Pretty wild to see Adobe entering the “Microsoft Word 6 for Mac” phase.

[jernej__s@infosec.exchange]

@benfry Sounds like problems that plague many many modern UIs. All bling, no usability.

[wellsitegeo@masto.ai]

@benfry
That would have been something to see. Word ("for DOS", it went without saying) v.5 was a really capable non-WYSIWYG word processor that MS didn't match on Windows until about 2000. I almost dread to think what Word for DOS 5 was like on a Mac.
Could Macs do DOS emulation then?
(Shrug. My new employer used Manuscript mostly. Which was an education, indeed.)

[guinnessduck@mstdn.social]

@benfry I used Word 5.1a on the Mac for ages, long past its end of life. Still probably the best word processor of the gui era.

[joxn@wandering.shop]

@benfry @cstross @mjtsai Unironically, word processing kind of peaked at Microsoft Word for Mac 5.

[mjtsai@mastodon.social]

@joXn Word for Mac 5 was good, but I liked 90s WordPerfect and Nisus Writer better.

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@mjtsai @joXn As Word for Mac 5 dates to 1985 or 86 it shouldn't surprise anyone that by the 90's the state of the art had moved on …

[soapdog@social.soapdog.org]

@joXn @benfry @cstross @mjtsai agreed

[jillypaddock@mastodon.social]

@joXn @benfry @cstross @mjtsai I'm a writer and I've never used Word.
Went from Locoscript to Appleworks, which became Corel somewhere along the way, to WordPerfect and Open Office. Now I use LibreOffice and that suits me fine.

[mjtsai@mastodon.social]

@cstross @joXn Word for Mac in 1986 was not great. Word 5 was released in the early 90s (5.1, the one people remember fondly, was in 1992), after the release of Nisus.

[geraint@mastodon.social]

@joXn @benfry @cstross @mjtsai I was going to say that I didn’t experience Word for Mac 5 but Word for Windows 2 on a 386SX was perfect. No bloat, and not enough power to do anything but get ideas down on the page (with footnotes). Then I looked up the timeline and yup both products were released in 91/92 and were pretty much equivalent.

[wiredfool@fosstodon.org]

@mjtsai @cstross @joXn
Word 4 was pretty good on a Mac SE, Word 5 started to get a bit slow.

[greenmtnbear@4bear.com]

As one of the technical writers on Word for DOS, Word for Windows, and Word for Mac, I'm embarrassed at what it's mutated into. I no longer use it except where required. I use a Markdown editor or LibreOffice.
(edited for a grammar error)
@joXn @benfry @cstross @mjtsai

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@joXn @benfry @cstross @mjtsai that's a very weird way to write WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS