PaperClip is a word processor for the Commodore 64 , 128 ( native mode ), and Atari 8-bit computers published by Batteries Included in 1985. In the UK it was published by Ariolasoft .
52-581: Both the Atari and Commodore versions share the PaperClip name, but have significant differences. The Commodore 64 version of PaperClip was written by Steve Douglas and was rewritten for the Atari personal computer by Steve Ahlstrom and Dan Moore. The Atari version is based upon the editor in the Action! programming language by Clinton Parker. PaperClip is also the name given to the text editor ROM portion of
104-414: A "literary piano". The only "word processing" these mechanical systems could perform was to change where letters appeared on the page, to fill in spaces that were previously left on the page, or to skip over lines. It was not until decades later that the introduction of electricity and electronics into typewriters began to help the writer with the mechanical part. The term “word processing” (translated from
156-656: A computer-based word processing dedicated device with Japanese writing system in Business Show in Tokyo. Toshiba released the first Japanese word processor JW-10 [ jp ] in February 1979. The price was 6,300,000 JPY, equivalent to US$ 45,000. This is selected as one of the milestones of IEEE . The Japanese writing system uses a large number of kanji (logographic Chinese characters) which require 2 bytes to store, so having one key per each symbol
208-551: A couple of specific bytes of data in the EPROM, and this check was easily bypassed by a small change to the code. PaperClip, however, placed all the user messages in the EPROM. Thus no EPROM, and no messages. One unusual aspect of PaperClip is that the Control key functions more like on a hand-held calculator. You have to press and release the Control key, then press the key for the appropriate function. Ahoy! wrote that "PaperClip
260-496: A debugger, allowing an entire program or individual functions to be run, memory to be displayed and modified, and program execution to be traced. Action! has three fundamental data types , all of which are numeric. BYTE is internally represented as an unsigned 8- bit integer. Values range from 0 to 255. The CHAR keyword can also be used to declare BYTE variables. CARD inal is internally represented as an unsigned 16- bit integer. Values range from 0 to 65,535. INT eger
312-504: A separate run-time package which was sold by OSS as the Action! Toolkit. Action! constructs were designed to map cleanly to 6502 opcodes , to provide high performance without needing complex optimizations in the one-pass compiler . For example, local variables are assigned fixed addresses in memory, instead of being allocated on a stack of activation records . This eliminates the significant overhead associated with stack management, which
364-552: A set of stick-on "keycaps" describing the function were provided with the software. Lexitype was popular with large organizations that had previously used the Lexitron. Eventually, the price differences between dedicated word processors and general-purpose PCs, and the value added to the latter by software such as “ killer app ” spreadsheet applications, e.g. VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3 , were so compelling that personal computers and word processing software became serious competition for
416-469: A test, ten iterations of the sieve completed in 18 seconds in Action!, compared to 10 seconds for assembly and 38 minutes in BASIC. The magazine also lauded the language's editor. BYTE reported that the language resembled C closely enough to "routinely convert programs between the two", and approved of its pointer support. The magazine concluded that "Action! is easy to use, quick, and efficient. It can exploit
468-456: A typewriter) was patented in 1714 by Henry Mill for a machine that was capable of "writing so clearly and accurately you could not distinguish it from a printing press". More than a century later, another patent appeared in the name of William Austin Burt for the typographer . In the late 19th century, Christopher Latham Sholes created the first recognizable typewriter, which was described as
520-504: A user to rewrite text that had been written on another tape, and it also allowed limited collaboration in the sense that a user could send the tape to another person to let them edit the document or make a copy. It was a revolution for the word processing industry. In 1969, the tapes were replaced by magnetic cards. These memory cards were inserted into an extra device that accompanied the MT/ST, able to read and record users' work. Throughout
572-417: A word processor and a desktop publishing program has become unclear as word processing software has gained features such as ligature support added to the 2010 version of Microsoft Word . Common word processor programs include LibreOffice Writer , Google Docs and Microsoft Word . Word processors developed from mechanical machines, later merging with computer technology. The history of word processing
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#1732791573389624-586: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Action! (programming language) Action! is a procedural programming language and integrated development environment written by Clinton Parker for the Atari 8-bit computers . The language, which is similar to ALGOL , compiles to high-performance code for the MOS Technology 6502 of the Atari computers. Action! was distributed on ROM cartridge by Optimized Systems Software starting in 1983. It
