Bruce Bastian, WordPerfect co-creator, has died

The WordPerfect story as told by an early executive, Pete Peterson:

http://www.wordplace.com/ap/almostperfect.pdf

So long, and thanks for Reveal Codes.

I know lawyers (who do a lot of very particular word processing) who kept using WordPerfect for decades after Microsoft Word had become the norm.

This makes me sadder than I thought it would.

My first computer [1] didn't have Microsoft Word on it, but it had WordPerfect installed with the OEM Windows. I've always had really horrid handwriting so I preferred to type out all my homework since I was twelve or so, so I had to use whatever I could to do so, and WordPerfect was there.

I grew to actually really like it, and I used it for about two years until my hard drive crashed, I had to reinstall Windows, and then I installed StarOffice (which Google was giving away for free from Google Pack or something like that).

Still, I liked WordPerfect, and looking at the history it seems like it was actually quite significant; a part of me feels like it should have been the de facto word processor instead of Word.

[1] Not counting the hand me down Commodore 64 I got as a pretty young kid.

WordPerfect is still being sold. Lawyers used to love it, but I think they’ve mostly moved on to Word now. So who’s still buying new licenses for WP in 2024?

WordPerfect really was an outstanding word processor. Reveal codes (like many others here have pointed out) made "debuging" formatting issues relatively painless as was the "make it fit to a certain layout or size" feature. In an era when you didn't really have WYSIWYG they did an excellent job of enabling users to more or less get nice looking output without having to go to TeX.

I remember it took a LONG time before there was a Windows version of WordPerfect which I think took a lot of their momentum away. Combine that with Microsoft basically giving away Office or bundling Word+Excel they succeeded in eroding market share from Lotus / WordPerfect.

I think the Lotus Suite may have even pre-dated MSFT Office as a suite (not 100% certain) and as usual functionality was often superior or better implemented than MSFT's.

Credit should also go to WordPerfect for making a Linux version in the 2000's before Linux desktop was as mature as it is today. Sadly they didn't continue this effort.

I'm glad we have LibreOffice but it's frankly a clone of MSFT Office, the UI is very cluttered and it has the same "weirdisms" that Office has.

I changed the url from https://www.wsj.com/tech/bruce-bastian-wordperfect-lgbtq-act... because that one doesn't appear to have any paywall workaround.

It does appear to be a better article though, so if someone finds a link that people can actually read, we can swap it back.

Back in the late 80's I was feeling the kind of the world editing documents WYSIWYG with some Desktop Publishing package on my Atari ST, while my friends toiled away in the stone age of PC text mode with WordPerfect and that incredibly weird and primitive thing (to me): reveal codes.

By the time I moved to PCs I could use Windows 3.x and MS Word, so I lived through college in the late 80s and early 90s without ever using WP. But I still learned to understand the meaning, reason and power of reveal codes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Bastian

Related (from Wikipedia references):

https://www.deseret.com/utah/2024/06/17/word-perfect-co-foun...

https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/bruce-bastian-co-fo...

https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/human-rights-campaign-mou...

The goto office package during MSDOS time period - First WordStar then Multimate and then WordPerfect.

Famous for supporting every printer manufactured on planet Earth - 3 disks of printer drivers.

Afaik it was written in assembler hence the tough time when they needed to move to more modern OS/2 with Presentation Manager and then later Windows 3.

Brings back so many memories. WordPerfect, Quattro Pro, Novell, and Wang Computers. So long, Mr Bastian, and thank you

How else would I have shrunk 12 pages of high-school physics notes to fit on the allowed 3x5" (76x127mm) index card with 0.1 pt font printed in raster mode at 600 dpi on an HP LaserJet 4? WP 5.2 for DOS. IIRC, Word for Windows at the time was inflexible in granularity of TrueType font sizes.

WordPerfect 5.x, running on DOS, is/was the best work processor ever. WordPerfect indeed.

F7

Your changes have been saved, Bruce. RIP

RIP. Expertise in wordperfect was what allowed me to grok emacs and latex during college and post-grad work. In working life, I was forced to shift to vim, when I found emacs unavailable by default on many unix boxen.

The comments here focus on WordPerfect, reveal codes, etc, as is natural for a tech site.

But what struck me reading this obituary is that he was a graduate of Brigham Young University, lived in Utah, and was a strong LGTBQ+ advocate, appearing to be a member of that community himself. I can't imagine that was easy, especially in the past (googling shows it is still condemned by the LDS church today) and he seems to have tackled it through very strong philanthropy and support.

Kudos. Kindness and support for those who need it is a greater legacy than any technology.

WordPerfect 4.2 for DOS paired with a model F XT or AT layout (function keys on the side) keyboard has a special place in my heart. That combination along with a copious amount of weed got me through a lot of college papers in the late 80s.

Brings back great memories of laying out WordPerfect keyboard overlays at my University Computer Lab job back in the day. And helping students to Bold (F6) and Underline (F8) their documents.

