1st Word is a word processor program for the Atari ST platform, written by GST Computer Systems in 1985. This was given away with all ST systems from December 1985 for the next two years. Although it was relatively well received, it was a very simple program, laking most power features and was very slow when working in large documents. In spite of any limitations, it's wide availability made the program's .DOC file format became a de facto standard for the platform and was widely supported by other programs like desktop publishing systems.
1st Word Plus was a greatly improved version released by GST when the bundling deal ended in 1987. This addressed performance issues and added dozens of features that made it one of the faster and most feature-packed word processors on the platform. Among its more notable additions were a spell checker, mail merge, and support for footnotes and similar long-document editing features. This became one of the best selling programs on the ST and saw a number of revisions over its lifetime. Plus was later ported to the Acorn Archimedes and IBM PC under GEM as First Word Plus.
In 1990, an entirely unrelated program known as 1st Word Plus 4.0 was released by Compo Software. This used a new file format, and while it could load files from the original 1st Word, the older versions could not read the newer files.
History
Atari released the ST in the summer of 1985, and to ensure there was some useful software at release, they bundled it with the ST Writer word processor. This was a purely text-mode program that had been ported from the best-selling Atari 8-bit program, AtariWriter. The company made it clear ST Writer was being offered only as a stop-gap solution while a graphical user interface (GUI) program was being developed, known as GEMwrite.[1]
For reasons unknown, the company contracted GST Computer Systems of Cambridge, UK to port their Sinclair QL products to the ST. In December 1985, Atari began bundling their 1st Word with the ST. At the time Atari suggested this would be a short-term arrangement while GEMwrite was completed,[1] but from this point on any mention of GEMwrite disappears and it was never released.
The bundling deal with GST would last for two years. When the deal concluded in late 1987, GST released 1st Word Plus, a major update. This became a best-seller for the rest of the platform's history. 1st Word Plus version 2.0 credits Mike Bees, Howard Chalkley, Phil Champ, Martin Dickens, Chris Scheybeler, and Alun Gladman.[2] GST continued updating the program on the ST, releasing 3.0 in late 1998. A series of 3.x releases followed, finishing with 3.20TT in January or February 1991. This version had been updated to work on the Atari TT030 series machines, along with a number of other fixes.[3]
Acorn Computers commissioned GST to make a version known as First Word Plus available for the Archimedes range of computers. It was released on the Arthur operating system in 1988, priced at £92.[4][5] After the release of RISC OS, a new version of the software was released to take advantage of the multi-tasking environment. This version did not make use of the system's own printing architecture and accompanying drivers, retaining its own drivers to take advantage of printer features such as "near-letter quality" modes. Also priced at £92, with an upgrade from the earlier version costing £45, the software was regarded as not providing any "giant leap forward in capability" from similar products on Acorn's 8-bit computers, but nevertheless made the activities of such a "simple system" easier to accomplish on the more capable hardware, lending itself to efficient use of dot-matrix or daisywheel printers. It was also considered a useful companion to Acorn Desktop Publisher - a derivative of GST's Timeworks software - making a "neat system" for users with 2MB of RAM.[6]
A PC version was produced that ran using Digital Research's GEM interface. Other versions were produced for the Torch XXX and for Digital Research's CP/M and FlexOS.[7]
In 1992, Compo Software released 1st Word Plus 4.0. This was an entirely different program with nothing in common with its namesake, simply using that name to provide visibility.[8]
Description
1st Word is a GEM program and follows its conventions fairly closely. When opened, it presents a document window, either empty or containing the opened document, along with a standard menu bar along the top of the display. It broke from tradition in adding a separate area along the bottom of the screen that displayed various function key commands. This was relatively large, taking up room that would otherwise be used to display the document itself.[1] This became a feature found in a number of similar programs; WordUp took this further with two lines of such keys. Along the left side of the screen, normally under a document window, was a second display showing all of the available characters for the selected printer.[9]
