Some Comments on antique software

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 187

Posted by urqurw
1999-08-20 09:34:41

I had sent this to Dave Winer, who suggested that i post it here as well:

> I just came across your site and just wanted to say thanks!
> I also wanted to comment on the phenomenon that you noted about Outline software being available at one point and then disappearing. (Or at least certain functionalities.) I’ve noted this as well, to the point that, if i think about it long and hard it bothers me. It seems that for a lot of software pre-Windows (pw) there were a lot of applications that has some tremendous applications and functionality, that ran on a small memory footprint, that have now, for whatever reason, have disappeared.
> The categories that i have also seen have been in the areas of writing (Xywrite, my wordprocessor of choice), grammar checker (pw Grammatik had support for your own rules as well as more wordprocessors supported), Ventura for DOS (a complete desktop publishing package, supporting various wordprocessor formats, graphics, etc. that ran on an 8086 machine), wordprocessor conversion (Word for Word had some of the best conversions for a bunch of diverse wordprocessors, they’ve been bought by Inso, which does not sell or support their filters, but uses the technology for their Viewer utility. Conversions for unique formats are no longer supported.) These are just a small sample, in an area of my interest, but if you go to any old used software store you can find many more examples. I can’t help but feel that, with the advent and popularity of Windows and windows applications, many of the smaller companies that created these products, couldn’t afford the development and marketing for a windows version, as well as keeping a DOS version for their installed base. I think that a lot of the Windows users were sold a bill of goods that this new environment would be as good or better than where they came from. At the time i thought so, now i have my doubts. When all of the afore mentioned apps that i can/would use, are no longer available AND it takes a faster machine, with MORE memory, to use applications that have LESS functionality! Is this progress? I think not!

> fwiw,

Russ

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