Timeline

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--- Knud van Eeden --- 14 May 2005 - 01:09 pm

Text: Editor: History: Can you give an overview of history of text editors/wordprocessor? [timeline]

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Some examples:

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1962 - In 1962 at the SRI (='S'tanford 'R'esearch 'I'nstitute), Douglas Engelbart (inventor of e.g. the mouse), who also later worked at Xerox PARC (='P'alo 'A'lto 'R'esearch 'C'enter) proposed, and later implemented, a word processor with automatic word wrap, search and replace, user-definable macros, scrolling text, and commands to move, copy, and delete characters, words, or blocks of text for his NLS (=o'NL'ine 'S'ystem)

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1967 - QED: In December 1967 Butler Lampson and Peter Deutsch released QED (='Q'uick 'ED'itor) for the Berkeley time-sharing system on the SDS (='S'cientific 'D'ata 'S'ystems) 940 (this computer, developed by Keith Couch, was the first commercial timesharing computer system. It was part of the 'Project Genie' (1964-1969) at the University of California, Berkeley, which was funded by the ARPA ('A'dvanced 'R'esearch 'P'roject 'A'gency) of the US military (contract SD-185) to produce a timesharing system)

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1967 - TECO: the TECO (='T'ext 'E'ditor and 'CO'rrector) editor written first for the first Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-1 (='P'rogrammed 'D'ata 'P'rocessor) timesharing system at MIT (='M'assachusets 'I'nstitute of 'T'echnology)

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1967 - Hypertext Editing System (HES): developed at Brown University by Andy van Dam, Ted Nelson, and students. Ran on the IBM 360. "The first hypertext system available on commercial equipment that novices could use". Sold by IBM to NASA for use in Apollo documentation, among other things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Editing_System

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1968 - File Retrieval and Editing System (FRESS): successor to HES at Brown University. Incorporated innovations from Engelbart's NLS to provide collaborative, device-independent hypertext editing and document preparation. Worked on terminals from dumb typewriters to Imlac PDS-1 graphical minicomputer with light pen. Possibly the first computer system with "Undo" function. Used for years at Brown, by faculty for books, and in teaching experiments, notably with poetry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Retrieval_and_Editing_System

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1969 - ED: Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson (original developers of the C language and the Unix operating system), while at Bell Labs, release a simplified form of QED for the PDP-7, written in PL/M ('P'rogramming 'L'anguage for 'M'icroprocessors (a sub-set of PL/I (='P'rogramming 'L'anguage I (=one), from IBM (='I'nternational 'B'usiness 'M'achines)))

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1974 - Bravo: Bravo was the first WYSIWYG document preparation program. It provided multi-font capability using the bitmap displays on the Xerox Alto personal computer. It was produced at Xerox PARC by Butler Lampson, Charles Simonyi (who also developed Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word) and colleagues in 1974.

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1976 - EMACS: Richard Stallman, Guy Steele, and Dave Moon, while at MIT, release EMACS (a set of 'E'ditor 'MAC'ro'S', for the TECO editor), running on the PDP 10 computer

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1976 - VI / Ex: In November 1976 William (=Bill) Joy (of e.g. Sun Microsystems), while at the University of California at Berkeley, releases the screen oriented text editor VI (='V'isual 'I'nterface), together with its line oriented counterpart Ex. VI and Ex are different interfaces (one screen oriented, one line oriented) to the same program behind it.

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1976 - MITS Altair programmer Michael Shrayer releases the first IBM PC word processing program, the Electric Pencil

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1976 - NED: In 1976 John Robbins Barnaby releases NED (='N'ew 'ED'itor) as his replacement for ED, written in assembler, while working as an assembly language systems programmer for IMSAI (='I'nformation 'M'anagement 'S'ervices 'A'ssociates 'I'ncorporated), who was making a computer based on the Intel 8080 CPU (='C'entral 'P'rocessing 'U'nit) and running Gary Kildall's Digital Research's CP/M (='C'ontrol 'P'rogram/'M'onitor or Control Program for Microcomputers) operating system. The IMSAI 8080 was a copy of the original 8-bit computer, the MITS (='M'icro 'I'nstrumentation 'T'elemetry 'S'ystems) Altair. NED is the forerunner of Wordstar.

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1978 - Wordstar: John Robbins Barnaby (in corporation with Jim Fox) releases in 1978 Wordstar for CP/M (written in assembler).

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1980 - XEdit: IBM releases XEdit for VM/CMS (='V'irtual 'M'achine/'C'onversational 'M'onitor 'S'ystem)

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1982 - WordPerfect: WordPerfect was originally produced by Satellite Software International, Inc. of Orem, Utah, which later renamed itself WordPerfect Corporation. Originally written for Data General minicomputers (e.g. the in 1980 released program SSI*WP), in 1982 the developers ported the program to the IBM PC as WordPerfect 2.20. WordPerfect was first sold to Novell, then to Corel. In 2003, Corel was acquired and taken private by Vector Capital, a San Francisco- based venture capital and private equity firm.

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1983 - Microsoft Word: Richard Brodie releases a DOS (='D'isk 'O'perating 'S'ystem) version. Microsoft Word owes a lot to Bravo, the original GUI word processor developed at Xerox PARC. Bravo's creator Charles Simonyi left Xerox PARC to work for Microsoft in 1981. Charles Simonyi hired Richard Brodie, who had worked with him on Bravo, away from Xerox PARC that summer.

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1983 - BRIEF: The Underware corporation releases the BRIEF (='B'asic 'R'econfigurable 'I'nteractive 'E'diting 'F'acility) text editor, written by Dave Nanian and Michael Strickman. BRIEF was bought by Solution Systems, then bought by Borland.

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1985 - Microsoft Notepad: in November 1985 Microsoft releases the text editor Notepad as part of Microsoft Windows 1.0

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1985 - QEdit: In November 1985 Sammy Mitchell of the Semware (='S'ammy 'E'dward 'M'itchell soft'WARE') corporation releases the text editor QEdit (='Q'uick 'Edit') (later in 1992 renamed to TSE (='T'he 'S'emware 'E'ditor)), written in Turbo Pascal, later in 1990 converted to C.

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Internet: see also:

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Operating system: Linux: Editor: Emacs: History: Meaning: What is the meaning of Emacs? http://www.faqts.com/knowledge_base/view.phtml/aid/26771/fid/648

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Operating system: Linux: File: Editor: Vi: History: What is the meaning of VI? http://www.faqts.com/knowledge_base/view.phtml/aid/26785/fid/1561

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Douglas Engelbart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart

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NLS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLS_%28computer_system%29

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Text editor http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/t/te/text_editor.htm

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Orthodox Editors as a Special Class of Advanced Editors http://www.softpanorama.org/Editors/index.shtml

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Emacs Timeline http://www.jwz.org/doc/emacs-timeline.html

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A History of UNIX before Berkeley: UNIX Evolution, 1975-1984 http://www.daemonnews.org/199903/history.html

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The core of information technology http://cne.gmu.edu/itcore/userinterface/GUIHistory3.html

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SDS 940 http://www.scqaa.com/MeetingsEvents/2003%20Meetings/March03/03-18-03% 20Presentation/03-18-03_Couch.htm

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History of WordStar http://www.wordstar.org/wordstar/history/history.htm

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Brief editor http://www.shirt-pocket.com/AboutUs.html

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Microsoft Word http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Word

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Bravo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bravo_%28software%29

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WordPerfect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect

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WordPerfect http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/chronology.html

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The First Word Processor http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa030199.htm

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History of Word Processing http://www.stanford.edu/%7Ebkunde/fb%2Dpress/articles/wdprhist.html

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TSE: Version: Overview: History: In which year were TSE versions released? [timeline] http://www.faqts.com/knowledge_base/view.phtml/aid/36156/fid/932



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