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It's interesting to note that when WordPerfect got a GUI, it had to be worked up separately for each platform --- the NeXTstep version was quite nice, took full

It's interesting to note that when WordPerfect got a GUI, it had to be worked up separately for each platform --- the NeXTstep version was quite nice, took full advantage of Display PostScript, and was coded up by a couple of programmers in six weeks or so.

wat10000 2y ago
That’s how cross-platform apps were. Middleware libraries that you could use to put the same GUI code on different OSes didn’t exist, and there wasn’t room for them anyway. Even sharing the core could be a tough proposition. I know that at least MS Word for Mac vs Windows was two completely separate programs that happened to share a name and a feature set. That continued until Mac MS Word 6.0 in 1994. That was a port of the Windows version, and very much disliked among the Mac userbase for being poor performance and not really behaving like a Mac app should. I don’t think cross-platform UI code really took off on the Mac until maybe 20 years later. Plenty of Mac apps were built that way before that point, but they tended to be ones in the “you’re stuck using this, so it doesn’t have to be very nice” category, like Word ended up being. It doesn’t really seem to have tipped until Electron came along, and somehow web apps that use half a gigabyte of RAM to show some text became totally accepted as good enough. Incidentally, the Cocoa UI framework that macOS uses was originally a cross platform framework that could deploy to Windows and various other OSes, back when it was made by NeXT. Apple. Apple killed that off and it became Mac-exclusive. I wonder what the world would look like if they kept support for other OSes. Maybe we’d have a good selection of cross platform apps that actually look nice and perform well.
- mjevans 2y ago
  Real damage of Microsoft's Monopoly power. They have a severe case of Not Invented Here syndrome and even for free Open Source Software refuse to ship any of it naively unless they can fork it and pretend they wrote it (early TCP code based off BSD IIRC). It's horrendously tough to target for a cross-platform application when you have to bring the entire GUI toolkit along and adapt it individually to every target, even the 95% of the market gorilla that is whatever versions of Desktop Windows are the most recent 3.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Real damage is called Electron.
    - mjevans 2y ago
      Electron; ship a whole web browser as your cross platform toolkit. Worst of all worlds, but at least you pick the browser version... wait that's horrid for security!
- WillAdams 2y ago
  To see that, look at the apps which almost were: - Pages.app by Pages --- amazing DTP tool which was bought by Anderson Financial Services, but then killed off when Rhapsody went away - Macromedia Freehand --- unfortunately, they continued with their in-house toolkit to make the Mac/Windows versions, since it would have been too much work to revive the old Altsys Virtuoso code - Quantrix Financial Modeller --- at least this still survived, but be sure to take a seat before looking up the cost per seat - FrameMaker --- the NeXT version was the nicest one I ever used, and with Display PostScript, was far nicer to work with - WordPerfect --- the NeXT version was far nicer than the Windows, would have been nice to see that come back - Stone Create (and the other Stone apps) --- nice assortment of various tools which would have been quite nice to have Lots of other way cool NeXT apps which should have done better in the market.
efitz 2y ago
WordPerfect's GUI releases were yuck. Late to the scene and lost the essence of WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS. I'm not surprised that Word won that battle.
- ghaff 2y ago
  WordPerfect and WordStar were always pretty yuck IMO once newer generation products came along. I was pretty much a fan of Microsoft word even in the DOS days. (Even Multimate which was basically a DOS clone of a Wang product.)
  - efitz 2y ago
    I loved WP5.1 for DOS because of one feature: "show codes" - it made it trivial to understand why the formatting looked the way it did, and to fix formatting problems. Other than that it was not outstanding software :-) I never used Word in the DOS days so I can't compare, but it was obvious that Word for Windows was written natively for Windows and it "felt" much more natural in the Windows of that time.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      Neither WordPerfect nor WordStar even connected for me. No disrespect for anyone for whom they did. Never really loved Word for Windows to be honest, though I used it a lot over the years. Though liked the DOS version.
- WillAdams 2y ago
  The NeXTstep version was _very_ nice --- looked and felt like a native app, but still had "Reveal Codes" --- nicest version of WordPerfect I every used.

