WPMac Appliance for Intel-based Macs | The WPMac Appliance desktop | Other programs installed with the Appliance | The files in the download | FAQ | Copying and pasting to and from OS X | Open WPMac files in other programs | Links and useful information | Automatically set zoom level and window size | Automatic font replacement macro | Set up this system by hand in OS X 10.4 | Home page
Read this first: The information on this page is only designed for owners of any Intel-based or PowerPC-based Mac running OS X 10.5 "Leopard" or 10.6 "Snow Leopard" or later! If you have a PowerPC-based Mac running OS X 10.3 or 10.4, stop now and go to a separate page about WPMac in the OS X "Classic" environment.
Note: If you have an Intel-based Mac running OS X 10.4 "Tiger" (not 10.5 or 10.6 any other version), see the note on "SheepShaver" below or the instructions for installing the WPMac Appliance by hand.
If you don't know which kind of Mac you have, click the Apple icon on the upper left corner of the screen, then click "About this Mac". In the "About this Mac" dialog box, look at the line that begins "Processor." If you see the word "Intel," then you have an Intel-based Mac. If you see "Power PC" then you have a PowerPC-based Mac. The same dialog box will also tell you which version of OS X you have.
Are you absolutely certain that you understand which page you should read? If not, read this section again, and, if necessary, yet again, until you are absolutely certain that you understand whether this page applies to your Mac.
If you want information about ways to run WordPerfect for DOS on modern Macintosh hardware, see a separate page.
If you have WordPerfect for DOS or WordPerfect for Windows files that you want to open in Microsoft Word for the Mac, you may ignore this page and go directly to another page on this site.
This page provides an "emulated" 68K Macintosh system that runs Mac OS 7.5.5 and WordPerfect for the Mac in a window in the OS X desktop. This system is called the WPMac Appliance, and it runs in the form of a window that contains the full desktop of a 1990s-era Macintosh computer. (An "appliance" is an emulated computer system used for one specific purpose.)
Like all applications written for older (pre-OS X) versions of the Macintosh operating system, WordPerfect for the Mac cannot run within OS X itself. It will only run inside an "emulated" Macintosh - a "virtual" computer created entirely by software, and running in a window on the OS X desktop. This "emulated" Macintosh is the software equivalent of a 1990s-era Macintosh that can run System 7 or OS 8 or 9, which are the operating systems in which WordPerfect for the Mac were designed to run.
Two programs exist that can create an "emulated" Macintosh, one called Basilisk II, which imitates an ancient 680x0-based (68K) Macintosh. This is the program that is at the heart of the WPMac Appliance.
A note on SheepShaver: The other Mac-emulation software is called SheepShaver; it imitates a more recent PowerPC-based Macintosh. Basilisk II can run Mac OS 7 through OS 8.1; SheepShaver can run Mac OS 7.5.2 through OS 9.0.4. For details about a SheepShaver-based system that runs WordPerfect for the Mac on a later version of the MacOS than the one used in the Basilisk II-based WPMac Appliance, visit the WordPerfect Mac users group in Yahoo Groups. If you wish to use WPMac as your main word-processor, I recommend that you use the SheepShaver-based version. The Basilisk II-based version described below is more useful for viewing, printing, and converting WPMac files, but perhaps not suitable for full-time use.
To use WordPerfect for the Mac on this emulated WPMac Appliance system, download the installer disk image for the WPMac Appliance, a complete system based on Basilisk II. Perform the following steps to install and run the Appliance:
To restart the WPMac Appliance after shutting it down, double-click the "WPMac Appliance" icon that the installer placed on your OS X desktop.
System requirements: OS X 10.5 or 10.6 or later. I have tested this system only on Intel-based Macs running OS X 10.5 and 10.6, but visitors tell me that it also works on PowerPC Macs running OS X 10.5. If your system has been updated from previous versions of OS X, and the installer is unable to create the folder "Folder Action Scripts" in the "Library/Scripts" folder of your user directory, you may need to create that folder and then run the installer again.
