In the beginning, there was the word processor
Summary: Now, most of us use Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or OpenOffice/LibreOffice Writer, but once upon a time word processors were new, exotic programs.
Once upon a time, and it wasnt that long ago, instead of word processors like todays favorites such as Microsoft Word, Google Docs or OpenOffice and its brother LibreOffice, we had to use typewriters. Some of us, dare I admit it, wrote by hand on paper. The horror! The horror! But, then along came word processors and the world changed.
In my case, I made the change-over in 1980. I went from using my prized IBM Selectric II to using two word processors at almost the same time. Ive always been a glutton for punishment.
The first, and the one that counts as a real word processor, was WordStar. I first used it on an Osborne 1 luggable computer. This was a portable computer only in the sense that if you absolutely had to move it, you could lug its 24-pounds from one place to another. Of course, you had to have a power outlet where-ever you went, we were a long, long way from having batteries that could power something like the new iPad for ten hours.
WordStar, which was Gods gift to touch-typists, made it possible to use the control key-at the time the only alternative key most PC keyboards hadto copy, cut, and paste text. While there were earlier word processors, Electric Pencil, WordStar was for many of us the first word processor we could use on a general purpose PC.
It was also the first popular What You See is What You Get (WYSWWYG) word processor. So long as you didnt want, oh say, fonts. Fonts were pretty much beyond us in these days of daisy-wheel and dot-matrix printers.
At the same time, I was also learning vi. This text-processing program still lives on in every Linux and Unix system ever made. To this day, both WordStar and vis control sequences are locked into my fingers. Indeed, I still use vi for editing Linux configuration files and some light word processing.
As for graphical user interfaces? What are you talking about? Oh sure, there were mini-computers like the Xerox Alto, but in the early days of the PC world we used character-based interfaces and we liked it. Steve Jobs would, of course, look in on the Alto and see the mouse-based, bit-mapped graphics future that lead to the Macintosh. But, at the time we were just happy to have any kind of word processing.
Im not the only one who felt that way. I asked some of my fellow technology writers in the Internet Press Guild, a non-profit organization promoting excellence in technology journalism. Most of us were there in the early days of word processing and are still fond of our first word processors.
Some of us, like Mac McCarthy, actually used dedicated word processors before they used word processing software.
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In the beginning, there was the word processor