5 ms·

The article is missing a bit, since Word for Mac (1985) was more the model for the eventual Windows 1.X version, but isn't even mentioned in the article. There

The article is missing a bit, since Word for Mac (1985) was more the model for the eventual Windows 1.X version, but isn't even mentioned in the article. There were also versions for other "windowed" OS's during the same 5 year period before Windows was sufficiently viable to make it work. People often forget that new apps appeared first on the Mac until around 1990 or so when Windows 3.0 shipped (Word appeared a bit before); basically MacOS was much more advanced than Windows up until that point. After Windows 3 the first platform flipped completely to Windows. I shipped my first MacOS app in 1987.

bluedino 10y ago
I'd be interested in learning about the DOS version. I remember using it but it was a text mode application as far as I can remember (2.0?)
- lobster_johnson 10y ago
  It was text only. The article says it was WYSIWYG, but that was only the later Mac and Windows versions. The early text versions only did some stuff like underlining, bold and alignment. Microsoft released Word for DOS even after the Windows version came out, and I remember a lot of people were surprised that they bothered -- 5.5 was even transformed into a curses-style "graphical" DOS app [1] with colour, drop down menus (with shadows!) and mouse support (but drawn with ASCII characters), similar to Borland's DOS apps, but it seemed like a perfunctory release -- at that point it was obvious DOS was legacy and that Windows was the future of Microsoft. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+word+5.5+dos&num=30&safe=off&client=safari&hl=en-us&prmd=sivn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiy3PCcpZjRAhUP6WMKHVcMB1IQ_AUICCgC&biw=375&bih=559 https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+word+5.5+dos&num=3...
  - anonymfus 10y ago
    >similar to Borland's DOS apps And to Visual Basic for DOS.
    - int_19h 10y ago
      This one was more similar to QBASIC and QuickBASIC, and also EDIT.COM. All of these used the same UI toolkit, so far as I know. VB for DOS was a bit different, and tried harder to look like Windows (3.x). You can tell by looking at push buttons and window decorations: http://toastytech.com/guis/textvbdos.png http://toastytech.com/guis/textvbdos.png
      - stuaxo 10y ago
        I wish they would release that textui used by qbasic, edit and Microsoft works.
        rzzzt 10y ago
        Borland's version is called Turbo Vision, and it was available as a framework to build applications on in their Pascal IDE.
        Narishma 10y ago
        And their DOS C and C++ IDEs as well.
        lobster_johnson 10y ago
        As rzzzt says, you can get Turbo Vision [1], which is the framework that Borland used for all their apps. Borland released the C++ source code in the public domain, and it's since been ported to a bunch of platforms, including Linux. Google Images has lots of screenshots [2]. It supports multiple overlapping windows, including modals, and since window rendering is based on buffers, it automatically supports things like region repaint and shadows; it comes with an extensible file editor that supports selection, clipboard and undo/redo; form validation; and even persistence (any UI widget, or set of widgets, can be written to disk and read back again). It's quite an advanced object-oriented toolkit that's impressive even now, though it seems a bit insane today that they spent so much effort on something that could render only VGA's 80x25 characters. Documentation is spotty, but it exists [3]. [1] http://tvision.sourceforge.net http://tvision.sourceforge.net [2] http://bit.ly/2iJuckO http://bit.ly/2iJuckO [3] http://www.sigala.it/sergio/tvision/html/index.html http://www.sigala.it/sergio/tvision/html/index.html
  - Narishma 10y ago
    The article isn't really wrong. From the very first DOS version it had support for mouse, (non-overlapping) windows, color and some limited WYSIWYG (it can display bold, italic, underline and so on). Here's a screenshot from version 1.15: https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/1x-dos-e22144b8ec0b755eb237207260ec8f3a-Microsoft%20Word%201.15%20for%20DOS%20-%20%20Windows.png https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/1x-dos-e22144b8ec...
- fanf2 10y ago
  There was also a SCO Unix port of MS Word. http://www.informatica.co.cr/unix/research/1990/1201.htm http://www.informatica.co.cr/unix/research/1990/1201.htm https://winworldpc.com/product/microsoft-word/5x-unix https://winworldpc.com/product/microsoft-word/5x-unix
hogrammer 10y ago
That's simply not true. That's why the article didn't say it.