Good times. http://xahlee.info/kbd/wordperfect_shortcuts_strip.html

On a podcast series covering some of the history of the intersection of business and technology in Utah (The 4th Node), the hosts had an episode with Bruce Bastian. Covers his background and the history of WordPerfect, for those curious to learn more and/or hear from Bruce himself:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1z0AEyFvPN30WFbQc317T6

Sometime in '85, my mom is an administrative assistant at the local University. She's an absolute wiz on her office's newly modernized setup with these "PC" things running Wordperfect all creating beautiful documents on nascent HP laser printers. She'd let me show up after hours to hunt'n'peck the final draft of my high school term papers on the setup. I knew so little about computers then, but i firmly believe the magic of this simple process and things like "reveal codes" planted the seeds for finding deeper insights into speedy software on slow hardware and how file formats work. She was so sad when it inevitably went to windows :-) Rest in peace Bruce, thank you for .. you.

Late 80's: WP's 'Reveal Codes' helped me whip up some code that imported our application's screen definitions so I could use them directly in a specification document, impressing our customer. WP was an elegant weapon in a more civilized age.

I've never really seen Word as anything other than inferior, having cut my teeth on WordPerfect.

Others have posted their favorite shortcuts (and Reveal Codes truly was magical); my most used ones I haven't seen mentioned were Ctrl+Shift+F1 and Alt+Shift+F1. IIRC, those were spell check and thesaurus, respectively.

RIP Bruce, you made the world a better place for millions.

Bruce came into the world and made it a better place. Bruce was smart, kind, thoughtful, and generous. I have never met him personally, but early in my life, his story had a significant positive impact on my life. Like him, I too grew up in Twin Falls, Idaho. It’s a conservative state in an LDS Religious stronghold. My high school technology teacher (Mike) was married to his sister at the time and spoke fondly of him but more importantly, spoke specifically about who Bruce was. In hindsight, he knew I needed to hear it.

I wasn’t out as gay yet, maybe only 15 years old. Of course, it would have been a death sentence for a teenager in Southern Idaho to come out as gay. One day though, Mike told me “You know, you can grow up here and you can be /different/ in many different kinds of ways, you can be a band nerd, a guy who writes software, you can be gay, you can be /yourself/ and no matter what some adults might tell you right now, you will be okay. Not only okay, but you can live a fulfilled and successful life while being authentic and true to yourself. You are never the person that these adults claim you are. They don’t know anything.“ He then went on to tell me Bruce’s story and how in his opinion, of course, Bruce wasn’t “evil” or “wrong” for being gay.

In 2005, I wrote my technology teacher a personal thank you letter. I wrote one to Bruce as well and I asked if it could be shared with him.

Bruce took the time to respond:

  Dear Brian,
  Thank you for taking the time to write your letter.  I was very moved by your story.  There were parts that really reminded me of some of my own experiences in life.
  The beautiful thing about life, at least as I have seen it, is that if you keep trying and never doubt yourself, you really can make amazing things happen both in yourself and in the world around you.  I am sure you too have already touched many people around you and have been a positive influence for them. That's so very important.  You may never realize the good you are doing, but it is happening.
  Being gay is becoming more and more accepted as "normal" and one day maybe it just won't matter.  As for being a geek, I don't consider that a bad term.  The world needs geeks.  But then they need gays too!
  Thanks again,
  Bruce Bastian

Reveal codes was useful. The loss of screen realestate to the hint bar was sometimes annoying.

I preferred runoff/[t]roff and vi

In the 1990s I loved the macro feature of WP 5.1. Macros and Reveal Codes let me write a basic Emacs keyboard emulator to accommodate my fingers' muscle memory.

When Windows got to be a thing, my law firm considered switching to WP for Windows because WP 5.1 for DOS was the unquestioned industry standard for lawyers. But we surveyed our clients (almost all of them were big companies) and learned that they were going over to Word for Windows. So we said, "who gives a [hoot] what other law firms are using" and switched to Word for Windows. It was more than a bit of a downgrade from WP 5.1 in DOS

Word perfect was the best - Reveal Codes - was my ninja tool for making thing format just right.

WordPerfect was my perfect electric typewriter experience. It struck a nerve for me.

I had an old, bulky laptop, Windows 3.11, and then WordPerfect 6. Of course, everything had to be installed from disk.

This was my technically totally limited writing setup, however I was very productive with it and enjoyed the setup.

Even on Windows 95, WordPerfect was my tool of choice. MS Word overtook only because WP crashed too often and the beneficial Grammar tool was lagging behind.

I felt sad the moment I had to let go of WP. Even thinking about it today feels crazy. I never ever again felt an emotional rift after switching to another tool. It was only this one time with WP.

I think Corel bought WP and somewhat tried to revive WP, but this came too late.

F10, F7