Warning: Alternate versions of Basilisk II sometimes become available from other web sites. Do not use any alternate version of Basilisk II to replace the copy of Basilisk II in the WPMac Appliance! The copy in the Appliance has been modified to incorporate two files, a keycode table and a ROM, in its "resources." Other versions of Basilisk II will not contain those files and the system will not run if those versions are used. (Highly expert users will know how to modify alternate versions to incorporate those two files, but the great majority of users will not.)
Note: The system was most recently updated 12 October 2009 with minor improvements, including an updated version of Basilisk II recently posted at emaculation.com.
These are the icons on the WPMac Appliance desktop. (Remember, the WPMac appliance appears in a window on your OS X desktop.)
A shortcut to the "Read Me First.pdf" file; you must read at least the first page of this file! It will tell you how to set up the system so that you can print or create PDF files from WordPerfect. You absolutely must read this file if you want to print or create PDF files.
The desktop shortcut "WordPerfect 3.5 Enhanced" opens the final version of WPMac. Use the program exactly as you would have used it on a real Macintosh computer.
The "Old WP Versions" folder contains shortcuts to copies of WordPerfect for the Mac 1.0.5, WordPerfect for the Mac 2.1.1, and WordPerfect for the Mac 3.5.4. These are provided in the unlikely event that you need them to open files created in those versions, but you probably will not need them, because WordPerfect 3.5e (Enhanced) should open all WordPerfect for the Mac files except password-protected files created in WordPerfect for the Mac 1.0. Use the shortcut to WordPerfect 1.0.5 to open such files.
The "Open WP Files in WPMac" folder contains "droplets" that you can use to open WordPerfect files (for files created in non-WP formats, such as Microsoft Word, see the paragraph below this one) in WPMac when you can't (or don't want to) open those files from the WPMac File/Open menu. Drag the files to appropriate droplet to open it in WPMac. The droplet named "Drop Mac file..." should be used only for WPMac files and Mac-based text files.
The "Convert to/from WPMac" folder contains droplets that can convert many file formats into other file formats. If you want to edit a Microsoft Word or other non-WP file in WPMac, drop the file on the "to Corel WordPerfect 3.5e doc" droplet and drag the resulting file to the desktop or some other folder. To convert a file into WPDOS, Microsoft Word, or any other supported format, drop the file onto the appropriately-named droplet and drag the resulting file to the desktop or your Unix folder. Use these droplets before transferring files to your OS X system.
The "Virtual Printers" folder contains desktop printers used by this system. All of them can print to your OS X printer or create PDF files. You can, of course, use these printers from within WordPerfect. Make sure to read the "Read Me First.pdf" file on the WPMac Appliance desktop for instructions on initial setup.
The "Shortcut to OS X user folder" and the "Unix" icon both open a window that shows the file in your OS X "home" folder. In other words, if your OS X username is "Roscoe", the Unix icon in the Appliance is the same as your "roscoe" folder in OS X. Drag documents to and from the Unix window to move them between OS X and the Appliance. The "Shortcut to OS X user folder" shortcut is on the desktop only in case you forget what the "Unix" icon does!
How the WPMac Appliance differs from a real Mac: The Basilisk II emulator works more or less like any real 68K Mac. The only significant differences between this system and your ancient 68K Mac are these:
Warning: Be safe by saving new and modified files to the WPMac Appliance Desktop, not directly the "Unix" folder. WordPerfect for the Mac can save files directly to the "Unix" folder (which, as you remember, is actually a folder on your OS X system). However, not all programs included on the WPMac Appliance are able to save directly to the "Unix" folder; for example, any file that you attempt to save from Apple's SimpleText (included in the WPMac Appliance) to the "Unix" folder is deleted, not saved. To avoid this problem, save new and modified files to the WPMac Appliance desktop, and then drag the files from the WPMac Appliance desktop to the "Unix" folder in order to transfer them to your OS X system.
