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A word processor from 1990s for Atari ST/TOS is still supported by enthusiasts
by muzzy19
I wish WriteNow was similarly available/supported --- it was probably one of the last major applications written in assembly language (~100,000 lines).
XyWrite is supported in a similar fashion: https://mendelson.org/xywin.html (but I just helped folks use that, never actually found it comfortable myself).
I kind of wish all these small/tight/efficient programs could be gathered up and ported to an optimized OS for the Raspberry Pi....
It's too bad the architecture is different, a Raspberry Pi compatible with peak Win98SE software would be an amazing low-power computer.
There were tons of amazingly well-made commercial software packages that have just been lost to time; in a large part due to open-source and other free options getting "good enough" - but many had features that simply don't exist anymore.
The list of features is impressive even today!
Those were the glory days of word processors, I used to have something similar on the Amiga. I'd still rather write on something like this than Word, Pages or Google Docs.
At least Word has an outline mode, GDocs is the worst. A text editor with markdown support is better than GDocs.
Word's outline mode is a sham. You can't export the text in the outline format. Stupid AF.
Word used to be a great product. Today it's a shambolic testament to incompetent design and dereliction.
Google Docs is in fact a text editor with Markdown support, see https://support.google.com/docs/answer/12014036
I don’t remember seeing the outline function on the online version of Word.
The ST had some awesome productivity programs. Tempus Word, Papyrus, Calamus... All running on a 8 Mhz computer with 1 or 2 MB, but with feature sets that do not need to hide from today's software.
People doing DTP with Calamus on their Ataris stuck around for a long time after the systems weren't used for much else – MIDI tooling excepted, of course.
On the other hand, there you didn't have that many powerful packages on any system, besides Quark & the various Adobe tools du jour everything paled in comparison.
For word processing, being forced to use Word was/is usually worse than for DTP, though. But feature-wise, everything seemed to converge during the 90s, so "having" to use Word instead of e.g. WordPerfect was less and less of an issue.
With some exceptions of course, most famously GRRM and other people who got into things very early sticking with the first thing they learned (i.e. WordStar), or apparently some journalists being really into XyWrite.
It's not surprising that people who write professionally would learn one tool to the point it gets out of the way and then not want to change. It's not just sticking with the first thing they learned - there's a constant churn of "tools for distraction-free writing" that address some of the complaints that people that still use older word processors have about more up-to-date systems.
Once you know the pattern, every so often you'll see a piece about a writer or journalist and the funky software they use and you can just wait for it... it's going to be Wordstar, XyWrite, one of the XEDIT editors, sometimes Wordperfect for DOS. Rarely Word for DOS. Neal Stephenson uses emacs, but he's an outlier in a lot of ways. I think there was a piece linked here recently by a journalist who uses the macOS TextEdit for note-taking, which dates back to NeXSTEP. (not exactly the same thing, but consider)
Late 1990s supposedly a considerable extension on use of Macs for DTP was that Quark could get significantly automated with AppleScript, and some publishing houses had non-trivial workflows done that way to reduce time spent on preparation.
DTP? GRRM?
DeskTop Publishing - WYSIWYG design of printed matter (What You See Is What You Get) on PC(Personal Computer)s.
George R.R. Martin (No idea about the Rs), author of A Song of Ice and Fire which was adapted into Game of Thrones.
I used ST Writer which came bundled with my ST. I still have all my ST Writer files (last modified in 1993!), and quite impressively they open just fine in LibreOffice with formatting and everything preserved (unlike some later .doc files I have).
.DOC was never meant to be interoperable, even across Word versions (much), you were supposed to save "final" or "exchange" versions in RTF :)
That is genuinely remarkable! Even indentation?
Yes. Just opened some files to check. There was one including a table which I thought at first was a little wonky, but then I realised the column that looked off had currency where I'd right aligned on the decimal point, so even that seems to have been preserved!
Their non cookie popup is the perfect example how user cookies should be managed.
I used to use First Word on the ST back in the day.
I still have the printed documentation and floppy for Tempus, the editor which I think is the predecessor to the linked word processor. It was blazing fast because it had been written in 68000 assembly IIRC. Even then it would handle giant documents with ease.
Ah. You will also like another story that popped up here some time back.
A Canadian science-fiction writer, Robert J. Sawyer, made an Archive available complete with extensive resources on how to use it. In addition, fully text-searchable PDFs of the original manuals, totaling over 1,000 pages, were also available. He is a dedicated WordStar user.
