WordPerfect versus Word 2007

[Jerry Mac]

My organization is in the process of upgrading to Office 2007 from 2003. One
of our offices is using WordPerfect 11 macros which does some pretty
impressive formulas and computations and we would like to convert the macros
into Word 2007 macros. Although not sure if Word 2007 with it's XML back end
can match the functionality of WordPerfect 11 macros can.

Here are some functions that Word 2007 would have to do.

1) Ability to automatically populate templates with data from a “work fileâ€.
2) Be able to perform calculations with work file data and insert it in the
template.
3) Allow dynamic changes to the calculations with the resulting changes
reflected in the document.
4) Be able to automatically replicate changes to calculated and static data
fields throughout the document.
5) Be useable on a laptop that is off-line.

If anyone has knowledge or experience with this I would appreciate anything
you can send me.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

FWIW my experience of WordPerfect and its "merge language" as I think of
it is (a) old and (b) limited.

However it was always clear that WordPerfect had a much richer end-user
oriented facility for including data in documents than the Word "field
language."

In Word, you can achieve a certain amount using fields (and in Word 2007
you can do some other stuff using Content Controls), but if you need the
sort of control you'd typically get from a procedural language you would
typically end up using automation, e.g. using VBA, or perhaps turning to
a solution based on .NET code with or without VSTO. I'd say the problems
with those kinds of solution are primarily to do with distributing the
solution(s) and ensuring that they can and will function as designed
within the end user's environment.

Turning to the functions that Word 2007 would have to do, maybe stuff
that is done in WordPerfect in a rather obvious way does not translate
well to the Word environment, e.g. let's pick this apart:

1) Ability to automatically populate templates with
data from a “work fileâ€.

What do we mean by
a. automatically?
b. templates?
c. "work file"?

One possible scenario is that the user creates a new document based on a
(Word) template, and that that document should be automatically
populated by the data in a prespecified data file. I guess you could do
that using (say) Word 2007 content controls and some VBA to get the data
from the data file and put it in the document's "data store".

As for the datafile, how does the data get there? Does it have to have a
certain format/structure or can you (by which I mean the
design/programming arm of your organisation) choose what that
format/structure should be?

Moving on...

2) Be able to perform calculations with work file data and insert it in the
template.

Where do the calculations need to be defined and by whom? You might be
able to insert calculation results using Word { = } fields (which offer
a fairly limited set of arithmetic operators and functions), or by doing
the calculations using VBA (or some such) and inserting the results, or
perhaps by using Content controls and XPATH 1.0 expressions. There are
other possibilities.

3) Allow dynamic changes to the calculations with the resulting changes
reflected in the document.

do you mean for example that the users could modify the formulas used to
calculate the results? How does that work in practice? Are they in
effect entering worksheet formulas (cf. Excel) in WordPerfect cells and
seeing the results propagate immediately? If so, I think that would be
difficult to replicate in Word in any general, easy-to-use way.

and so on...


Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk