He founded MicroPro International Corporation in September 1978 and hired John Robbins Barnaby as programmer, who wrote a word processor, WordMaster, and a sorting program, SuperSort, in Intel 8080 assembly language.
MicroPro began selling the product, now renamed WordStar, in June 1979.
Barnaby left the company in March 1980, but due to WordStar's sophistication, the company's extensive sales and marketing efforts, and bundling deals with Osborne and other computer makers, MicroPro's sales grew from $500,000 in 1979 to $72 million in fiscal year 1984, surpassing earlier market leader Electric Pencil.
Starting with WordStar 4.0, the program was built on new code written principally by Peter Mierau. WordStar was written with as few assumptions as possible about the operating system and machine hardware, allowing it to be easily ported across the many platforms that proliferated in the early 1980s.
In spite of its great popularity in the early 1980s, these problems allowed WordPerfect to take WordStar's place as the most widely used word processor from 1985 on. == History == ===Founding=== Seymour I.
Priced at $495 and $40 for the manual, by early 1980, MicroPro claimed in advertisements that 5,000 people had purchased WordStar in eight months. ===Early success=== WordStar was the first microcomputer word processor to offer mail merge and textual WYSIWYG.
Barnaby left the company in March 1980, but due to WordStar's sophistication, the company's extensive sales and marketing efforts, and bundling deals with Osborne and other computer makers, MicroPro's sales grew from $500,000 in 1979 to $72 million in fiscal year 1984, surpassing earlier market leader Electric Pencil.
During the second half of the 1980s, the fully modernized WordPerfect overtook it in sales. WordStar 5 (released in 1989) added footnote and endnote capability and a fairly advanced Page preview function.
InfoStar), and CalcStar (spreadsheet) comprised , the first-ever office suite of personal computer programs. As a product enhancement, in the late 1980s WordStar 5 came bundled with PC-Outline, a popular DOS outliner then available from Brown Bag Software, Inc.
This carried with it an unfortunate performance penalty as everything had to be "double" processed (meaning that the DOS API functions would handle screen or keyboard I/O first and then pass them to the BIOS). The first DOS version of WordStar, demoed by Jim Fox and executed by a team of Irish programmers in April 1982, was a port of the CP/M-86 version of WordStar, which in turn had been ported from the CP/M-80 version in September 1981.
One of them, Introduction to WordStar, was written by future Goldstein & Blair founder and Whole Earth Software Catalog contributor Arthur Naiman, who hated the program and had a term inserted into his publishing contract that he not be required to use WordStar to write the book, using WRITE instead. ===MS-DOS=== WordStar 3.0, the first version for MS-DOS, appeared in April 1982.
This carried with it an unfortunate performance penalty as everything had to be "double" processed (meaning that the DOS API functions would handle screen or keyboard I/O first and then pass them to the BIOS). The first DOS version of WordStar, demoed by Jim Fox and executed by a team of Irish programmers in April 1982, was a port of the CP/M-86 version of WordStar, which in turn had been ported from the CP/M-80 version in September 1981.
Although competition appeared early (the first version of WordPerfect debuted in 1982 and Microsoft Word in 1983), WordStar was the dominant word processor on x86 machines until 1985.
By May 1983 BYTE magazine called WordStar "without a doubt the best-known and probably the most widely used personal computer word-processing program".
The company released WordStar 3.3 in June 1983; the 650,000 cumulative copies of WordStar for the IBM PC and other computers sold by that fall was more than double that of the second most-popular word processor, and that year MicroPro had 10% of the personal computer software market.
However, edited versions of a document were "saved" only to this RAM disk, and had to be copied to physical media before rebooting. InfoWorld described WordStar as "notorious for its complexity", but by 1983 it was the leading word processing system.
Although competition appeared early (the first version of WordPerfect debuted in 1982 and Microsoft Word in 1983), WordStar was the dominant word processor on x86 machines until 1985.
