IBM Lotus Symphony

BM Lotus Symphony is a suite of applications for creating, editing, and sharing text, spreadsheet, presentations and other documents. Originally released in July 1984 as an integrated software application for DOS, IBM revived the Symphony name for a new office suite that was first released free of charge in 2007.

The first incarnation of Lotus Symphony was an integrated software package for DOS released by Lotus Development as a follow-on to its popular spreadsheet program, Lotus 1-2-3. Lotus Jazz on the Apple Macintosh was a sibling product.

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Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is Microsoft’s word processing software.

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It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. 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 is a component of the Microsoft Office system; however, it is also sold as a standalone product and included in Microsoft Works Suite. Beginning with the 2003 version, the branding was revised to emphasize Word’s identity as a component within the Office suite; Microsoft began calling it Microsoft Office Word instead of merely Microsoft Word. The latest releases are Word 2007 for Windows and Word 2008 for Mac OS X.

Concepts and ideas of Word were brought from Bravo, the original GUI word processor developed at Xerox PARC. On February 1, 1983, development on what was originally named Multi-Tool Word began.

Richard Brodie renamed it Microsoft Word, and 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.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.

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Jarte Free Word Processor

Jarte \jär · ‘tay\ noun (est. 2001)  1. A free word processor based on the Microsoft WordPad word processing engine built into Windows.  2. A fast starting, easy to use word processor that expands well beyond the WordPad feature set.  3. A small, portable word processor whose documents are fully compatible with Word and WordPad.

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Does Your Word Processor Handle Like an Ocean Liner?

When word processors replaced typewriters they helped free the creative expressions innate in all of us. But somewhere along the way word processors evolved into enormous machines designed primarily to serve the needs of the corporate world. Office word processors have become huge, cumbersome vessels of software that remind us of ocean liners. The seeming goal of both is to become as large as possible by including every imaginable feature, whether anyone actually needs all those features or not. That’s fine for an ocean liner since you are there to relax and marvel at its grandness. However, it is not so fine when the size and complexity of your word processor makes it as cumbersome to operate as an ocean liner in a yacht race.

It does not have to be like that. Jarte is a WordPad based, FREE word processor whose unique interface will make you feel like you are piloting a swift, nimble yacht by comparison. Although Jarte doesn’t look anything like the office word processor you are used to, it can handle your word processing tasks with aplomb. If this sounds like the kind of word processor you are looking for then maybe you owe it to yourself to give Jarte a try.

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AbiWord

AbiWord free word processing logo

AbiWord is a free word processing program similar to Microsoft® Word. It is suitable for a wide variety of word processing tasks.

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AbiWord Highlights

AbiWord is rapidly becoming a state of the art Word Processor, with lots of features useful for your daily work, personal needs, or for just some good old typing fun. This tour gives you a quick look into some of AbiWord’s highlights.

Multi Platform

Enjoy your favorite Word Processor on the operating system you like to use - be it Windows, Linux, QNX, FreeBSD or Solaris.

AbiWord has been designed to integrate perfectly with the operating system it runs on. It will take advantage of the functionality provided by the system, such as image loading or printing capabilities.

Interoperability

What use is a Word Processor when you can’t share your documents with your friends? AbiWord is able to read and write all industry standard document types, such as OpenOffice.org documents, Microsoft Word documents, WordPerfect documents, Rich Text Format documents, HTML web pages and many more.

Advanced Document Layout

Give your document that professional, scientific or fun-to-read look using AbiWord’s advanced document layout options. Use tables, bullets, lists, images, footnotes, endnotes and styles to enhance the way your document looks.

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