Microsoft Word: Encyclopedia II - Microsoft Word - The beginning

Microsoft Word - The beginning

Many concepts and ideas were brought from Bravo, the original GUI word processor developed at Xerox PARC, into Microsoft Word. Bravo's creator Charles Simonyi left PARC to work for Microsoft in 1981. Simonyi hired Brodie, who had worked with him on Bravo, away from PARC that summer.

Word's first general release was for MS-DOS computers on May 2, 1983. It was not well received, and sales lagged behind those of rival products such as WordPerfect.

Although MS-DOS was a character-based system, Word for DOS was the first word processor for the IBM PC that showed typeface markups such as bold and italics directly on the screen while editing, although this was not a true WYSIWYG system. Other DOS word processors, such as WordStar and WordPerfect, used simple text-only display with markup codes on the screen or sometimes, at the most, alternative colors.

However, as with most DOS software, each program had its own, often complicated, set of commands for performing functions that had to be learned (for example, in Word for DOS, a file would be saved with the sequence Escape-T-S; the only similar interface belonged to Microsoft's own Multiplan spreadsheet), and as most secretaries had learned how to use WordPerfect, companies were reluctant to switch to a rival product that offered few advantages.

Word for Macintosh was written to match the Mac's user interface, and as such it had little in common with Word for DOS; it eventually became the source for Word for Windows 1.0. After Word for Mac was released in 1985, it gained wide acceptance: like other Mac software, Word for Mac was a true what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editor. There was no Word 2.0 for Macintosh; this was the first attempt to synchronize version numbers across platforms.

The second release of Word for Macintosh, named Word 3.0, included numerous internal enhancements and new features, but, shipped in 1987 before it was ready, it was plagued with bugs. Word 3.0 was quickly superseded by Word 3.01, released a few months later, which was much more stable. All registered users of 3.0 were mailed free copies of 3.01, making this one of Microsoft's most expensive mistakes up to that time. Word 4.0, released in 1989, was a very successful and solid product.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The beginning", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki