A look back: WordPerfect on DOS (2023)

There was a saying in the 1980s that if you knew how to use WordPerfect, you were guaranteed a job in any office. WordPerfect was the word processing system for DOS and several other platforms - but in most technical writing circles, it was primarily known as a DOS system. A brief history W. E. Peterson details the rise and fall of WordPerfect in his book Almost Perfect (1994, Prima). Originally written by Alan Ashton for the Data General platform in the late 1970s, the first version of what would become WordPerfect was already innovative. Unlike document preparation systems that used markup codes like .LM12 to change the page margin or @HD@B to change the text formatting, this new "word processor" presented the text on the screen like it would appear on the printed page, "with the correct line endings and page breaks and without any ugly codes." When the system moved to the PC in 1982, they needed to rename the system. As Peterson writes, "SSI*WP was not very catchy. I liked the na ... Read full article.