Adobe Acrobat (1993) 88 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

CorelDraw! (1989) 55 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)

Instant Artist / Print Artist (1992) 25 Graphics Publishing Novelty DOS

Instant Artist, later renamed to Print Artist, is a greeting card and sign creation program that uses vectorized graphics. It was created by The Pixellite Group, the original authors of The Print Shop, and published in 1992 by Autodesk. It was later sold by Sierra On-line. It features a high quality set of generic reusable clip art. The clip art uses vector based technology that was also used in BannerMania.

• 1.0 (DOS)

The Print Shop (1984) 21 Publishing DOS

The Print Shop is a home oriented publisher capable of creating calendars, banners, greeting cards and other printable goods. It started off on the Apple II and Commodore 64 where it became popular for its simplicity and ease of use. From day one, it featured interactive editing, on-screen artwork/layout selection, print previewing, and a library of customizable clipart.

• For IBM PC (DOS)
• The NEW PS (DOS)
• Deluxe

QuarkXPress (1986) 6 Publishing DOS

QuarkXPress was THE standard publishing software during the 1990s. However it failed to update its product line to newer technologies in a timely manager, charged insane amounts for updates or additional features that should have been built in to the software, and became very abusive to their customers. Later versions required a parallel port/ADB copy protection dongle. They lost most of their market share to Adobe InDesign.

• 3.x

Ventura Publisher (1986) 6 Publishing DOS

Ventura Publisher, originally from Xerox, is a professional desktop publishing program for the GEM graphical environment and later Windows. It has the distinction of being the first popular publishing program for the IBM PC platform. It competed with Aldus PageMaker, which initially was more popular on the Mac platform. There are also versions for Mac and OS/2.

• 1.0
• 1.1
• 2.0
• 3.0 for DOS-GEM

PFS First Publisher (1988) 6 Publishing DOS

First Publisher, from Software Publishing Corporation, is a WYSIWYG desktop publisher for DOS that excels at producing extremely high quality text and graphics print even using dot-matrix printers. This program originated as T/Maker Clickart. In 1991 Software Publishing Corp sold their PFS series to Spinnaker Software, where it became Easy Working Desktop Publisher.

• 2.0
• 2.01 for DeskMate
• Art
• 3.0

Bookshelf (1987) 5 Reference DOS

Microsoft Bookshelf is a CD-ROM based multimedia reference tool from Microsoft, including a dictionary, thesaurus, quotations, atlas, and other types of references. Some versions were included and integrated with Microsoft Office, albeit sometimes stripped down.

• 87
• 91

BannerMania (1989) 5 Graphics Publishing DOS

Banner Mania is a banner making program for IBM PC compatible computers, enabling the user to create banners, posters, signs and logos. It can create and print multi-page banners, with 19 different fonts and effects in 16 colors.

• 1.0

The Software Toolworks Multimedia Encyclopedia (1992) 5 Reference DOS

The Software Toolworks Multimedia Encyclopedia is an early multimedia CD-ROM encyclopedia that features articles, photographs, animation, and sound. It was often bundled with sound cards and new computers. There were versions for DOS, Windows, and Macintosh.

• 1.x

PC Globe (1990) 4 Reference DOS

PC Globe is an electronic atlas of the world that provides profiles, maps, geography, and graphics for the countries of the world. It can generate a variety of reports using this data and export map graphics. They also sold a USA specific version called PC USA that contains more detail about the US states. A related product was released for Windows as PC Globe Maps N Facts.

• 3.0
• 4.0
• 5.0

The Print Shop Companion (1984) 3 Graphics Publishing DOS

As the name suggests, the Print Shop Companion is a companion product to The Print Shop. It contains extra miscellaneous functionality such as graphics editors and envelope printing.

• For IBM PC (DOS)
• The NEW PSC (DOS)
• Deluxe

Express Publisher (1990) 3 Publishing DOS

Express Publisher, by Power Up Software Corporation. is a very easy to use but somewhat limited entry level-desktop publishing program.

