Virtually ALL "FIRST"s in history had obscure predecessors.
Hence the word "FIRST" should be avoided by any real historians with integrity.
On Sun, 10 Sep 2017, Guy Sotomayor Jr wrote:
I think it all depends upon how you define ???word processing???. For
me I absolutely detest things like MS Word. Probably because I started
with markup languages.
Well, in THIS case, the claim was "the first author to write a novel on a
computer".
There are a LOT of items subject to dispute. Does "write a novel on a
computer" include manuscripts that were never submitted to publisher?
manuscripts rejected by publisher?
manuscripts that never made it to print?
Manuscripts that were printed, but had inadequate sales?
Published novels that weren't best sellers?
include composing on computer, but then retyped by secretary?
include composing offline, but typed on a computer by secretary?
Is a dedicated word processor machine a computer?
Is a terminal on a timesharing system "on a computer"?
So, I'm settling for pointing out that "FIRST" usually ignores obscure,
little known, unsuccessful, predecessors.
Jerry did some great things to popularize microcomputers, and bring them
to the masses.
He was an EARLY user (Electric Pencil), but certainly not "THE FIRST".
He wrote an entertaining column. It sometimes pissed us off.
He was loud and opinionated.
He had easy access to all the latest stuff that we wanted - one time,
another columnist ridiculed him by talking about Seymour Cray personally
installing and troubleshooting a machine given to Jerry.
We will miss him.
PS: I started with an editor on a timeahring system, and then when
microcomputers came out, used Electric Pencil, then SCRIPSIT (My Honda
book) and Wordstar. But once I settled in, I liked to use PC-Write for
text editing (Bob Wallace and I were buddies in high school), and used
Xerox Ventura for formatting. (XenoSoft manuals, etc.)
Now I use Word and Open Office Writer.
I did my PhD written exams on Windows Write, and was the first person in
the School of Library and Information Studies to do them on a computer.
("FIRST"!!) I responded to faculty objections with, "Are you going to
grade me on my penmanship?" Windows Write, being included in the OS,
seemed to answer some of the concerns about how to "sanitize" a computer
to avoid smuggling in pre-written content.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
The first one was one that I wrote for the IBM 1130 so I could do a high school
research paper (1974). It was written in
Fortran (sorry long gone) and the ???paper??? was all on punch cards and
printed on a 1403 printer. I did it mainly because
it was a pain to keep track of how to format for footnotes and attributions.
At CMU I used Scribe that output to the XGP (Xerox Graphics Printer driven by a
PDP-11/45). This was the first time I
used something where there were selectable fonts (1976). At IBM *everything*
was done with various versions of SCRIPT.
At this point I can???t recall but I believe a number of the IBM manuals were
all done in SCRIPT.
I then used Interleaf (a *high* end document publishing/management system) and
then FrameMaker (before Adobe
completely screwed it up and finally killed it).
I currently use LaTex for producing anything more complicated than an email.
TTFN - Guy