The company, which did not have a corporate sales program until December 1983, developed a poor reputation among customers.
PC Magazine wrote in 1983 that MicroPro's "motto often seems to be: 'Ask Your Dealer'", and in 1985 that By late 1984 the company admitted, according to the magazine, that WordStar's reputation for power was fading, and by early 1985 its sales had decreased for four quarters while those of Multimate and Samna increased.
In September 1983 it published WordStar clone NewWord, which offered several features the original lacked, such as a built-in spell checker and support for laser printers.
Word (four versions from 1983 to 1987) and WordPerfect (five versions), however, had become the market leaders.
Barnaby left the company in March 1980, but due to WordStar's sophistication, the company's extensive sales and marketing efforts, and bundling deals with Osborne and other computer makers, MicroPro's sales grew from $500,000 in 1979 to $72 million in fiscal year 1984, surpassing earlier market leader Electric Pencil.
By 1984, the year it held an initial public offering, MicroPro was the world's largest software company with 23% of the word processor market. A manual that PC Magazine described as "incredibly inadequate" led many authors to publish replacements.
Such machines were expensive and were generally accessed through terminals connected to central mainframe or midrange computers. When IBM announced it was bringing DisplayWrite to the PC, MicroPro focused on creating a clone of it which they marketed, in 1984, as WordStar 2000.
PC Magazine wrote in 1983 that MicroPro's "motto often seems to be: 'Ask Your Dealer'", and in 1985 that By late 1984 the company admitted, according to the magazine, that WordStar's reputation for power was fading, and by early 1985 its sales had decreased for four quarters while those of Multimate and Samna increased.
Despite competition from NewStar, Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, and dozens of other companies, which typically released new versions of their software every 12 to 18 months, MicroPro did not release new versions of WordStar beyond 3.3 during 1984 and 1985, in part because Rubinstein relinquished control of the company after a January 1984 heart attack.
His replacements canceled the promising office suite Starburst, purchased a WordStar clone, and used it as the basis of WordStar 2000, released in December 1984.
Company employees were divided between WordStar and WordStar 2000 factions, and fiscal year 1985 sales declined to $40 million. By 1984 NewWord had released a second version, and many WordStar users switched to it.
In spite of its great popularity in the early 1980s, these problems allowed WordPerfect to take WordStar's place as the most widely used word processor from 1985 on. == History == ===Founding=== Seymour I.
Although competition appeared early (the first version of WordPerfect debuted in 1982 and Microsoft Word in 1983), WordStar was the dominant word processor on x86 machines until 1985.
PC Magazine wrote in 1983 that MicroPro's "motto often seems to be: 'Ask Your Dealer'", and in 1985 that By late 1984 the company admitted, according to the magazine, that WordStar's reputation for power was fading, and by early 1985 its sales had decreased for four quarters while those of Multimate and Samna increased.
Despite competition from NewStar, Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, and dozens of other companies, which typically released new versions of their software every 12 to 18 months, MicroPro did not release new versions of WordStar beyond 3.3 during 1984 and 1985, in part because Rubinstein relinquished control of the company after a January 1984 heart attack.
It received poor reviews—by April 1985 PC Magazine referred to WordStar 2000 as "beleaguered"—due to not being compatible with WordStar files and other disadvantages, and by selling at the same $495 price as WordStar 3.3 confused customers.
Company employees were divided between WordStar and WordStar 2000 factions, and fiscal year 1985 sales declined to $40 million. By 1984 NewWord had released a second version, and many WordStar users switched to it.
In February 1985 MicroPro promised updates to WordStar 3.3, but none appeared until new management purchased NewWord and used it as the basis of WordStar 4.0 in 1987, four years after the previous version.
MultiMate, in particular, used the same key sequences as Wang word processors, which made it popular with secretaries switching from those to PCs. BYTE stated that WordStar 2000 had "all the charm of an elephant on motorized skates", warning in 1986 that an IBM PC AT with hard drive was highly advisable to run the software, which it described as "clumsy, overdesigned, and uninviting ...
