Microsoft Word... for UNIX? Yes. It's real.

Date:
Thu, 12 May 2022 22:59:33 GMT

Description:
And it all dates back to... Microsoft Xenix.

FULL STORY ======================================================================

Weve already covered how Microsoft developed Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and Outlook Express for UNIX .

But, did you know that the giant from Redmond also made Microsoft Word for UNIX too? They did.

Here is what Microsoft Word 5.1 running on SCO UNIX looked like: Word 5.1 on UNIX

If it looks familiar to any of you who used the DOS version of MS Word thats because it all has the same origins.

The very, very first version of Word was actually called Multi-Tool Word and was released in 1983 for the Microsoft Xenix operating system (an early 1980s version of UNIX from Microsoft). Microsoft Word 3.0 for Xenix

Thats right. MS Word started on a UNIX system. Not DOS. Not Windows. Not even Mac. No-sir-ee-bob. UNIX (Xenix, specifically).

The name was changed to simply Microsoft Word and released, very shortly thereafter for a bunch of platforms (including MS-DOS). Note how similar
Word looked on the different platforms. (Xenix above, DOS below.) Word 1.15 for MS-DOS

Because Xenix was a UNIX platform, this made it simple for Microsoft to port Word to other UNIX systems including AT&T UNIX and SCO UNIX.

Early versions of Microsoft Word (and Multi-Tool Word) actually shared much the same code between platforms it was developed in C and ran in a P-code interpreter. That P-code machine could be ported to a wide variety of platforms fairly easily.

Interesting tidbit:

At one point, Microsoft was planning to continue to develop and release Word for UNIX. You can find this referenced in a few text files here and there from the company:

Commands with Microsoft Word for UNIX and Microsoft Word for Windows are similar but not identical. Commands with future versions of Microsoft Word for UNIX will follow the lead of the PC Word and Word for Windows products, and will become more window oriented.

However Microsoft would never release a version of Microsoft Word for UNIX after version 5.1.1b. No graphical version of Word for UNIX was ever released.

Another fun thing to think about: Having a text mode version of Microsoft
Word for UNIX means that many organizations were able to allow users to SSH / Telnet into a UNIX server to run Word from a terminal.

Which is pretty nifty. Want more obscure computer history? Check out
Lundukes History of Computers (volume 1) which is free for all Lunduke
Journal subscribers . Get 76% off for 1 year





======================================================================
Link to news story: https://lunduke.substack.com/p/microsoft-word-for-unix-yes-its-real


--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 (Linux/64)
* Origin: tqwNet Technology News (1337:1/100)