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Re: MacWrite rumors?

Posted: October 21st, 1984, 1:21 am
by Info-Mac
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From: info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac)
Newsgroups: fa.info-mac
Subject: Re: MacWrite rumors?
Message-ID:
Date: Fri, 21-Sep-84 00:46:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-beave.1667
Posted: Fri Sep 21 00:46:19 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Sep-84 07:24:51 EDT
Sender: daemon@uw-beave
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
Lines: 36

From: John W. Peterson
I saw a demo of the "Disk Based MacWrite" a couple months ago. Although
it wasn't near release then, it was still VERY impressive.

Features included...

Designed to work with very large files (up to a diskful). Doesn't
slow down when inserting into the middle or end of a large file
like MacWrite does.

Integrated spelling checker/corrector. Uses clever word compression
to minimize the lookup time for large percent of the cases.

Horizontal scrolling.

Allows the editing of -multiple column- text. Insertions and deletions
are handled intelligently and quickly (WYSIWYG).

Super- and Sub-scripts can be adjusted on a pixel by pixel basis. Makes
doing fancy equations and such easy.

Multiple windows to multiple files.

Upward compatible to Write (i.e., it can read macwrite files).

Also interesting was the amount of "behind the scenes" wizardry involved.
The whole thing was hand-crafted machine code, and (at least the version
I saw) the application was actually smaller than MacWrite.
They also went to a lot of work to avoid the "flicker" that
occurs when typing with Text Edit or Write. Italics are carefully done
so overlapping characters work properly.

As I understand it, this will be released as an "Apple label" product
(e.g, like Write or MacPascal is). I have no clear idea on what the
expected release date is.
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