Fullwrite word processor

[beachycove]

Wow! This thing (marketed as a "document processor") is really interesting as a piece of vintage software. It doesn't quite fit into the usual paradigms.

If you have a spare evening and have an interest in word processors, you should check it out. Archive.org has it and additional bits and bobs, when you go a-looking for the goods at http://www.encyclomedia.ca/fwp/

Released officially as freeware some 15 years ago, so all is licit.

 

[olePigeon]

What a shame.  Frustrating when you see superior products that get squashed by Microsoft.

 

[beachycove]

I don't really think it was superior to Word 5, which would take some doing, but it sure was different.

I think that word processing, because ti is so ubiquitous, ought to be one of the areas in which software had genuinely made great creative strides, but instead  all  of them look much the same as each other, and there haven't really been any useful innovations for a very long time. So as you say, it is a shame that this alternative and highly innovative approach got squashed.

 

[olePigeon]

It was superior to Word 5 in one very important way:  large documents.  To this day, Microsoft Word is terrible with large documents or technical documents.  That's why Framemaker was invented.

But then again, for the average person (which is most of us), Word is fine.

 

[Machead]

I use LaTeX, including on classic Mac OS.