• 2.0

American Heritage Electronic Dictionary (1991) 3 Reference DOS

Houghton Mifflin American Heritage Electronic Dictionary is a resident background program that gives you instant searchable access to an entire dictionary.

• 1.x
• 3.0

HiJaak (1991) 2 Graphics Publishing DOS

The original HiJaak program, from Inset Systems, is a powerful screen capture tool and image converter that can perform batch conversion between a large number of formats. The later Windows version are a powerful raster-to-vector graphics conversion and editing tool that can convert between a huge number of bitmap and vector file formats.

• 2.x (DOS)

Expert Pet Care (1992) 2 Reference Novelty DOS

Expert Pet Care, from Expert Software, is a budget title for the IBM PC. "Expert Pet Care is your complete guide to your pet's health and upkeep. Developed by a practicing veterinarian, Expert Pet Care offers valuable information and advice on nutrition, exercise, emergency care, behavioral problems, training, and medication. It also includes special tips on training, diet and grooming, plus produces pedigree and descendants charts. You can lean about the various breeds of dogs and cats, and even view pictures of them! Expert Pet Care contains information on over 150 different breeds. You'll learn about each breed's physical attributes, history, and special care considerations. Expert Pet Care Provides vital emergency health care do's and don'ts which may literally save your pet's life. You can easily create a medical history for your pet. Expert Pet Care tracks information such as vaccinations, allergies, surgery and more. All you have to do is fill in the blanks. Expert Pet Care is simple to use - it's arranged like a stack of index cards that can flip through at your own pace, and in the order you like!"

• 1992

Expert Publisher (1991) 2 Publishing DOS

This is a very low-end budget desktop publishing program from your glorious low-end budget crap software publisher Expert Software.

• 1991

Policies Now! (1993) 2 Utility Publishing DOS

Policies Now is a document creation wizard that specializes in corporate policies. It provides general purpose templates with carefully constructed language that are customized via a series of questions. The results may be manually customized further with a built in text editor. accompanied by "DescriptionsWrite Now!" (A job description writing tool), and "Personal Policy Expert". These were renamed to "Policies Now!", "Description Now!", and "Policies Now! HR Pro Edition" respectively.

• 1.30

NewsMaster (1987) 2 Publishing DOS

NewsMaster, from Unison World, is a primitive low-cost desktop publishing program aimed at home users and low end PCs. It supports both dot-matrix and laser printers. Separate clipart libraries were also available, and it could make use of PrintMaster clipart.

• 1.5

Easy Working Desktop Publisher (1992) 1 Publishing DOS

Easy Working Desktop Publisher is a rebranded version of PFS:First Publisher. PFS:First Publisher and the other PFS titles were acquired from Software Publishing Corp by Spinnaker Software in 1991.

• 1.0

ClickArt Personal Publisher (1986) 1 Publishing DOS

ClickArt Personal Publisher is a simplified, Mac-like desktop publishing program. It was later purchased by Software Publishing Corporation and turned in to PFS:First Publisher, who then in turn sold it to Spinnaker Software where it became Easy Working Desktop Publisher

• 1.x

FrameMaker (1990) 1 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

Expert Maps (1991) 1 Reference DOS

A budget mapping program from Expert Software that can print clipart from any global geographical location and contains a database of general information about each location.

• 1.0

Expert Astronomer (1992) 1 Reference Novelty DOS

Expert Astronomer from Expert Software is a budget star chart with a large number of features. Database includes around 9000 objects including stars, constellations, and planets.

• I

IBM Script/PC (1984) 1 Utility Publishing DOS

IBM Script/PC is a document formatter utility. It is similar to the mainframe DCF tool for IBM TSO or VM 370 that uses the Script/VS language. Unlike integrated word processors, one creates their document in a separate text editor and manually adds markup commands (called GML or Generalized Markup Language tags). This utility then interprets those commands to produce a formatted document regardless of the printer used. formatters already on the market such as WORDIX+INDIX, ReadiWriter, and MicroScript. for use with IBM Professional Editor, and can work with existing mainframe Script/VS documents.

• 1.00