3 ms·

Back in '85-6 I developed training for USDA (using Dan Bricklin's Demo) for a curses version of Word 5 that ran on 3B2s with SysV v2. I'd be very happy to see t

by acmdas 2mo ago

Back in '85-6 I developed training for USDA (using Dan Bricklin's Demo) for a curses version of Word 5 that ran on 3B2s with SysV v2. I'd be very happy to see that ported to Linux or one of the BSDs. In fact, I'd love to see both Word and Excel '98 on one of my workstations. IMHO things went South after that. I had to use Windows and Office off and on with clients up to 2010 and I'm sure that Excel provided some important edge-case functionality after '98, but for me the UI went steadily to sh*t.

d3Xt3r 2mo ago
FWIW, Office 97 works perfectly under Wine, so there's nothing stopping you from continuing to use it, well, except maybe the lack of support for modern OOXML formats. An alternative could be Abiword and Gnumeric, both are super lightweight and retain the classic Office 97-style UI and support OOXML formats (though somewhat limited compared to LibreOffice).
- dmitrygr 2mo ago
  Microslop’s free “Office format converters” pack from Microsoft adds support for new office formats to old office versions. Read and write.
  - M95D 2mo ago
    > adds support for new office formats Barely... I'm using them with Office 2003 and most of the time it's a garbage conversion.
  - anthk 2mo ago
    LibreOffice will do it better.
emeril 2mo ago
office 2003 (for word + excel at least) were peak - after the ribbon it all went downhill
- kevin_thibedeau 2mo ago
  I just installed my copy in a new Win10 VM. With the added OOXML support pack, there's nothing left wanting.
  - vt240 2mo ago
    Does the activation still work for these are do you have to use a hack to get them running? I still have a TON of older Office 2003 licenses, I'd love to go back. I've hated modern Office with the ribbon for half my life now.
    - ranger_danger 2mo ago
      Please don't. There are so many unpatched exploits for old Office... opening any document could trash your whole system or silently steal information from you.
      - M95D 2mo ago
        Just like a current Office does?
      - emeril 2mo ago
        maybe so but that would imply the end user is opening sketchy files - most of the time these products are for low risk files
    - kevin_thibedeau 2mo ago
      The product keys still work. You can skip online activation. Only annoyance is needing to run once as admin to make the EULA acceptance write to the registry. I have a stockpile of patches that I preserved a while back that are not readily available today.
mjg59 2mo ago
https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/wordperfect.html https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/wordperfect.html describes getting the UNIX release of Word Perfect running on modern Linux. There was a SCO release of Word in 1990, so plausibly that could be fudged into a similar setup?
flopsamjetsam 2mo ago
> Dan Bricklin's Demo There's a name I haven't heard in a while. During our undergrad (90s), we used it to mock up UI designs for one of our early courses.

by acmdas 2mo ago

d3Xt3r 2mo ago

FWIW, Office 97 works perfectly under Wine, so there's nothing stopping you from continuing to use it, well, except maybe the lack of support for modern OOXML formats. An alternative could be Abiword and Gnumeric, both are super lightweight and retain the classic Office 97-style UI and support OOXML formats (though somewhat limited compared to LibreOffice).

dmitrygr 2mo ago
Microslop’s free “Office format converters” pack from Microsoft adds support for new office formats to old office versions. Read and write.
- M95D 2mo ago
  > adds support for new office formats Barely... I'm using them with Office 2003 and most of the time it's a garbage conversion.
- anthk 2mo ago
  LibreOffice will do it better.

emeril 2mo ago

office 2003 (for word + excel at least) were peak - after the ribbon it all went downhill

kevin_thibedeau 2mo ago
I just installed my copy in a new Win10 VM. With the added OOXML support pack, there's nothing left wanting.
- vt240 2mo ago
  Does the activation still work for these are do you have to use a hack to get them running? I still have a TON of older Office 2003 licenses, I'd love to go back. I've hated modern Office with the ribbon for half my life now.
  - ranger_danger 2mo ago
    Please don't. There are so many unpatched exploits for old Office... opening any document could trash your whole system or silently steal information from you.
    - M95D 2mo ago
      Just like a current Office does?
    - emeril 2mo ago
      maybe so but that would imply the end user is opening sketchy files - most of the time these products are for low risk files
  - kevin_thibedeau 2mo ago
    The product keys still work. You can skip online activation. Only annoyance is needing to run once as admin to make the EULA acceptance write to the registry. I have a stockpile of patches that I preserved a while back that are not readily available today.

mjg59 2mo ago

https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/wordperfect.html https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/wordperfect.html describes getting the UNIX release of Word Perfect running on modern Linux. There was a SCO release of Word in 1990, so plausibly that could be fudged into a similar setup?

flopsamjetsam 2mo ago

> Dan Bricklin's Demo There's a name I haven't heard in a while. During our undergrad (90s), we used it to mock up UI designs for one of our early courses.