Microsoft Write - The First Word Processor for Windows (also released for Mac and... Atari ST?)

Date:
Mon, 25 Apr 2022 22:07:48 GMT

Description:
That's right. Microsoft made Write for Mac and Atari ST. Weird, right?

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History of Computers. Which you want. A lot.

When you think of Word Processor bundled with Windows what springs to mind?

Wordpad? Notepad? How about Word or Works?

Well, in Ye Olden Times (tm), the first word processing software to ship for Microsoft Windows was Microsoft Write. A simple, very lightweight word processor that (at least in earlier versions) used the .WRI file type (a proprietary file format that contained basic styling information).

Lets go on a quick tour through every single version of Microsoft Write to ever be released. 1985 - Microsoft Write for Windows 1.0

To start with: That Windows 1.0 interface . Man. I tell ya. Makes my eyes bleed every time I see it. 1987 - Microsoft Write for Macintosh

Microsoft Write for Macintosh was released in 1987 and wasnt actually Microsoft Write per se . It was the original version of Microsoft Word tweaked. And stripped down.

It was, for a time, the cheap little brother of Microsoft Word. Didnt sell great and wasnt long for this world. 1987 - Microsoft Write for Windows 2.0 Image courtesy of GuideBookGallery.org .

Not much changed in the newer version of Write for Windows 2.0. Same menu structure and features. 1988 - Microsoft Write for Atari ST

Now heres something I bet most people arent familiar with! Did you know that the second version of Microsoft Write to ever be released was for the Atari ST?

Its true! However, it was not based (in any way) on the code base of Write for Windows 1.0. In fact, it was a re-branded (and modified) version of the very first Microsoft Word release for the Macintosh!

And, while it was released in 1988.. it was actually originally announced
back in 1986. Theres a (not too glowing) review of it in a 1988 issue of Start Magazine that I found highly entertaining.

Despite its lengthy gestation, Write is a disappointment. It has fewer bugs than WordPerfect, but mostly because it has fewer features. It also takes a non-standard approach to both word processing and the ST, the latter probably due to its Macintosh ancestry. Unofficial but reliable word from Atari
sources is that Write will not be updated or enhanced. For better or worse, what we have now is the final version.

No updates or new versions of Microsoft Write for Atari ST were ever
released. It was, essentially, dead on arrival. 1990 - Microsoft Write for Windows 3.0 Image courtesy of GuideBookGallery.org .

Once again, very little change to Microsoft Write for Windows in this
release. Though there is a new Help menu now. So thats nice. 1992 - Microsoft Write for Windows 3.1

Starting with this version, Write has the same UI but is slightly more powerful in that it can handle OLE (Object Linking and Embedding). Microsoft Write for Windows NT 3.51

This is, I believe, the final version of Microsoft Write to ever be released.

It was bundled with Windows NT 3.51 which, as it happens, is the final version of Windows NT to include the older Windows 3.x style program manager.

In future versions of Windows, Microsoft would continue to include a
write.exe that simply pointed to the new Wordpad word process which took its place starting with Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0.

All-in-all, Microsoft Write was a stable, but capable, lightweight word processor. One that served Microsoft Windows users well until it was
replaced by Wordpad in the mid 1990s.

The fact that there was an Atari ST version is just an added, and highly amusing, bonus. Dad Jokes + Computers = Dad Jokes about Computers



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Link to news story: https://lunduke.substack.com/p/microsoft-write-the-first-word-processor


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