SPEEDING UP WORDPERFECT 
 
                                PC Development 
                               TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 
      Faster Hardware                                        
               1 
                  Processing Speed/Bit Class                 
               1 
                  Disk Drives                                
               2 
                  Hard Drive vs. Floppy Disk Drives          
               2 
 
      More Memory                                            
               3 
                  Increasing Available Conventional Memory   
               3 
                  Using Expanded Memory                      
               3 
                  Extended Memory                            
               4 
 
      Faster file I/O:                                       
               4 
                  Physical Disks                             
               4 
                  RAM I/O                                    
               5 
 
      Fine Tuning WordPerfect 5.1                            
               7 
                  Network WordPerfect                        
               7 
                  Background Printing                        
               8 
                  Increasing Available Workspace             
               8 
                  Speeding WordPerfect Features              
               9 
                            SPEEDING UP WORDPERFECT 
 
As the demand for new functionality in WordPerfect rages on,
PC Development continues to fashion a word 
processor that is "nearly everything" to "nearly everyone." 
But because our DOS heritage includes the "640K 
barrier," new functionality often comes at the expense of
program speed.  How to "speed up" DOS applications, 
including WordPerfect 5.0 and 5.1 is a simple question with a
complex solution that involves the resources 
available to you (your time and money), those available to
your system (compatible with your hardware), and 
most often a trade-off between speed and functionality in the
application itself.  The optimum allocation of each 
resource can be found only through experimentation.  The
purpose of this document is to introduce the factors 
involved in program speed, and to present the issues you
should consider in determining how to best "beef up" 
your system. 
 
Speeding up nearly any DOS application can be done by
acquiring any or all of the following: 
More Memory 
Sorting 
Printing a Document Summary 
The Print to Hardware Port feature (6-29-90 or later) will
speed printing to local serial and parallel printers.  
The /bp=(kilobytes) switch sets the buffer size for printing
to hardware port (default is 512 bytes).  If your 
printer is relatively slow, increasing the size of this
buffer will allow WP to continue working without waiting 
for the printer.  Although the maximum setting is 63K, a
setting greater than 20K taxes available workspace so 
much as to cause a decrease in printing speed. 
 
Decreasing size of .PRS.  Decreasing the number of fonts
selected in your .PRS file (especially page printers 
with several fonts available) decreases the amount of memory
needed (73 bytes per font you remove) to display 
the base font list and to print documents formatted for that
printer.  See Increasing Available Workspace: Size of 
.PRS above for more details. 
 
Graphics printing is one of the few 5.1 features that use
expanded memory workspace before going to disk.  
Installing expanded memory will speed graphics printing. 
 
If you're working with downloadable softfonts, marking the
frequently used fonts with "*" and initializing the 
printer once a day will save the time required to download
fonts with each print job. 
 
Editing and scrolling through a document with Reveal Codes on
is slower than with Reveal Codes off because 
WP must display much more with every cursor movement.  The
upper half of the display must also be re- 
centered much more frequently.  An additional factor, though
minor, is that the pieces of code that display the 
Reveal Codes screen and move the cursor share the same spot
in memory and must shuffle in and out of 
memory with each cursor movement.  Turning off Reveal Codes
will speed scrolling and editing significantly.  
 
The Automatically Format and Rewrite feature causes WP to
frequently re-fresh the full editing screen.  
Setting this option to "No" will also speed editing and
scrolling.  See Setup (Display): Edit Screen Options. 
 
Saving 
Normally documents are fast saved which means that
WordPerfect does not format the document for printing 
before saving it.  If you edit and save documents more
frequently than you print them, you will speed the 
saving process by leaving or setting Fast Save to "Yes." 
 
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