bluedino 10y ago

I'd be interested in learning about the DOS version. I remember using it but it was a text mode application as far as I can remember (2.0?)

lobster_johnson 10y ago
It was text only. The article says it was WYSIWYG, but that was only the later Mac and Windows versions. The early text versions only did some stuff like underlining, bold and alignment. Microsoft released Word for DOS even after the Windows version came out, and I remember a lot of people were surprised that they bothered -- 5.5 was even transformed into a curses-style "graphical" DOS app [1] with colour, drop down menus (with shadows!) and mouse support (but drawn with ASCII characters), similar to Borland's DOS apps, but it seemed like a perfunctory release -- at that point it was obvious DOS was legacy and that Windows was the future of Microsoft. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+word+5.5+dos&num=30&safe=off&client=safari&hl=en-us&prmd=sivn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiy3PCcpZjRAhUP6WMKHVcMB1IQ_AUICCgC&biw=375&bih=559 https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+word+5.5+dos&num=3...
- anonymfus 10y ago
  >similar to Borland's DOS apps And to Visual Basic for DOS.
  - int_19h 10y ago
    This one was more similar to QBASIC and QuickBASIC, and also EDIT.COM. All of these used the same UI toolkit, so far as I know. VB for DOS was a bit different, and tried harder to look like Windows (3.x). You can tell by looking at push buttons and window decorations: http://toastytech.com/guis/textvbdos.png http://toastytech.com/guis/textvbdos.png
    - stuaxo 10y ago
      I wish they would release that textui used by qbasic, edit and Microsoft works.
      - rzzzt 10y ago
        Borland's version is called Turbo Vision, and it was available as a framework to build applications on in their Pascal IDE.
        Narishma 10y ago
        And their DOS C and C++ IDEs as well.
      - lobster_johnson 10y ago
        As rzzzt says, you can get Turbo Vision [1], which is the framework that Borland used for all their apps. Borland released the C++ source code in the public domain, and it's since been ported to a bunch of platforms, including Linux. Google Images has lots of screenshots [2]. It supports multiple overlapping windows, including modals, and since window rendering is based on buffers, it automatically supports things like region repaint and shadows; it comes with an extensible file editor that supports selection, clipboard and undo/redo; form validation; and even persistence (any UI widget, or set of widgets, can be written to disk and read back again). It's quite an advanced object-oriented toolkit that's impressive even now, though it seems a bit insane today that they spent so much effort on something that could render only VGA's 80x25 characters. Documentation is spotty, but it exists [3]. [1] http://tvision.sourceforge.net http://tvision.sourceforge.net [2] http://bit.ly/2iJuckO http://bit.ly/2iJuckO [3] http://www.sigala.it/sergio/tvision/html/index.html http://www.sigala.it/sergio/tvision/html/index.html
- Narishma 10y ago
  The article isn't really wrong. From the very first DOS version it had support for mouse, (non-overlapping) windows, color and some limited WYSIWYG (it can display bold, italic, underline and so on). Here's a screenshot from version 1.15: https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/1x-dos-e22144b8ec0b755eb237207260ec8f3a-Microsoft%20Word%201.15%20for%20DOS%20-%20%20Windows.png https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/1x-dos-e22144b8ec...
fanf2 10y ago
There was also a SCO Unix port of MS Word. http://www.informatica.co.cr/unix/research/1990/1201.htm http://www.informatica.co.cr/unix/research/1990/1201.htm https://winworldpc.com/product/microsoft-word/5x-unix https://winworldpc.com/product/microsoft-word/5x-unix

hogrammer 10y ago

That's simply not true. That's why the article didn't say it.