Word Processors - an overview

In this initial article about word processing, I'll have a look at what a word processor is, and a look at Microsoft Word in particular.

Where to begin, Caxton? Perhaps not, but it might be valid to describe what isn't a word processor. A typewriter can create text straight onto paper but you can't change it afterwards without correcting fluid, or scissors and glue. The original "killer" application on the personal computer was a spreadsheet with built-in formulae but the ability to create text using the aforementioned typewriter meant that the use of the computer to create text took a while to catch on. Once people realised that you could type, correct and above all, save the words you had just written and change them later, the use of the computer for this purpose really took off.

Early applications were similar to the current "Notepad", but these still aren't word processors as such. Some applications enabled you to create text effects such as italic, bold or extra width or height by typing codes in amongst your words. These effects would appear only when you printed out. It was to be some years before the font size and style would appear on screen. By this time you could really start to "process" the words you had already written without re-writing them. This eventually gave birth to the amazing acronym WYSIWYG (pronounced "wizzy-wig") or "What You See Is What You Get" where what you saw on the screen would print out exactly the same. It was the all-pervading buzzword 15 years ago. This was amazing at the time but is taken for granted these days and you rarely hear the expression now because it's the norm.

So where are we now? Once you have typed text into the application, you can copy it, move it, change the size, the style, the colour, the formatting, you name it! You could copy or cut and paste for many years until Microsoft (I think it was) invented drag-and-drop, where you select and grab a section of text and drag it with the mouse to a different location. You can easily create tables (complete with fairly comprehensive spreadsheet capability), you can add pictures and sound to your documents, along with all sorts of automatic features, cross-references, book marks, automatic page numbering...... phew! The list is unending.

All these improvements along with the extraordinarily high level of adoption of computers at home has lead the word processor to be the most widely used creative application. So comprehensive has been the take-over by the computer based word processor, that there has been NO typewriter production in the USA since the early 90's.

The History of "Microsoft Word" ...

I have been using Word since it was a DOS application in the mid 1980s. At BA, I used Word for Windows as soon as it appeared as version 1. The "for Windows" suffix was used as Windows was still fairly new and also to differentiate it from Word for DOS as they were both available at the same time for a while. Word for Windows came on four 5¼" floppy discs and the full installation was about a megabyte. So sophisticated was it at the time that it had two menu levels, 'Beginner' and 'Advanced'. I have used every version of Word since and I'm still learning. Word 1 was followed by Word 2 and then Word 6. Words 3, 4 and 5 didn't exist for the PC because Microsoft wanted to align the Mac and PC versions of Word; but the Mac version of Word was already at version 5 when the PC version was at 2. So to produce a version common to both platforms, version 6 was produced for the Mac and the PC. The User Manual was common to both and included instructions for both. It was called Microsoft Word (not Word for Windows.) After that, Word essentially took its name from the applicable version of Office. Office 95 had Word 7, Office 97 had word 8, Office 2000 has Word 9, Office XP has Word 10 and Office 2003 has Word 11. Now we have Word 2007 (version 12). This last one has a whole new interface. The menus have gone in favour of “ribbons”.  All the old functions are there but completely re-arranged and sometimes renamed. Unfortunatley, if you're upgrading to Office 2007, these functions are sometimes hard to find!

The introduction of Word into BA was a revolution and it virtually killed off a popular Desktop Publishing application of the time called PageMaker, as Word could do most of what PageMaker could do at the time. The feature count in Word continues to grow and it swamps an increasing number of other applications. There was a concept put forward by Microsoft many years ago which would see us using just a single application that did absolutely everything. Early versions of Star Office from Sun did just that but it took some getting used to. We're getting nearer but the modular design of Windows has brought us very close to this concept via another route. The key to the Microsoft family is a common look and feel and exceptional interaction between the applications.

If you find Microsoft Office too expensive, you can use Star-Office instead. This is a very good application from SUN Microsystems and looks remarkably similar to Microsoft Office except that it's very cheap. Alternatively you can get a similar version (called OpenOffice) free ! Really ? Yes - give it a try. Go to www.openoffice.org and download it. We use it at the Computer Club as well as Microsoft Office.

At the computer Club, I regularly present teach-ins on Word, where I go into the functionality in detail. It does so much that I couldn't begin to describe the functions here. If you can think of it, Word can probably do it. The problem is knowing the terminology that Microsoft use so you can look it up in the help system! Keep an eye open for our future events programme and come along when Word is being discussed.

More to come soon from......

Steve Kirby