A third version appeared in 1986.
In February 1985 MicroPro promised updates to WordStar 3.3, but none appeared until new management purchased NewWord and used it as the basis of WordStar 4.0 in 1987, four years after the previous version.
Word (four versions from 1983 to 1987) and WordPerfect (five versions), however, had become the market leaders.
More conflict between MicroPro's two factions delayed WordStar 5.0 until late 1988, again hurting the program's sales.
During the second half of the 1980s, the fully modernized WordPerfect overtook it in sales. WordStar 5 (released in 1989) added footnote and endnote capability and a fairly advanced Page preview function.
After renaming itself after its flagship product in 1989, WordStar International merged with SoftKey in 1993. ===WordStar for Windows=== Like many other producers of successful DOS applications, WordStar International delayed before deciding to make a version for the commercially successful Windows 3.0.
Versions 5.5 and 6 had added features, and version 7 (released 1991) included a complete macro language as well as support for over 500 printers.
The company purchased Legacy, an existing Windows-based word processor, which was altered and released as WordStar for Windows in 1991.
After renaming itself after its flagship product in 1989, WordStar International merged with SoftKey in 1993. ===WordStar for Windows=== Like many other producers of successful DOS applications, WordStar International delayed before deciding to make a version for the commercially successful Windows 3.0.
So when Wordstar2000 arrived with a copy protection scheme everyone should have predicted its immediate demise." Besides the ready availability of third-party books explaining WordStar in detail, the program's extensive help facility made it easy to use an illegal copy. ===WordStar 2000=== At the time, the IBM Displaywriter System dominated the dedicated word processor market.
Such machines were expensive and were generally accessed through terminals connected to central mainframe or midrange computers. When IBM announced it was bringing DisplayWrite to the PC, MicroPro focused on creating a clone of it which they marketed, in 1984, as WordStar 2000.
WordStar 2000 supported features such as disk directories, but lacked compatibility with the file formats of existing WordStar versions and also made numerous unpopular changes to the interface.
MultiMate, in particular, used the same key sequences as Wang word processors, which made it popular with secretaries switching from those to PCs. BYTE stated that WordStar 2000 had "all the charm of an elephant on motorized skates", warning in 1986 that an IBM PC AT with hard drive was highly advisable to run the software, which it described as "clumsy, overdesigned, and uninviting ...
WordStar 2000 had a user interface that was substantially different from the original WordStar, and the company did little to advertise this.
His replacements canceled the promising office suite Starburst, purchased a WordStar clone, and used it as the basis of WordStar 2000, released in December 1984.
It received poor reviews—by April 1985 PC Magazine referred to WordStar 2000 as "beleaguered"—due to not being compatible with WordStar files and other disadvantages, and by selling at the same $495 price as WordStar 3.3 confused customers.
Company employees were divided between WordStar and WordStar 2000 factions, and fiscal year 1985 sales declined to $40 million. By 1984 NewWord had released a second version, and many WordStar users switched to it.
The subsequent WordStar 2000 retained WordStar's distinctive functionality for block manipulation.
For instance, a line reading: ".05 percent text text text..." would not appear in the printout though the document would continue on the printout without any error reported. WordStar 2000 added few new commands, but completely rewrote the user interface, using simple English-language mnemonics (so the command to remove a word, which had been ^T in WordStar, became ^RW in WordStar 2000; the command to remove the text from the rest of the line to the right of the cursor changed from ^QY to ^RR).
Although WordStar 2000 was meant as the successor to WordStar, it never gained substantial market share. The original WordStar interface left a large legacy, and many of its control-key command are still available (optionally or as the default) in other programs, such as the modern cross-platform word processing software TextMaker and many text editors running under MS-DOS, Linux, and other UNIX variants.
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