Adobe Acrobat (1993) 13 Publishing Windows Unix MacOS

Adobe Acrobat, first released in 1993, is a tool for creating portable electronic documents. Its documents retain complex formatting when used across differing systems, so that they appear identical when viewed on screen or printed to a printer. Acrobat accomplishes this by encapsulating Adobe's PostSript printer language in to a document file format and offering the ability to embed fonts that are not present on the target system.

• 3.x

CalcStar (1980) 1 Spreadsheet DOS CPM

CalcStar is a spreadsheet from MicroPro, somewhat like VisiCalc but using commands similar to WordStar. You can also format content similar to WordStar. It was available for CP/M and DOS, and often part of early 80s system's bundled software.

• 1.x

CorelDraw! (1989) 39 Graphics Publishing Unix

Corel Draw is a vector based drawing and illustration program. It is primarily a Windows application, but was ported to Mac OS, Mac OS X, Linux, CTOS and OS/2. It competed against Aldus Freehand, Adobe Illustrator, and Micrografx Designer.

• 3.5 (Unix)

FoxBASE (1987) 4 Database DOS Unix MacOS

FoxBASE, a relational database from Fox Software, started off in 1984 as a clone of dBase II that boasted many speed improvements. FoxBASE+ adds feature parity and compatibility with dBase III Plus. It was later aquired by Microsoft and became FoxPro

• Plus 1.x
• Plus 2.x

FrameMaker (1990) 4 Publishing Unix MacOS Other Windows

FrameMaker, originally from Frame Technology Corporation and later Adobe, is a professional document system for creating large, complex documents with highly structured layout. It was often accompanied by FrameReader.

• 2.x
• 4.x

GraphPlan (1983) 0 Spreadsheet Presentations Graphics CPM

GraphPlan, from Chang Labs, is an integrated spreadsheet/business graphics package that turns numbers into presentation-quality graphics - instantly. Historically important as being among the early "integrated" spreadsheet/graphing packages, and it uses Digital Research's GSX, a core graphics system that evolved in to GEM.

• 1.0

IBM Asynchronous Communications Support (1981) 0 Communications CPM

IBM Asynchronous Communications Support contains a rudimentary telecommunications terminal emulation program written in IBM BASIC. It was provided alongside IBM PCs and the IBM asynchronous communications adapter (serial port card).

• 1.00

IBM Small Business Suite (2000) 0 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Graphics Server Database Windows Linux

IBM Small Business Suite for Linux V1.6 is a Development Platform with a Set of Personal Productivity Tools. It was intended to simplify businesses transitioning to "e-business" by providing a foundation on which users could “webify” their businesses. It includes IBM and Lotus middleware products for Linux and Productivity tools for Windows.

• 1.x

Informix (1983) 0 Database Unix

Informix is a powerful high-speed high-end multi-user relational database program originally developed for Unix and Xenix in the C programming language. It includes form and report building tools.

• 3.x

InfoStar (1983) 0 Database DOS CPM

InfoStar, by MicroPro, a business-application- development system designed specifically for nonprogrammers, provides easy-to-use on-screen menus that guide users through each step of data entry-form design and detailed report generation. within the report and allows users to incorporate data from multiple files. Other features include a form generator and a sorting facility.

• 1.x

Lotus 1-2-3 (1983) 50 Spreadsheet Unix

Lotus 1-2-3 was an early spreadsheet application available for MS-DOS. It became extremely popular in the late 1980s, displacing the former leader VisiCalc. Lotus had difficulties adapting 1-2-3 to the Windows environment, and was overtaken by Microsoft Excel. Spreadsheet functionality was also included in Lotus Symphony. Later versions were included in Lotus SmartSuite.

• 1.x (Unix)

Microsoft Word (1983) 65 Word Processor Unix

The Microsoft Word word processor was first introduced for MS-DOS in 1983. Its design made use of a mouse and WYSIWYG graphics. Its crude WYSIWYG/mouse support was a direct response to the Apple Lisa/Mac, and VisiCorp Visi On. Initially it competed against many popular word processors such as WordStar, Multimate, and WordPerfect. Word for DOS was never really successful.

• 3.x (Unix)
• 5.x (UNIX)

PasteUp (1992) 0 Publishing Unix

PasteUp is a text processing system that can arrange columns of text, provide typographical control, draw shapes, and other effects.

