- Electric Pencil on a TRS-80 Model 1
- Word Writer on a C64
- PC-Write on an IBM XT
- WordPerfect for DOS 4.2 on a XT clone
- Describe for OS/2
- Lotus WordPro
- WordPerfect for Windows
- Microsoft Word
- Google Docs
I went to a mostly liberal arts university and the new my freshman year, 1987, computer lab consisted of around a dozen non-networked XT clones running WP 4.2. Two of them had dot matrix printers attached and were dedicated to printing. I had my own XT clone, which made me the computer lab for my friends, but no printer so WP 4.2 was somewhat forced on me. That being said I found it to be extremely productive and is the only one I have any sort of nostalgic feeling towards. Once AT layout keyboards became the norm it was much less productive to use.
I know Microsoft Word is disliked around here, but I regularly produced complex documents hundreds of pages in length both by myself and in collaboration with others. I found it to be a good tool for doing so.
I did try Wordstar at one point but it lost out to PC-Write which used many of the same control keys.
I mostly retired a few months ago and now part time manage my fiancee's horse farm. Google Docs meets those needs.
> I know Microsoft Word is disliked around here, but I regularly produced complex documents hundreds of pages in length both by myself and in collaboration with others. I found it to be a good tool for doing so.
Anyone who doesn't think Microsoft Word is now on-par or superior to every other word processor in ability and function, tells me they have no idea how to use.
Part of that is Microsoft - Word is extremely complex with, literally, hundreds of options, much of which you need to be actively taught (a high quality book or a long course) - the other part is that it's user interface is still very much rooted in earlier computer design ideology. It has to be.
This kind of reminds me of the people who complained that Maya was so much more complex than KPT Bryce. Yeah... it has to be. One of them is almost unfathomably powerful for creating computer-generated graphics, and the other displays its limitations well within the first hour of usage.
Seconded. I'm mostly a LibreOffice user now (since I use the Linux desktop almost all the time), but Word is an extremely capable piece of software.
Sadly, the atrocity that is the ribbon interface manages to obfuscate or hinder most of this advanced functionality.
A lot of people told me "I wanted to do X in Word but it cannot be done...". Yes, it can be done, you just have to discover that functionality and learn how to operate it. Used to be easier ("Just go to Tools > Mail Merge, and follow the wizard"). Now you have to learn which tab of the atrocious ribbon interface, and in a completely unintuitive way.
+1 Microsoft Word is a very capable piece of software. If Microsoft's software engineers were forced to write board papers and legal contracts, it would probably be more intuitive too. IntelliSense for defined terms would be amazing.
I know Microsoft Word is disliked around here, but I regularly produced complex documents hundreds of pages in length both by myself and in collaboration with others. I found it to be a good tool for doing so.
I did try Wordstar at one point but it lost out to PC-Write which used many of the same control keys.
I mostly retired a few months ago and now part time manage my fiancee's horse farm. Google Docs meets those needs.