676-401: Is especially difficult in the case of the 6502's 256-byte stack. However, this precludes the use of recursion . Unlike the integrated Atari BASIC and Atari Assembler Editor environments, the Action! editor does not use line numbers. It has a fullscreen, scrolling display capable of displaying two windows, and includes block operations and global search and replace. The monitor serves as
728-523: Is example code for Sieve of Eratosthenes written in Action!. In order to increase performance, it disables the ANTIC graphics coprocessor, preventing its DMA engine from "stealing" CPU cycles during computation. While taking his postgraduate studies, Parker started working part-time at Xerox PARC working on printer drivers . He later moved to the Xerox Alto project where he wrote several games for
780-600: Is infeasible. Japanese word processing became possible with the development of the Japanese input method (a sequence of keypresses, with visual feedback, which selects a character) -- now widely used in personal computers. Oki launched OKI WORD EDITOR-200 in March 1979 with this kana-based keyboard input system. In 1980 several electronics and office equipment brands including entered this rapidly growing market with more compact and affordable devices. For instance, NEC introduced
832-434: Is internally represented as a signed 16- bit integer. Values range from -32,768 to 32,767. Action! also has ARRAYs, POINTERs and user-defined TYPEs. No floating point support is provided. An example of a user-defined TYPE: A reserved word is any identifier or symbol that the Action! compiler recognizes as something special. It can be an operator, a data type name, a statement, or a compiler directive. The following
884-511: Is one of the most comprehensive word processing programs for the C-64", but noted the $ 125 list price. Antic called PaperClip, "by far the best word processor ever available for the Atari." In the December 1986 shopper's guide, a staffer wrote, "We write and edit every word at Antic with PaperClip before transmitting the copy to our typesetter via modem ." This word processor article
936-467: Is the story of the gradual automation of the physical aspects of writing and editing, and then to the refinement of the technology to make it available to corporations and Individuals. The term word processing appeared in American offices in the early 1970s centered on the idea of streamlining the work to typists, but the meaning soon shifted toward the automation of the whole editing cycle. At first,
988-532: The Commodore PET Execudesk office suite. The ROM was written by Steve Douglas as well. PaperClip does not use word wrap to display text on the screen, which Ahoy! ' s reviewer wrote was satisfactory for Commodore 64 users with 40-column displays but drew the ire of the reviewer for Whole Earth Software Catalog while highlighting OMNIWRITER 's support for same. The Commodore 64 version provides an 80-column preview mode with text that
1040-877: The Gypsy word processor). These were popularized by MacWrite on the Apple Macintosh in 1983, and Microsoft Word on the IBM PC in 1984. These were probably the first true WYSIWYG word processors to become known to many people. Of particular interest also is the standardization of TrueType fonts used in both Macintosh and Windows PCs. While the publishers of the operating systems provide TrueType typefaces, they are largely gathered from traditional typefaces converted by smaller font publishing houses to replicate standard fonts. Demand for new and interesting fonts, which can be found free of copyright restrictions, or commissioned from font designers, developed. The growing popularity of
1092-612: The NWP-20 [ jp ] , and Fujitsu launched the Fujitsu OASYS [ jp ] . While the average unit price in 1980 was 2,000,000 JPY (US$ 14,300), it was dropped to 164,000 JPY (US$ 1,200) in 1985. Even after personal computers became widely available, Japanese word processors remained popular as they tended to be more portable (an "office computer" was initially too large to carry around), and become commonplace for business and academics, even for private individuals in
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#17327915733891144-406: The $ 10,000 range. Cheap general-purpose personal computers were still the domain of hobbyists. In Japan, even though typewriters with Japanese writing system had widely been used for businesses and governments, they were limited to specialists and required special skills due to the wide variety of letters, until computer-based devices came onto the market. In 1977, Sharp showcased a prototype of
1196-612: The 1960s and 70s, word processing began to slowly shift from glorified typewriters augmented with electronic features to become fully computer-based (although only with single-purpose hardware) with the development of several innovations. Just before the arrival of the personal computer (PC), IBM developed the floppy disk . In the 1970s, the first proper word-processing systems appeared, which allowed display and editing of documents on CRT screens . During this era, these early stand-alone word processing systems were designed, built, and marketed by several pioneering companies. Linolex Systems
1248-655: The Atari with changes to support the 6502 processor and the addition of an integrated fullscreen editor and debugger. Action! was used to develop at least two commercial products—the HomePak productivity suite and Games Computers Play client program—and numerous programs in ANALOG Computing and Antic magazines. The editor inspired the PaperClip word processor . The language was not ported to other platforms. The assembly language source code for Action!
