From: barr@pop.psu.edu (David Barr)
Subject: Re: Word Perfect 5.1 experience ?
Organization: Penn State Population Research Institute
Date: Sat, 03 Oct 92 00:33:05 GMT

In article <BvILCt.7HE@news.cso.uiuc.edu> hr@spica.astro.uiuc.edu (Harold Ravlin) writes:
>I do have some qualms. I have yet to understand why it is necessary for
>what is basically a text editor to have setuid root permissions:
>
> ---s--x--x  1 root     software   319488 Oct  1 10:43 ./shbin/wpexc51
> ---s--x--x  1 root     software   983040 Oct  1 10:43 ./shbin/wpp
>
>I think the wpexc51 is their own 'print spooler'. This gets started when
>Wordperfect is started and sticks around forever.

Sure, 'lpr' is suid root, what is so bad about WordPerfect's spooler
to be suid?  (other than the fact that it's awful big for what it
needs to do.)

>WordPerfect also assumes it can write anywhere it wants to. I had problems
>running the license manager because the system running it didn't have
>write permissions on the partition with the WordPerfect files (33+MB of them).
>Fortunately, I was able to redirect the log outputs to a file in /var/adm
>by editing their startup script.

Well that's an odd setup.  A simple fix is to run the license daemon on
the filesystem you have WP installed on.  It needs/wants to write to a
"License.log" file.

>At least I was able to get around their mucking with my printcap entries.
>(The manuals helped here, but then so did some comments I recently read
>on the net).

Oh gawd, don't get me started on WordPerfect's miserable excuse for
printer setup.

>I can't get over the feeling that the WordPerfect people still think of
>Unix boxes as PCs that they can completely take over.

Believe me, you're not alone.

I just love it when i call WP tech support.  The first thing they say
is "okay, make sure everyone is not running WordPerfect".  HUH!?!  "And
how do you suppose I do that?!  I have two dozen machines across two
buildings!"  (Not as bad as another admin friend who has 60 machines
spread across 4 floors)

FYI, here's a list of "bugs" and other wanted fixes I sent to WP last
week by fax:
-------------
System: SunOS 4.1.1
Help line: WP 5.1    Sun SPARC       07/05/92

Using Sun's PCFS filesystem, it is impossible to save a document
directly to a mounted PCFS filesystem.  WP tries and fails to lock
the file.  Solution: turn off file locking (overkill), or save to a
Unix filesystem and then copy the file with the Unix 'cp' command.
WP's 'copy' command in the directory listing also fails to copy
a file to a PCFS filesystem.  Please fix WP so it does not lock files
located on PCFS filesytems.

WP does not understand BSD groups.  It would be nice to assign print
priorities and access controls for different groups.  For example,
I wish to restrict modification of the printer drivers to everyone
except those in group 'staff'.  In order for this to work, users must
use the newgrp command to switch groups.  This is unacceptable.

WP's graphical interface is painfully slow, even on a Sparc2 running
MIT X11R5 and 48MB of memory.  When typing text in the middle of a document,
WP is constantly redrawing the bottom half of the screen unnecessarily.
This is very distracting, and makes use of the graphical interface unusable
for long periods of time.

There should be a more elegant way of starting wpport than by typing
'wpxtool -e wpport'.

WP gets confused if you are running as root (su'd) and the HOME
environment variable does not point to /usr/local/wp (or whatetever)
Instead of modifying the global .wp*.set files, it modifies the user's
.wp*.set configuration files.  (the user who su'd)

It is a very confusing matter when changing port configurations.
If I change a port configuration, it does not take effect unless I
go in to the Select Printer dialog box and click on OK after selecting
"Setup.. Port..".

Sometimes when deep in dialog boxes in the "Select Printer", xwp will
exit suddenly with no error or message.

The HP Postscript IIIsi printer driver does not generate PostScript.

It would be nice if the printer drivers could be made to do printer
accounting.
-------

--Dave
-- 
System Administrator, Population Research Institute    barr@pop.psu.edu
  "An analogy is like instant coffee: it can wake you up, but it's
  not the real thing"  -- Peter da Silva
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.apps