wat10000 2y ago

That’s how cross-platform apps were. Middleware libraries that you could use to put the same GUI code on different OSes didn’t exist, and there wasn’t room for them anyway. Even sharing the core could be a tough proposition. I know that at least MS Word for Mac vs Windows was two completely separate programs that happened to share a name and a feature set. That continued until Mac MS Word 6.0 in 1994. That was a port of the Windows version, and very much disliked among the Mac userbase for being poor performance and not really behaving like a Mac app should. I don’t think cross-platform UI code really took off on the Mac until maybe 20 years later. Plenty of Mac apps were built that way before that point, but they tended to be ones in the “you’re stuck using this, so it doesn’t have to be very nice” category, like Word ended up being. It doesn’t really seem to have tipped until Electron came along, and somehow web apps that use half a gigabyte of RAM to show some text became totally accepted as good enough. Incidentally, the Cocoa UI framework that macOS uses was originally a cross platform framework that could deploy to Windows and various other OSes, back when it was made by NeXT. Apple. Apple killed that off and it became Mac-exclusive. I wonder what the world would look like if they kept support for other OSes. Maybe we’d have a good selection of cross platform apps that actually look nice and perform well.

mjevans 2y ago
Real damage of Microsoft's Monopoly power. They have a severe case of Not Invented Here syndrome and even for free Open Source Software refuse to ship any of it naively unless they can fork it and pretend they wrote it (early TCP code based off BSD IIRC). It's horrendously tough to target for a cross-platform application when you have to bring the entire GUI toolkit along and adapt it individually to every target, even the 95% of the market gorilla that is whatever versions of Desktop Windows are the most recent 3.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Real damage is called Electron.
  - mjevans 2y ago
    Electron; ship a whole web browser as your cross platform toolkit. Worst of all worlds, but at least you pick the browser version... wait that's horrid for security!
WillAdams 2y ago
To see that, look at the apps which almost were: - Pages.app by Pages --- amazing DTP tool which was bought by Anderson Financial Services, but then killed off when Rhapsody went away - Macromedia Freehand --- unfortunately, they continued with their in-house toolkit to make the Mac/Windows versions, since it would have been too much work to revive the old Altsys Virtuoso code - Quantrix Financial Modeller --- at least this still survived, but be sure to take a seat before looking up the cost per seat - FrameMaker --- the NeXT version was the nicest one I ever used, and with Display PostScript, was far nicer to work with - WordPerfect --- the NeXT version was far nicer than the Windows, would have been nice to see that come back - Stone Create (and the other Stone apps) --- nice assortment of various tools which would have been quite nice to have Lots of other way cool NeXT apps which should have done better in the market.

efitz 2y ago

WordPerfect's GUI releases were yuck. Late to the scene and lost the essence of WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS. I'm not surprised that Word won that battle.

ghaff 2y ago
WordPerfect and WordStar were always pretty yuck IMO once newer generation products came along. I was pretty much a fan of Microsoft word even in the DOS days. (Even Multimate which was basically a DOS clone of a Wang product.)
- efitz 2y ago
  I loved WP5.1 for DOS because of one feature: "show codes" - it made it trivial to understand why the formatting looked the way it did, and to fix formatting problems. Other than that it was not outstanding software :-) I never used Word in the DOS days so I can't compare, but it was obvious that Word for Windows was written natively for Windows and it "felt" much more natural in the Windows of that time.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    Neither WordPerfect nor WordStar even connected for me. No disrespect for anyone for whom they did. Never really loved Word for Windows to be honest, though I used it a lot over the years. Though liked the DOS version.
WillAdams 2y ago
The NeXTstep version was _very_ nice --- looked and felt like a native app, but still had "Reveal Codes" --- nicest version of WordPerfect I every used.