1300-575: The Atari's full power. Action! puts programming for the Atari in a whole new dimension." Ian Chadwick wrote in Mapping the Atari that "Action! is probably the best language yet for the Atari; it's a bit like C and Pascal, with a dash of Forth. I recommend it." Word processor A word processor ( WP ) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicated to
1352-533: The German word Textverarbeitung ) itself was possibly created in the 1950s by Ulrich Steinhilper , a German IBM typewriter sales executive, or by an American electro-mechanical typewriter executive, George M. Ryan, who obtained a trademark registration in the USPTO for the phrase. However, it did not make its appearance in 1960s office management or computing literature (an example of grey literature ), though many of
1404-498: The Windows operating system in the 1990s later took Microsoft Word along with it. Originally called "Microsoft Multi-Tool Word", this program quickly became a synonym for “word processor”. Early in the 21st century, Google Docs popularized the transition to online or offline web browser based word processing. This was enabled by the widespread adoption of suitable internet connectivity in businesses and domestic households and later
1456-428: The dedicated machines and soon dominated the market. In the late 1980s, innovations such as the advent of laser printers , a "typographic" approach to word processing ( WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get), using bitmap displays with multiple fonts (pioneered by the Xerox Alto computer and Bravo word processing program), and graphical user interfaces such as “copy and paste” (another Xerox PARC innovation, with
1508-587: The designers of word processing systems combined existing technologies with emerging ones to develop stand-alone equipment, creating a new business distinct from the emerging world of the personal computer. The concept of word processing arose from the more general data processing, which since the 1950s had been the application of computers to business administration. Through history, there have been three types of word processors: mechanical, electronic and software. The first word processing device (a "Machine for Transcribing Letters" that appears to have been similar to
1560-414: The editor, noting its split-screen and cut and paste capabilities and describing it as a "complete word processing system that's very responsive." He said that Action! ran about 200 times as fast as Atari BASIC , concluding that "This language is like a finely tuned racing car." BYTE in 1985 praised the compilation and execution speed of software written in Action! Using their Byte Sieve benchmark as
1612-417: The function, but current word processors are word processor programs running on general purpose computers. The functions of a word processor program fall somewhere between those of a simple text editor and a fully functioned desktop publishing program. While the distinction between a text editor and a word processor is clear—namely the capability of editing rich text —the distinctions between
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1664-518: The ideas, products, and technologies to which it would later be applied were already well known. Nonetheless, by 1971, the term was recognized by the New York Times as a business " buzz word ". Word processing paralleled the more general "data processing", or the application of computers to business administration. Thus, by 1972, the discussion of word processing was common in publications devoted to business office management and technology; by
1716-404: The language and sales ended shortly after. In a 2015 interview, Parker expressed his surprise in the level of interest in the language continued to receive, suggesting it was greater than it had been in the late 1980s. Brian Moriarty , in a February 1984 review for ANALOG Computing , concluded that Action! was "one of the most valuable development tools ever published for the Atari." He cited
1768-459: The manual as the only weak point of the package, claiming it "suffers from lack of confidence, uncertain organization and a shortage of good, hard technical data." Leo Laporte reviewed Action in the May/June 1984 edition of Hi-Res . He began the review, "This is the best thing to happen to Atari since Nolan Bushnell figured out people would play ping-pong on a TV screen ." Laporte praised
1820-617: The mid-1970s, the term would have been familiar to any office manager who consulted business periodicals. By the late 1960s, IBM had developed the IBM MT/ST (Magnetic Tape/Selectric Typewriter). It was a model of the IBM Selectric typewriter from earlier in 1961, but it came built into its own desk, integrated with magnetic tape recording and playback facilities along with controls and a bank of electrical relays. The MT/ST automated word wrap, but it had no screen. This device allowed
1872-883: The most popular systems of the 1970s and early 1980s. The Wang system displayed text on a CRT screen, and incorporated virtually every fundamental characteristic of word processors as they are known today. While early computerized word processor system were often expensive and hard to use (that is, like the computer mainframes of the 1960s), the Wang system was a true office machine, affordable to organizations such as medium-sized law firms, and easily mastered and operated by secretarial staff. The phrase "word processor" rapidly came to refer to CRT-based machines similar to Wang's. Numerous machines of this kind emerged, typically marketed by traditional office-equipment companies such as IBM, Lanier (AES Data machines - re-badged), CPT, and NBI. All were specialized, dedicated, proprietary systems, with prices in
1924-424: The other three blocks by changing the value in address $ AFFF. This allowed for more RAM available for user programs. Action! used this design by breaking the system into four sections, the editor, the compiler, a monitor for testing code and switching between the editor and compiler, and the run-time library. The run-time library is stored in the cartridge itself. To distribute standalone applications requires
1976-412: The public. By the late 1970s, computerized word processors were still primarily used by employees composing documents for large and midsized businesses (e.g., law firms and newspapers). Within a few years, the falling prices of PCs made word processing available for the first time to all writers in the convenience of their homes. The first word processing program for personal computers ( microcomputers )