A warning on "Save As..." from WordPerfect for the Mac: Be certain to test any files that you create by using the File | Save As... option in WordPerfect. If your document is complex, the WordPerfect export filter may produce an empty file. The export filters that seem most reliable are "Microsoft Word 6.0" and "WP for PC 6,7,8." (Avoid using the "RTF - Rich Text Format" and "WP for PC 5.1,5.2", which often create empty files.)
A warning about the Microsoft Word 6 format: If you convert your WPMac files to the Microsoft Word 6, the resulting files may not be usable in Microsoft Word for Windows. Recent versions of Word for Windows refuse to open such files because their file format is inherently insecure. If you save a file in Word 6 format from WPMac, open in it Word for the Mac or some other program, and then save it again in the format of Word 97 or later so that it can be read on current Windows systems.
If you need more disk space: If you run out of disk space on the WPAppliance.dsk disk image, use the Emulator Disk Image Chooser application (in the same folder with the Basilisk II application) to create another disk image for use in your WPMac Appliance system. The process is entirely self-explanatory; follow the prompts and menus. You can do one of two things with your newly-created disk: (a) you can use the new disk to store files and programs that do not fit on the main disk, while you continue to use the main disk, or (b) if you created a large disk (perhaps 512MB or 1GB in size), you can use it to replace the original disk. To do so, start the WPMac Appliance; copy the entire contents of the original disk to the new disk; shut down the WPMac Appliance; then run the Emulator Disk Image Chooser application to set your new, larger, disk as the only disk in your WPMac Appliance system. (You may need to recreate some alias files after performing this operation.)
Troubleshooting:
Also installed in the BasiliskII folder in the Applications folder in your user folder are three AppleScripts that you can use to modify the default WPMac Appliance setup:
Set WPMac Appliance Window Size: Double-click this program to set a different size for the WPMac Appliance screen. If you need to use a screen size that isn't listed as an option, you will need to use the BasiliskIIGUI program (recommended for experts only) which is also installed in the same folder. Please send feedback if you encounter any problems with this script.
Run WPMac Appliance FullScreen: This AppleScript tries to run the WPMac Appliance in full-screen mode (or as close to full-screen as OS X allows). Full-screen mode is available only when the Appliance is launched from this script. If you launch the program in the ordinary way, from its own shortcut icon, it will run in its usual screen size, not full-screen. (Note: If your OS X system is set up in a way that prevents this script from working properly, the script will explain the change you need to make.) Please send feedback if you encounter any problems with this script.
Emulator Disk Image Chooser: This script lets you create a new disk image to add to the BasiliskII system, and also lets you install or remove other disk images that you may have already. The interface should be self-explanatory. (Note for experts: You can also use this program to create disk images for use with the SheepShaver PPC emulator.) Please send feedback if you encounter any problems with this script.
Also installed is the BasiliskIIGUI application, written by one of the developers of Basilisk II, and not by me. It may be used for any other changes in your Basilisk II setup. Do not get in touch with me if you encounter problems with this program. I did not write it!
This download includes a variety of different software, with different copyright status, as follows:
If either Apple or Corel wants me to remove any software from this site, they know where to find me. The chairman of Apple, Steven Jobs, quoted me in his keynote address to the World Wide Developers' Conference in 2008, and I am in constant communication with Apple's corporate communications department. I have been in continuous contact with Corel ever since that company acquired WordPerfect. Both companies know how to reach me, and both know that I will immediately agree to any request they may make in reference to their intellectual property.
Q. Why can't this system connect to the Internet,
or at least to the rest of my network?
A.
Networking in Basilisk II is at best slow and at worst unstable. If you want to
add networking components from a Mac OS installation CD, feel free to do so. But
I think you will be wasting your time.
Q. What happened to the Chooser? It isn't there!
A. In this system, I have removed the Chooser from the
Apple Menu because there is nothing you can
choose from the Chooser. The networking components are absent from this system
because networking is unreliable from Basilisk II. The "Virtual
Printers" are all variations on the Apple LaserWriter printer driver, which is
the only driver that lets you print to your OS X printers or create PDF files
through OS X. So the Chooser would be useless. If you insist on having the
Chooser, you can find it in the System Folder, in the Apple Menu Items (Disabled) folder.