In contrast to the Macintosh, the ST did not normally work in a multi-font environment, and required the separate GDOS device drivers to be loaded from disk to do so. This meant that most programs on the system, including 1st Word, were limited to the single system font.[1] This was not a significant limitation at the time, as most printers of the era had only limited font support or, in the case of daisy wheel printers, only one font and no styles. Although dot matrix printers could produce any font or size by outputting them as graphics, as was the case on the Macintosh, this was slow and offered limited quality. Most word processors on the ST thus used whatever font was directly supported by the printer, outputting the text as ASCII and using control characters where appropriate. 1st Word could take this to the extreme, printing or exporting as pure text.[9]
The text-mode display on the ST had a number of limitations. While it could display italics, it did not directly support superscripts or subscripts, or underlining. 1st Word could display underlining, but this did not follow the text during typing and only updated during a reformat. Nor was text layout as-you-type, fixing word wrapping and paragraph and page layout also occurred only during a reformat run, triggered through a menu command.[1] The program used block-mode selections using the mouse as the basis for most editing, including cut-and-paste and similar changes. It also included the ability to save a selection to a file or load it from a file, allowing documents to easily include boilerplate text. It included search and replace as well as the ability to place up to four markers within the program that could be quickly accessed from the menu, scrolling the document to that point.[1]
This version was designed to operate in one of two modes, text editing or word processing. In the former, features such as word-wrapping and character styles were turned off and the documents were saved as plain ASCII. Word processing mode turned these features on, saving documents in their own private .DOC format. The original 1st Word was otherwise quite limited, lacking support for common features such as double-spacing, multi-line header and footer text, date and time, and footnotes. One oddity is that all the document windows had to be closed before the files could be printed.[1] It was also quite slow at moving around large documents, scrolling to the bottom of a large document "took ages."[3]
1st Word Plus added a huge number of new features while still remaining very similar to the original in most ways. The only major change in screen layout was to move the window displaying the available character codes from the right side of the display to the centre, leaving room for a new smaller display of control keys like delete and return.[9] Among the many new features was a spell checker with a 40,000 word dictionary, although lacking many American English terms,[10] a mail merge program, footnotes and semi-automated hyphenation.[11] The spell checker included the relatively rare, for the time, option to check on-the-fly. It also added document statistics display, including the number of characters, pages, etc.[10]
The two headlining features of the Plus was the addition of on-screen text styles, not just underlining and italic, that continued to update as the document was edited, and the ability to include graphics and wrap text around them. The program only supported a single graphics format, GEM's own file format, which was used by practically no programs on the ST. A desk accessory, Snapshot, was used to convert other formats into GEM files for inclusion.[10] It also improved overall performance. It did, however, still require a manual reformatting after changing the text.[12]
Reviews
When it was originally released, reviews of the program were relatively positive. An early review in Antic noted its limited features, single documents, and lack of on-the-fly reformatting. But it concluded that "Its best feature is an outstanding robustness-it has yet to crash and dump me into a desktop full of bombs. I only wish 1st-Word had been available last summer!" But when mentioning its stability, the review notes "It is good that all of 1st-Word's formatting features work flawlessly, since there are so few of them."[1]
Atari's own magazine, Atari Explorer, reviewed the 1.06 version in early 1987. They note that its wide distribution made the .DOC format a de facto standard, saying "you almost have to have 1st Word because it is the program you are most likely to have in common."[13] Having moved from all-text programs to a GUI with some hesitation due to performance, they are happy that "Text entry is smooth and straightforward; no matter how fast you type, 1st Word keeps up and never drops a character." The same reviewer wrote about Plus shortly after its release and was very positive. Calling it "a truly full-featured word processor" that "can hold its own against control-code ridden" programs. It goes on to praise its documentation, saying it is "without a doubt, the best-documented piece of software for the ST I have seen to date." It concludes, "All things considered, I think 1st Word Plus is an outstanding package."[12]