• 2.0
• 2.5

Select Word Processor (1981) 0 Word Processor CPM

The Select Word Processor, from SELECT Information Systems, Inc., is a word processor for generic CP/M-80 based systems. There were also versions for MS-DOS and CP/M-86.

• 1981

Spellbinder (1982) 0 Word Processor CPM

Spellbinder, from Lexisoft and later Ltec Inc, is a word processing program originally created for CP/M and OASIS operating systems and eventually competed with WordStar. It was designed as a work-alike of the NBI Word Processing system and featured spell checking, grammar checking, footnotes, two-column print, proportional printing, and macro programming language. It was bundled with machines from Eagle Computers, Hewlett-Packard, and Xerox.

• 5.x

StarOffice (1995) 0 Word Processor Windows Unix Linux

StarOffice, initially from Star Division GmbH is an office suite containing a word processor, spreadsheet, drawing program, and graphing program. It was later owned by Sun Microsystems and then Oracle, and spawned the open source OpenOffice and LibreOffice. Also see the earlier StarWriter

• 6.0

SuperCalc (1983) 1 Spreadsheet Graphics DOS CPM

SuperCalc was a spreadsheet application published by Sorcim in 1980, and originally bundled (along with WordStar) as part of the CP/M software package included with the Osborne 1 portable computer. It quickly became the de facto standard spreadsheet for CP/M and was ported to MS-DOS in 1982. It competed against spreadsheets such as VisiCalc, Multiplan. and Lotus 1-2-3.

• 1.x

Thunderbird (2005) 0 Communications Windows Linux Mac OS X

Thunderbird is an e-mail client based on the integrated Netscape/Mozilla e-mail client. With the release Firefox, it was spun off in to a separate standalone product. It includes the same HTML rendering engine used in Firefox to render HTML formatted messages.

• 1.x
• 2.x

Turbo Pascal Toolbox (1985) 52 DOS CPM

The Borland Turbo Pascal Toolbox consists of several sets of sample source code for different purposes. They are designed for use in conjunction with the Turbo Pascal Compiler product. The sets include Turbo Graphix Toobox, Turbo Database Toolbox, Turbo GameWorks Tooolbox (new in 1986 with TP 3), and Turbo Editor Toolbox (new in 1986 with TP 3). Also see the Turbo Pascal Tutor.

• 1.x

Ultracalc (1982) 0 Spreadsheet CPM

Ultracalc, from Lattice Inc, is an electronic spreadsheet program that was available for CP/M, DOS, and Unix. It includes an algebraic expression analyzer that supports 11 operators and 22 functions. The system employs a menu-driven format and includes an extensive set of prompts, on-line help and error messages. Ultracalc is written in C and was considered highly portable.

• 2.0

Unify (1984) 0 Database Unix

Unify is a relational database for Unix based systems. There was also a DOS version.

• 3.1

Valdocs (1984) 0 Word Processor Spreadsheet Graphics Communications CPM

Valdocs is an office suite that was bundled with the Epson QX-10 (and later QX-16) Z80 based computer. It was "WYSIWYG" in that it could display different fonts of different sizes in the editor on the screen. It could also embed images in the document, and print the document to a graphics printer.

• 2.00
• Plus
• Plus III

WordPerfect (1983) 72 Word Processor Unix Linux

During the late 1980's, WordPerfect was THE standard word processor for DOS based PCs in big business. Under DOS, it competed mostly against Wordstar. WordPerfect for Windows enjoyed some success in the early Windows environments, but was quickly displaced by Microsoft Word for Windows. Later Windows versions were part of Borland Office/Novell PerfectOffice/Corel Office/Corel WordPerfect Office.

• 5.x (Unix)
• 6.0 (Unix)
• 8.x (Unix)

WordStar (1981) 16 Word Processor CPM DOS

WordStar, originally from MicroPro, was a popular word processor during the early 80s. It was ported to a number of CP/M architectures as well as Unix and PC/MS-DOS. It competed directly against many word processors, including WordPerfect, Microsoft Word for DOS, and Multimate. By the late 80s most business word processing had moved to WordPerfect. In the early 90s, Microsoft Word for Windows took over.

• 2.x
• 3.00
• 4.0

WriteUp (1994) 0 Word Processor Unix

WriteUp is a powerful business oriented word processor designed specifically for the NEXTSTEP operating environment. It features ease of use, customizability, supports ObjectLinks that enables embedding content from other applications, document styles, headers and footer, templates, split views, a unique page navigator for longer documents, mail merge, and imports/exports many other formats.

• 1.x