Q. I want to upgrade the WPMac Appliance from
System 7.5.5 to Mac OS 9. Can you help me do that?
A. If you had taken the trouble to read the explanations above, you
would see that Basilisk II can run Mac OS 7 through OS 8.1. That means it cannot
run Mac OS 8.6 or OS 9. If you want to update WPMac Appliance system to Mac OS
7.6.1 or 8.1, that is your choice. I have never tried updating this system, and
I don't know if the update will work. But you can easily try it.
Q. I have an old Mac program called MacCheese that
I use for making Stilton and Cheddar in my garage. Please tell me as soon as
possible whether your system will run this program, and what I might have to do
in order to make it work smoothly. I will be glad to send you a
copy of MacCheese so that you can test it for me and tell me whether it will
work, so that I don't have to waste my extremely valuable time installing it
only to find that it doesn't work.
A. I have never heard of MacCheese, and I have no plans to test
it. I understand, of course, that your time is far more valuable than mine is,
and I understand why it makes to sense to you that I should waste my time
testing a program that you want to use.
However, you might still want to take the bold, revolutionary step of trying it
yourself.
Q. Sorry, but I just don't understand any
of this. I see that you went to a lot of trouble to explain it extremely
clearly, but I'm too lazy and impatient to read what you've written. Please send
me an e-mail that tells me all the things that you're saying on this page, but
more clearly, and addressed to me personally, not just anyone. Meanwhile,
I'll also send you a long list of questions, because I'm too impatient to find the answers
that are already on this page.
A.
Please read this page slowly and carefully.
You can copy and paste plain text between OS X and the WPMac Appliance. If you are copying from the WPMac Appliance to OS X, follow these steps:
Follow a similar procedure to cut-and-paste instead of copy-and-paste from the WPMac Appliance to OS X. Use similar procedures to copy- or cut-and paste from OS X to the WPMac Appliance.
Technical note: When copying from OS X to the WPMac Appliance, it is not necessary to click on the WPMac Appliance desktop before pasting, but you should do so anyway, so that you will be less likely to forget that essential step when pasting to OS X.
Frequently-asked question:
Q. I tried this method and it didn't work at all! Why are you wasting my valuable time with a method that you obviously didn't bother to test? How can you repay me for the time and effort that I've wasted trying to follow your incompetent and ignorant instructions?
A. Please try the procedure again. This time, please remember to click on the desktop of the WPMac Appliance, exactly as it says in the description. Again, please do not forget to click on the desktop of the WPMac Appliance after copying and before pasting.
If you have WPMac files that you wish to open in other applications, the following list tells you which applications may be able to open your files. See also the list of standalone conversion programs at the end of this list.
WordPerfect for the Mac 3.5e (3.5 Enhanced):
WordPerfect for the Mac 3.0 through 3.5.4 (but not 3.5e) files (including files saved in "WPMac 3 Compressed" format, which seems to be identical to the WPMac 2.x compressed format):
WordPerfect for the Mac 2.x files (including files saved in "WPMac 2.x Compressed" format):
WordPerfect for the Mac 1.x files:
Standalone conversion software:
On the Macintosh:
Under Windows:
Yahoo Groups hosts a WPMac user group, founded by John Rethorst. Anyone may join easily, and your e-mail address can be hidden from other members. The group's resources include around a thousand digests of the now-defunct WP-L mailing list, which are accessible via Yahoo's search engine (over 23MB of discussion covering almost a decade) via this link (available only after you have joined the group). This index follows the digests in the group's Message area. The group's Links and Files section contain access to virtually every downloadable or web-based WPMac resource except for the large downloaders for WP itself.
Note: Make sure to study the files page of the Yahoo WPMac group, and download highly useful programs such as John Rethorst's MetaMacro, which runs a WP macro on multiple files with a single command. Also, remember that while most of the information available on the archives of the WP-L mailing list is highly reliable, you should not believe everything you read, especially in messages that warn you not to use up-to-date Mac software, or that warn you not to turn on useful convenient features of current Mac software; most such warnings that you find on the list are based on obsolete information.
