This plethora of keystroke possibilities, combined with the developers' wish to keep the user interface free of 'clutter' such as on-screen menus, made it necessary for most users to use a keyboard template showing each function.

For example, the Tab key and the related F4 (Indent) functions were adjacent. Many people still know the function key combinations from the DOS version, which were designed for the layout of the original 1981 IBM PC keyboard, with two columns of function keys at the left end of the keyboard. This was in contrast to WordStar, which used only Ctrl, in conjuction with traditional typing keys. WordPerfect used almost every possible combination of function keys with Ctrl, Alt, and Shift modifiers. In 1989, WordPerfect Corporation released the program's most successful version ever, WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, which included a pull-down menu that version 5.0 lacked. WordPerfect 4.2 became the first program to overtake the original market leader (WordStar) in a major application category on the DOS platform. The program's popularity took off with the introduction of WordPerfect 4.2 in 1986, with automatic paragraph numbering (important to the legal market), and the splitting of a lengthy footnote and its partial overflow to the bottom of the next page, as if it had been professionally typeset (valuable to the academic market). Originally written for Data General minicomputers, in 1982 the developers ported the program to the IBM PC as WordPerfect 2.20, continuing the version numbering of the Data General series. of Orem, Utah, which later renamed itself WordPerfect Corporation.

Alan Ashton who founded Satellite Software International, Inc. WordPerfect was originally produced by Bruce Bastian and Dr. Although the DOS and Microsoft Windows versions are best known, it has been available for a wide variety of computers and operating systems, including Mac OS, Linux, the Apple IIe, a separate verson for the Apple IIgs, most popular versions of Unix, VMS, Data General, System/370, AmigaOS, Atari ST, and OS/2. At the height of its popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was the de facto standard word processor, but has since been eclipsed in sales by Microsoft Word. WordPerfect is a software program for word processing. Tracing the History of the Computer - WordPerfect Word Processor

How to make footnotes in word perfect