Adobe Acrobat (1993) 28 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

Adobe Illustrator (1988) 188 Graphics Unix MacOS

Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe Systems. It was often sold as a companion product to the bit-map/photo editor Adobe Photoshop. Illustrator was originally released in 1987 for the Apple Macintosh. Early versions were ported to NexT, Silicon Graphics, and Sun Solaris.

• 5.5

AppSoft Image (1992) 0 Graphics Unix

AppSoft Image is a bit-mapped photograph editing program written specifically for NeXT computers.

• 1.0

Autodesk AutoCAD (1984) 34 Graphics Engineering Unix

AutoCAD, from Autodesk and first released in 1982, is a powerful Computer Aided Design tool. It was, and still is, often considered the standard for CAD tools. Primarily for the IBM PC platform, it was ported to x86 machines with higher video resolutions such as the Zenith Z-100 and NEC APC. Intermittently, versions for the Macintosh appeared. Later versions use a dongle copy protection.

• r10 (Unix)

CorelDraw! (1989) 43 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)

DR Draw (1983) 1 Graphics DOS CPM

DR Draw is a shape-based drawing program that uses Digital Research's GSX graphics library, making it portable across CP/M and DOS architectures with different video systems.

• 1.x

DR Graph (1984) 0 Presentations DOS CPM

DR Graph is a business graphics creation program. It can create line, bar, pie, and scatter graphs and print them on a graphics printer. DR Graph is implemented using Digital Research's GSX graphics library, and can run on many different platforms.

• 1.x

FoxBASE (1987) 7 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) 0 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

GrafTalk (1982) 0 Presentations Graphics CPM

GrafTalk is a business graphics package for CP/M systems. It can generate pie charts, line plots, symbol plots, composite plots, text, and color. It was considered "easy" to use, with menus, but also features a powerful command line interface.

• 2.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

Graphstation (1984) 0 Presentations Graphics CPM

Graphstation, from Signature Information Systems, is a graphing application for making business presentations.

• 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

Microsoft Word (1983) 102 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) 8 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) 0 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

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) 99 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) 28 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