LibreOffice

I was recently asked about Mac/OS X software which can read and write WordPerfect format files.  As a not-so-regular but long-time OpenOffice user, the OpenOffice/LibreOffice debacle immediately came to mind.  There were numerous articles and blogposts written about the situation including a good bit of FUD.  The net effect on me is that I don't immediately know which one to recommend, assuming such a solution is otherwise in the best interest of the user.

Ultimately I tested LibreOffice 4.1.4 on a couple of handy WP files I had handy and it worked well enough for my own needs.  [The latest version of OpenOffice I had installed would not read WordPerfect files but I believe I have used a filter to do so in the past.]

The trick, however, seemed to be actually downloading a current copy from the LibreOffice site.  Perhaps I caught it at a bad time, but I had to try three mirror sites before I could get anything close to a reasonable download speed or worse a file which downloaded (twice) with a bad MD5 checksum.

For convenience, I decided to put a copy on my own site which you can find here.  The MD5 checksum is ba641072d3fd51d9eec6c70a12fa362a

In order to meet Free Software requirements, I am also providing the link to the source code.

Hopefully this might speed things up a bit if you happen to be in North America.

HTH,
Carl

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