ST Writer was freeware and did the job, but Tempus was gold standard, even better than 1st Word Plus.
Huh, 1st Word Plus was what I had! Sudden recollection of pressing a rhombus-shaped F10 key to reflow after editing ...
There is another one still alive today: https://papyrus.de/en/
I don't use it. But i tried an old version and it was fast as f...
It is written now in C++
Wasn’t there a post a few weeks ago by the author of it?
I wonder why they don't just make it open source at this point?
Apparently they still hope to make a bit of money out of it:
"I never had a license! Well, even then you can have one - if you absolutely want to. . Depending on your bid, we will then contact you." https://tempus-word.de/en/download/index
I guess they found out they make out more that way than setting up a ko-fi account. It also insures the soft and its legacy doesn't become bloated over time. It is also possible that given it uses old tech (GEM) and probably assembly code, the software as it is would not be more easily portable than it is now using emulators.
I think that's out of date. The banner at the top of the page says "you can request a free license for version 5.4 from us." According to archive.org that was added later than the text you quoted, somewhere between 2022 and 2024.
Maybe they never got the source code or the license to distribute it. This is not the original company after all.
Usage of licensed 3rd-party libraries for example!
Why should they? It's their work, not for others to steal.
I used Application System Heidelberg's Script II on an Atari 1040STFM with 72 Hz SM 124 black/white monitor and an Epson LQ 550 24 pin printer. That was some superb publishing system for the time (1991), for a low budget.
1 MB RAM, 1.44 MB floppy drive
SM 124: 640x400 pixels, monochrome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST https://www.atarimuseum.de/1040st.htm
The software used a special driver to get better than standard quality from the then most common 24 pin printers (laser printers where much expensive) by kind of double-printing, I forgot the details. It looked really good though.
https://www.planetemu.net/screenshots/Atari%20ST%20-%20Appli...
https://stcarchiv.de/tos/1990/11/script-2 (German)
"Script" was the cheap version of their better product "Signum".
Similar technique was used in Daisy Dot II
Signum! (don't forget the exclamation point!) was an amazing piece of software. The key to its incredible print quality: carefully hand-crafted pixel fonts with incredible attention to detail.
With a 24-pin printer the output beat vector fonts on a 300dpi laser printer at the time. The actual resolution was higher than a single pass of printing with the 24 pins. Signum! would advance the print head in minute amounts and overprint to achieve its remarkable quality.
Printing a single page at maximum quality took a while... Think minutes per page instead of pages per minute. But it was very impressive.
Fond memories!
> "The software used a special driver to get better than standard quality from the then most common 24 pin printers (laser printers where much expensive) by kind of double-printing, I forgot the details. It looked really good though."
In opening up a few ancient files to answer another question about formatting, I found some long forgotten notes on how to make my Epson LQ400 24 pin printer work at 360dpi rather 180dpi, which may have been the same for you: First you had to install it as a NEC 24-pin 360dpi printer rather than 180dpi printer. Then, because it used fonts of half the size, you needed to switch fonts. So I had two fonts disks, one with 180dpi installed fonts and one with 360dpi fonts, and used the ASSIGN.SYS file to switch between them. It also seems to have taken twice as long to print out at 360dpi, and used twice as much printer ribbon:-)
I remember some printers had a "draft" mode and a "fine" mode (and you could simulate the fine even on those that didn't by printing, and then carefully going back and printing again but off by a tiny, tiny bit vertically).
I'm curious: the "Script" screenshot looks like it's using standard GEM Desktop, while the "Signum" is some other desktop. Are these both for ST? Was Signum written using some other full-screen graphic environment?
Signum! was highly opinionated. It ran on the Atari ST but did its own thing for the user interface. You could access a lower layer of drawing primitives and obviate GEM. In those days multitasking did not exist.
There were a good number of these kinds of application back then. Steve was one, GFA Basic another.
Ah, it was actually STeve:
https://ataricrypt.blogspot.com/2024/03/steve.html
An application that was more a random selection of tools than a cohesive whole but some people swore by it.
English not their first language?
Some of the best ST software came from Germany, where the it had a high market share driven by DTP applications. IIRC at one point the ST had a bigger installed DTP base in Germany than the Mac.
There was an annual fair in Düsseldorf, the Atari ST Messe, which was impressive in its size. I went for several years in a row until the ST sadly started losing its relevance.
What is so surprising about that?
tempus-word.de
Crafted by Rajat
Source Code