Re: What was your first word-processor?

[johncrow@mindspring.c o m (John Crow)]

>Crow fred (crowfred@aol.com) wrote:
>: How about ScreenWriter from about 1980 or 81 ??? I can remember using it
>: on a old Apple II that I had updated to a +.  Shortly after that I moved
>: over to Magic Words or Writter (??) by Artisi --- which I used until I had
>: a IIe and a Beta copy (bootleg) of AppleWorks.  Oh those were the days !!
>: Fred

The first word processor I ever used was an early version of WordStar
on a Hewlett-Packard lunchbox. After years of screwing with a 1935
Underwood typewriter, it was almost a religious experience.

On the Apple, aside from the obligatory experience with Bank Street
Writer in school, I laid hands on a copy of Applewriter and used it
for many years. The first thing I did when I got a IIc recently was
dig out my old Applewriter disk and fire it up. (To be entirely
honest, I played Starblazer for an hour first.) Towards the end of the
Apple II era, a friend gave me his (original) AppleWorks disks, and I
took to that fairly well, but I never gave up Applewriter completely.

I have to agree with Jeffrey Robertson that text entry and text
formatting are completely different tasks. Even today, I use a DOS
text editor to prepare text, and Pagemaker for actual layout. For 99%
of the routine tasks I perform with a computer, the only advantage my
Pentium has over my old Apple II is a detachable keyboard and a
monitor with a better dot pitch.


John Crow