STart magazine was also very happy with the Plus release, calling it "a dramatic upgrade of 1st Word", and "a powerful contender in the word processing market." They were not so happy with the documentation, saying it was too detailed to make it easy to skim for users already familiar with basic operations on the ST, and lacking an index. The online help was largely dismissed. The reviewer did note one significant problem; the program did not check if there was enough memory to load the spell checker dictionary, and would crash if one attempted to do so while many desk accessories were loaded. They also knocked it for lacking any keyboard controls, even for common operations like cut and paste or moving about using cursor keys. It concludes "I would recommend it as an ideal word processor for students because of its spell checker, footnote ability and flexible margins for indented quotations and bibliographies. It also has all the strengths of a business word processor with its ability to keep 'skeleton' formats on disk and its accompanying 1st Merge utility."[12]
Atari ST disk magazine ST News was written entirely using 1st Word and, later, 1st Word Plus. The first Volume (1986) was distributed as a plain 1st Word .DOC file, after that a custom shell was produced that enabled the 1st Word documents to be displayed in a shell program. 1st Word was reviewed several times in the magazine. The first review, for the 3.0 release in 1998, noted a number of changes to the command-key layouts and the ability to move the displays of these keys and the character set. Among the other minor changes was the removal of the Delete command, leaving only Cut, which presented a dialog every time it was used. Another annoyance was the addition of a blinking cursor that could not be turned off. On the plus side, the program finally added command key shortcuts for many common functions, improvements to the spell checker and a host of other additions. It concludes "If GST keeps bringing out updates like this, then First Word Plus is going to remain the most highly recommended mid-price GEM based word processor for a long time to come."[14] The Delete Block command was re-added to the 3.15 version.[3]
Related Research Articles
Microsoft Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including: IBM PCs running DOS (1983), Apple Macintosh running the Classic Mac OS (1985), AT&T UNIX PC (1985), Atari ST (1988), OS/2 (1989), Microsoft Windows (1989), SCO Unix (1990) and macOS (2001). Using Wine, versions of Microsoft Word before 2013 can be run on Linux.
The Rich Text Format is a proprietary document file format with published specification developed by Microsoft Corporation from 1987 until 2008 for cross-platform document interchange with Microsoft products. Prior to 2008, Microsoft published updated specifications for RTF with major revisions of Microsoft Word and Office versions.
WordPerfect (WP) is a word processing application, now owned by Corel, with a long history on multiple personal computer platforms. At the height of its popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was the dominant player in the word processor market, displacing the prior market leader WordStar.
Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online content. Desktop publishing software can generate layouts and produce typographic-quality text and images comparable to traditional typography and printing. Desktop publishing is also the main reference for digital typography. This technology allows individuals, businesses, and other organizations to self-publish a wide variety of content, from menus to magazines to books, without the expense of commercial printing.
Ventura Publisher was the first popular desktop publishing package for IBM PC compatible computers running the GEM extension to the DOS operating system. The software was originally developed by Ventura Software, a small software company founded by John Meyer, Don Heiskell, and Lee Jay Lorenzen, all of whom met while working at Digital Research. It ran under an included run-time copy of Digital Research's GEM.
Timeworks Publisher was a desktop publishing (DTP) program produced by GST Software in the United Kingdom.
Xara is an international software company founded in 1981, with an HQ in Berlin and development office in Hemel Hempstead, UK. It has developed software for a variety of computer platforms, in chronological order: the Acorn Atom, BBC Micro, Z88, Atari ST, Acorn Archimedes, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and more recently web browser-based services.
Cut & Paste is a word processor published in 1984 for the Apple II, Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64, IBM PC, and IBM PCjr. It is one of the few productivity releases from game developer and publisher Electronic Arts, along with the contemporaneous Financial Cookbook. In the UK it was distributed by Ariolasoft.