Many additional files for WPMac may be found at the Info-Mac HyperArchive; read the file "00wp-abstracts.txt" for descriptions. See also the page of WPMac links at WPUniverse (but be warned that most of these links are defunct).
Books worth reading about WordPerfect for the Macintosh include John Rethorst's Teach Yourself WordPerfect 3.0 for the Macintosh (search for it on bookfinder.com, or read the full text in on the Yahoo WPMac user group message board, starting here); Rita Lewis's WordPerfect 3.5 for Macintosh: Quick Start Guide (search for it on bookfinder.com); and Mark Kellner's WordPerfect 3.5 for Macs for Dummies (search for it on bookfinder.com).
Users who already know the basics of the program should study John Rethorst's unique guide to WordPerfect macros and related AppleScript scripting, available as "Scripting Guide" in the files section of the Yahoo WordPerfectMac group.
An Envoy document viewer for the Envoy-format files distributed with some WordPerfect, Corel, and Novell products may be found at a third-party download site.
WordPerfect for the Macintosh was written for different screen sizes than those on today's computers, so many users change the zoom level for comfort. Instructions for creating a macro that does this automatically may be found on another page.
If you created WordPerfect documents under older versions of the Macintosh operating system, you may have chosen obsolete Mac fonts like Geneva or New York as your default document fonts. These fonts can produce unattractively-formatted documents when printed under OS X, and you may want to replace them with more modern fonts.
A macro that automatically replaces fonts when a document is opened was written by John Rethorst and Kevin McCoy. Download this Stuffit archive containing a WPMac document; extract the document and open it in WordPerfect. Follow the instructions in the document to install the macro.
If you absolutely insist on setting up the WPMac Appliance on an Intel Mac running OS X 10.4 ("Tiger"), follow these steps with extreme care. It would be much easier to upgrade to 10.5 or later and run the automated installer instead. Remember: If you have a PowerPC-based Mac running OS X 10.4 ("Tiger") you should ignore these instructions and go to a different page instead.
(1) In your home folder (the one with your username; it has a house icon in the Finder) create two new folders, one named "Folder for PrintFiles" (no quotation marks), the other named Applications (if a folder with that name does not already exist in your home folder; keep firmly and consistently in mind that this Applications folder in your user folder is emphatically not the same as the top-level Applications folder in your Macintosh hard disk!). In the (perhaps newly-created) Applications folder in your home folder, create a new folder named "BasiliskII Folder" (no quotation marks). Leave this "BasiliskII Folder" open in the Finder.
(2) Download the installer disk image (as described elsewhere on this page) to your desktop, and double-click the WPApplianceInstaller.dmg file in order to mount the virtual disk. Click Agree when the first screen appears. Double-click on the WPMac Installer desktop icon to open the disk in the Finder. Drag the "Install WPMac Appliance" and "Read Me First" files from the WPMac Installer window to your desktop. Close the virtual disk window and drag the disk's icon to the trash to unmount it from the desktop.
(3) Control-click the "Install WPMac Appliance" icon on your desktop and select Show Package Contents from the contextual menu. In the window that opens with the contents of the "package", Alt-Click on the Contents folder, then Alt-Click again on the Resources folder, then Alt-Click again on the Files folder. You should see a Finder window with ten files. Drag all these files to the "BasiliskII Folder" that you created in step (1). Also drag into this "BasiliskII Folder" the "Read Me First" icon that you dragged to the desktop in step (2). Next, hold down the Ctrl, Option, and Cmd (Apple) keys and drag the Basilisk II icon from this "BasiliskII Folder" to the desktop in order to create a desktop shortcut for it. (This is the icon with a picture of a green dragon-like creature.) Rename this desktop shortcut "WPMac Appliance"; make sure that the original BasiliskII file (which also has a green dragon-like creature in its icon) remains in the "BasiliskII Folder" and continue to leave this folder open in the Finder.
