In the wake of WordPerfect's announced withdrawal from the NeXT market in November, Anderson Financial Systems (AFS) moved nimbly to fill the gap, announcing that it would accelerate development of its WordPerfect filter for WriteUp, a word processor that the company is currently developing.
AFS's WriteUp/WP document-interchange bundle was originally scheduled for release this June, but delivery has been pushed up to March. With the filter, WriteUp users will be able to automatically open WordPerfect files and save their documents in the WordPerfect format.
The company is also planning to develop filters for Microsoft Word and WriteNow, said Michael Pizolato, chief technology officer at AFS, but no release dates have been set.
Meanwhile, WordPerfect firmed up plans to ease users through its departure from the NeXT platform. In January, the company intends to ship an interim release of WordPerfect 1.0.1 that will provide a final round of enhancements and fixes. Changes will include correct mapping of the NeXT German keyboard, link-language files, fixes to the ASCII converter, the ability to save the paper size of the primary merge file during a merge, corrections to the use of the macro editor's extended characters, and updates to the French and German versions.
In addition, WordPerfect will continue to provide NEXTSTEP users with technical support for one year from the date of the interim release.