The ST had some awesome productivity programs. Tempus Word, Papyrus, Calamus... All running on a 8 Mhz computer with 1 or 2 MB, but with feature sets that do not need to hide from today's software.

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mhd 4 hours ago | parent [-]

People doing DTP with Calamus on their Ataris stuck around for a long time after the systems weren't used for much else – MIDI tooling excepted, of course.

On the other hand, there you didn't have that many powerful packages on any system, besides Quark & the various Adobe tools du jour everything paled in comparison.

For word processing, being forced to use Word was/is usually worse than for DTP, though. But feature-wise, everything seemed to converge during the 90s, so "having" to use Word instead of e.g. WordPerfect was less and less of an issue.

With some exceptions of course, most famously GRRM and other people who got into things very early sticking with the first thing they learned (i.e. WordStar), or apparently some journalists being really into XyWrite.

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buescher 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's not surprising that people who write professionally would learn one tool to the point it gets out of the way and then not want to change. It's not just sticking with the first thing they learned - there's a constant churn of "tools for distraction-free writing" that address some of the complaints that people that still use older word processors have about more up-to-date systems.

Once you know the pattern, every so often you'll see a piece about a writer or journalist and the funky software they use and you can just wait for it... it's going to be Wordstar, XyWrite, one of the XEDIT editors, sometimes Wordperfect for DOS. Rarely Word for DOS. Neal Stephenson uses emacs, but he's an outlier in a lot of ways. I think there was a piece linked here recently by a journalist who uses the macOS TextEdit for note-taking, which dates back to NeXSTEP. (not exactly the same thing, but consider)

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p_l 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Late 1990s supposedly a considerable extension on use of Macs for DTP was that Quark could get significantly automated with AppleScript, and some publishing houses had non-trivial workflows done that way to reduce time spent on preparation.

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AlecSchueler 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

DTP? GRRM?

	▲	bux93 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		DeskTop Publishing - WYSIWYG design of printed matter (What You See Is What You Get) on PC(Personal Computer)s. George R.R. Martin (No idea about the Rs), author of A Song of Ice and Fire which was adapted into Game of Thrones.