(4) Open a new Finder window and navigate to your own home folder, then to the Library folder inside your home folder (emphatically not the top-level Library folder in your Macintosh hard disk, but the Library folder inside the folder with your user name), then to the Scripts folder inside this Library folder; if the Scripts folder contains a folder named "Folder Action Scripts", navigate into that folder; if that folder does not exist, create it (without the quotation marks). Leave open the Finder window of the "Folder Actions Scripts" folder; go back to the "BasiliskII Folder" and drag the file "PrintOrPDFWPMac.scpt" from the "BasiliskII Folder" to the "Folder Actions Scripts" folder. Close the "Folder Actions Scripts" folder.
(5) In the Finder, find the "Folder for PrintFiles" folder that you created in your user folder in step (1). Control-click on it and study the contextual menu; you may need to scroll down through the menu to find the items described in the next few sentences. If you see "Disable Folder Actions", proceed immediately to the next sentence, but if, instead, you see "Enable Folder Actions", click on it; then open the contextual menu again; you should now see "Disable Folder Actions"; do not click on that item. In the same menu click on "Attach Folder Action". In the dialog that opens, navigate to your home folder, then to the Library (again, the Library folder inside your home folder), then to Scripts, then to Folder Action Scripts, and select "PrintOrPDFWPMac.scpt", and click Choose. Close this Finder window. A bug in OS X sometimes causes the Attach Folder Action operation to fail; immediately repeat this entire step (5) to make certain that the operation succeeds.
(6) Also among the files that you dragged into the "BasiliskII Folder" was one named BasiliskIIGUI. Double-click this file to launch the Basilisk II Settings program. On the Volumes tab, click Add, and then, very carefully and slowly, use the left-hand panel to navigate to, and double-click on, "Users/" (you will need to scroll down the list of folders); then double-click on your user name (for example "roscoe/"); then double-click on "Applications/"; then on "BasiliskII Folder/". Then, in the right-hand panel, click on "WPAppliance.dsk", and click OK. Back in the Volumes tab, in the "Unix Root" field, carefully enter "/Users/yourusername/" (without quotation marks), but replace "yourusername" with your actual user name (perhaps "roscoe", but more probably your real name). If you are foolish enough to type in "yourusername" instead of your actual user name, you should not be doing this at all.
(7) Still in the Basilisk II Settings window, in the Graphics/Sound tab, make sure that Video Type is Window and Window Refresh Rate is Dynamic. Set the Width to 800 and the Height to 640, or to any other set of numbers that you know will fit on your screen. Ignore the rest of this tab. In the Keyboard/Mouse tab, add a checkmark next to "Use Raw Keycodes" and, on the next line, click the Browse button; exactly as you did in step (5), use the left-hand panel to navigate to the "Basilisk II Folder" and, in the right-hand panel, click on "BasiliskII_keycodes", then click OK.
(8) Still in the Basilisk II Settings window, ignore the Serial/Network tab, and go to the Memory/Misc tab. Set the MacOS RAM Size (MB) to 512. Set the Mac Model ID to "Mac IIci (MacOS 7.x)". Set the CPU Type to 68040. Click the Browse button to the right of the ROM File field, and once again, as you did in steps (6) and (7), navigate to the "Basilisk II Folder" and, in the right-hand panel, click on Quadra650.rom then click OK. Back in the Memory/Misc tab, add a checkmark next to "Don't Use CPU When Idle." Ignore everything else in the Basilisk II Settings dialog, and close the Basilisk II Settings application.
(9) Close any Finder windows that may still be open and return to your desktop. Delete the "Install WPMac Appliance" icon from your desktop. Double-click the "WPMac Appliance" shortcut icon to launch the WPMac Appliance, and immediately read the "Read Me First" PDF file to learn how to complete the setup for printing or creating PDFs. You must follow the instructions in the "Read Me First" file if you want to print or create PDF files from the WPMac Appliance.
Frequently-asked question:
Q. I followed the instructions. They don't work!
Help me!
A. You didn't follow the
instructions. They do work. Try again.