Word

Microsoft Word, or Microsoft Office Word, is Microsoft's flagship word processing software. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. more...

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Versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS (1983), the Apple Macintosh (1984), SCO UNIX, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows (1989). It became part of the Microsoft Office suite, in which it is referred to as Microsoft Office Word, although it is still also sold as a standalone product or bundled with Microsoft Works.

Word 1981 to 1990

Many concepts and ideas of Word were brought from Bravo, the original GUI word processor developed at Xerox PARC. Bravo's creator Charles Simonyi left Xerox PARC to work for Microsoft in 1981. Simonyi hired Richard Brodie, who had worked with him on Bravo, away from PARC that summer. On February 1, 1983, development on what was originally named Multi-Tool Word began.

Having renamed it Microsoft Word, Microsoft released the program October 25, 1983, for the IBM PC. Free demonstration copies of the application were bundled with the November 1983 issue of PC World, making it the first program to be distributed on-disk with a magazine. However, it was not well received, and sales lagged behind those of rival products such as WordPerfect.

Word featured a concept of "What You See Is What You Get", or WYSIWYG, and was the first application with such features as the ability to display bold and italics text on an IBM PC. Word made full use of the mouse, which was so unusual at the time that Microsoft offered a bundled Word-with-Mouse package. Although MS-DOS was a character-based system, Microsoft Word was the first word processor for the IBM PC that showed actual line breaks and typeface markups such as bold and italics directly on the screen while editing, although this was not a true WYSIWYG system because available displays did not have the resolution to show actual typefaces. Other DOS word processors, such as WordStar and WordPerfect, used simple text-only display with markup codes on the screen or sometimes, at the most, alternative colors.

As with most DOS software, each program had its own, often complicated, set of commands for performing functions that had to be learned (for example, in Word for MS-DOS, a file would be saved with the sequence Escape-T-S; the only similar interface belonged to Microsoft's own Multiplan spreadsheet), and as most secretaries had learned how to use WordPerfect, companies were reluctant to switch to a rival product that offered few advantages. Desired features in Word such as indentation before typing (emulating the F4 feature in WordPerfect), the ability to block text to copy it before typing, instead of picking up mouse or blocking after typing, and a reliable way to have macros and other functions always replicate the same function time after time, were just some of Word's problems for production typing. Numbering after a heading with a tab after the heading is also problematic. The use of user preferences would improve Microsoft Word, including the option of a static cursor, which remains on the same line and in the same place, with the text moving around it.

Read more at Wikipedia.org