The WordPerfect format is interesting in some of its features, one of which is how stable the format has been – being designed with forward-compatibility in mind – and it vaguely resembles HTML in that it uses open-gates and end-gates for most of its codes, just like begin and end tags in HTML.
Further the format provides a finer granularity than HTML:
- Kerning/typesetting
- In-line justification; excellent for producing technical or information-dense documents
- In-line resetting of default tab-spacing, such that when ended it returns you to your former defaults.
So, to keep this versatile format alive, it is the intent to produce a package for creating, reading, altering and saving the format.