AtariWriter is a word processor program for the Atari 8-bit family released by Atari as a 16 kB ROM cartridge in 1983. The program was fast and easy to use, while still allowing the creation of fairly complex documents. It was a huge success for the platform, with at least 800,000 examples sold not including international versions and later updates.
SpeedScript is a word processor originally printed as a type-in MLX machine language listing in 1984-85 issues of Compute! and Compute!'s Gazette magazines. Approximately 5 KB in length, it provided many of the same features as commercial word processing packages of the 8-bit era, such as PaperClip and Bank Street Writer. Versions were published for the Apple II, Commodore 64 and 128, Atari 8-bit family, VIC-20, and MS-DOS.
Microsoft Write is a basic word processor included with Windows 1.0 and later, until Windows NT 3.51. Throughout its lifespan it was minimally updated, and is comparable to early versions of MacWrite. Early versions of Write only work with Write Document (.wri) files, which are a subset of the Rich Text Format (RTF). After Windows 3.0, Write became capable of reading and composing early Word Document (.doc) files. With Windows 3.1, Write became OLE capable. In Windows 95, Write was replaced with WordPad; attempting to open Write from the Windows folder will open WordPad instead.
Fleet Street Publisher was an Atari ST desktop publishing program produced by Mirrorsoft in the United Kingdom and released in November 1986. A IBM PC compatible version produced by Rowan Software was planned for 1987 but never released.
Scripsit is a word processing application written for the Radio Shack TRS-80 line of computers. Versions were available for most if not all computers sold under the TRS-80 name, including the Color Computer and several pocket computer designs, as well as the Tandy version of the Xenix operating system. Tandy Corp. also produced a version running under MS-DOS for its line of PC compatible computers. Some of the 8-bit versions are tape-based and have no ability to read or write to disk.
GST was a group of computer companies based in Cambridge, England, founded by Jeff Fenton in June 1979. The company worked with Atari, Sinclair Research, Torch Computers, Acorn Computers, Monotype Corporation and Kwik-Fit, amongst others.
ST Writer is a word processor program for the Atari ST series of personal computers. It was introduced by Atari Corporation in 1985 along with the 520ST. It was a port of Atari's enormously successful AtariWriter Plus from the earlier 8-bit computer series, matching it closely enough to share files across the platforms with no changes. Running on the ST allowed it to display a full 80-column layout, create much larger files, and support additional features.
TOS is the operating system of the Atari ST range of computers. This range includes the 520ST and 1040ST, their STF/M/FM and STE variants and the Mega ST/STE. Later, 32-bit machines were developed using a new version of TOS, called MultiTOS, which allowed multitasking. More recently, users have further developed TOS into FreeMiNT.
Protext is a British word processing program, developed by Arnor Ltd, of Peterborough in the decade following 1985. Originally written for the Amstrad CPC464, it was later sold for the Amstrad PCW series of word processors, for MS-DOS based PCs, the Atari ST, and the Commodore Amiga.
Wordwise is a word processor program published in 1981. It was the best selling word processor in the UK for the BBC Microcomputer during the 1980–1990 time period. The program was supplied on an 8K ROM, and was published by Computer Concepts. The use of ROM allowed the entire RAM of the host machine to be used for storing and manipulating the text, and providing printer-buffer functionality.
Atari Word Processor is a word processor program for the Atari 8-bit family, announced by Atari in January 1981 and shipped that summer. The program was powerful for its era, including numerous features like superscripts and two-column layouts. It was also quite complex, with a long list of control keys for basic operations and text-based menus for more complex ones. It left little memory free after loading, so longer documents had to be stored as separate files of about a page each and printing demanded a long re-formatting process as they were stitched together.
WordUp is a word processor for the Atari ST platform released by Neocept in 1988. It was one of the first word processors on the platform to offer a true what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) display, using GDOS to work with multiple fonts and embedded graphics. Most previous word processors on the platform were either entirely text-based, like Atari's own ST Writer, or did not use GDOS and did not support multiple fonts and effects on-screen.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