2028-505: The same format, allowing BCPL programs to call Micro-SPL programs. Aside from differences in syntax, the main difference between Micro-SPL and BCPL, and the reason for its existence, was that Micro-SPL produced code that was many times faster than the native BCPL compiler. In general, Micro-SPL programs were expected to run about ten times as fast as BCPL, and about half as fast as good hand-written microcode. In comparison to microcode, they claimed it would take half as long to write and 10% of
2080-496: The second half of the 1980s. The phrase "word processor" has been abbreviated as "Wa-pro" or "wapuro" in Japanese. The final step in word processing came with the advent of the personal computer in the late 1970s and 1980s and with the subsequent creation of word processing software. Word processing software that would create much more complex and capable output was developed and prices began to fall, making them more accessible to
2132-580: The system. His PhD was in natural language parsing and he had worked on compiler theory during his graduate work. Henry Baker and Parker released Micro-SPL in September 1979. Micro-SPL was intended to be used as a systems programming language on the Xerox Alto workstation computer , which was normally programmed in BCPL . The Alto used a microcode system which the BCPL compiler output. Micro-SPL output
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2184-431: The time to debug it. It was during this period that Parker purchased an Atari computer for use at home. He was disappointed with the lack of development systems for it, which was the impetus for creating Action! Parker considered releasing the system himself, but decided to partner with Optimized Systems Software (OSS) for sales and distribution. OSS focused on utilities and programming languages like BASIC XL , so this
2236-464: The time, (about $ 60,000 adjusted for inflation). The Redactron Corporation (organized by Evelyn Berezin in 1969) designed and manufactured editing systems, including correcting/editing typewriters, cassette and card units, and eventually a word processor called the Data Secretary. The Burroughs Corporation acquired Redactron in 1976. A CRT-based system by Wang Laboratories became one of
2288-457: Was Electric Pencil , from Michael Shrayer Software , which went on sale in December 1976. In 1978, WordStar appeared and because of its many new features soon dominated the market. WordStar was written for the early CP/M (Control Program–Micro) operating system, ported to CP/M-86 , then to MS-DOS , and was the most popular word processing program until 1985 when WordPerfect sales first exceeded WordStar sales. Early word processing software
2340-503: Was a natural fit for Action! Sales were strong enough for Parker to make a living off the royalties for several years. The IBM PC had C compilers available, and Parker decided there was no point in porting Action! to that platform. As the sales of the Atari 8-bit computers wound down in North America, OSS wound down as well. Late in its history Action! distribution moved from OSS to Electronic Arts , but they did little with
2392-449: Was founded in 1970 by James Lincoln and Robert Oleksiak. Linolex based its technology on microprocessors, floppy drives and software. It was a computer-based system for application in the word processing businesses and it sold systems through its own sales force. With a base of installed systems in over 500 sites, Linolex Systems sold 3 million units in 1975 — a year before the Apple computer
2444-513: Was legible on a computer monitor, and supported a wide variety of Commodore and non-Commodore printers. The software was supplied with a dongle , a hardware key used for copy protection that plugged into the DE-9 joystick port. A keyless version was also available. An EPROM was also used for copy protection on the Commodore PET. Other programs that used such a method just checked for
2496-559: Was made available under the GNU General Public License by the author in 2015. Action! is one of the earlier examples of the OSS SuperCartridge format. Although ROM cartridges for the Atari could support 16 kB, OSS opted for bank-switching 16 kB, organized as four 4 kB blocks, mapped onto 8kB of address space . The lower 4 kB did not change, and system could bank switch between
2548-596: Was not as intuitive as word processor devices. Most early word processing software required users to memorize semi-mnemonic key combinations rather than pressing keys such as "copy" or "bold". Moreover, CP/M lacked cursor keys; for example WordStar used the E-S-D-X-centered "diamond" for cursor navigation. A notable exception was the software Lexitype for MS-DOS that took inspiration from the Lexitron dedicated word processor's user interface and which mapped individual functions to particular keyboard function keys , and
2600-403: Was one of the company's first bank-switched 16 kB "Super Cartridges". The runtime library is stored in the cartridge; to make a standalone application requires the Action! Toolkit which was sold separately by OSS. Parker, working with Henry Baker , had previously developed Micro-SPL, a systems programming language for the Xerox Alto . Action! is largely a port of Micro-SPL concepts to
2652-495: Was released. At that time, the Lexitron Corporation also produced a series of dedicated word-processing microcomputers. Lexitron was the first to use a full-sized video display screen (CRT) in its models by 1978. Lexitron also used 5 1 ⁄ 4 inch floppy diskettes, which became the standard in the personal computer field. The program disk was inserted in one drive, and the system booted up . The data diskette
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#17327915733892704-414: Was then put in the second drive. The operating system and the word processing program were combined in one file. Another of the early word processing adopters was Vydec, which created in 1973 the first modern text processor, the "Vydec Word Processing System". It had built-in multiple functions like the ability to share content by diskette and print it. The Vydec Word Processing System sold for $ 12,000 at
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