Fontrix (1984) 1 Publishing DOS

Fontrix is a crude single-page typesetting program for the IBM PC that prints high quality custom fonts on a dot-matrix printer. It includes a font editor, and number of font packs were available for it.

• 2.x

Fontware (1988) 3 Publishing DOS Windows

Bitstream Fontware is a tool that converts commercial vectored fonts in to formats for use with applications such as Aldus Pagemaker running under Microsoft Windows 2. The program itself is DOS-based but the fonts it generates are for Windows.

• 2.0

FormWorx (1990) 8 Publishing DOS

FormWorx is a tool for quickly and easily creating high quality printed forms with your personal computer. It comes with a large library of customizable pre-made standard forms. With "Fill & File" you may enter data in to fields or populate multiple forms from a database. Earlier versions were available for DOS.

• 2.x (DOS)

FrameMaker (1990) 7 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

FreeHand (1988) 13 Graphics Publishing MacOS

FreeHand is a vector based drawing program used to create illustrations. It is similar to CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator. Initially it offered more features and flexibility than illustrator. It was created by Altsys, sold through Aldus, then sold to Macromedia, and then finally was assimilated by Adobe. Later versions repositioned itself as a content creation system for the web through Flash. The final version was Freehand MX (version 11) in 2003.

• 1.0
• 2.0

Key Form Designer (1989) 0 Publishing DOS

Key Form Designer, from SoftKey Software Products Inc, is an inexpensive tool for quickly producing, filling, and printing professional looking forms.

• 1.x (DOS)

Microsoft Office (1991) 438 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Publishing PIM Database Windows MacOS

Microsoft Office is a bundle of Microsoft's productivity application. This includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and later Mail, Office Manager, and Outlook. The "1.x" versions of Microsoft Office were simply a marketing bundle of the standalone products sold together with no other packaging changes. Even though these were distinct applications, rather than one single monolithic program, they shared a similar user interface, integrated well together and shared the ability to embed documents from one application in the documents of another.

• 2.x
• 4.3
• 97/98
• 2001 (Mac)

PFS First Publisher (1988) 13 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

Springboard Certificate Maker (1986) 3 Publishing DOS

Certificate Maker, from Springboard, is a fun little program for printing a variety of styled certificates on your dot-matrix printer. You must refer to the manual to see what the templates look like, as it provides no on screen preview. Award Maker seems to be an offshoot of this product.

• 1

SWIFT Label Publisher (1992) 3 Publishing DOS

SWIFT Label Publisher, from COSMI, is a budget label creation program that features a set of clipart and fonts, pre-defined Avery label sizes, and can print multiple labels from a mailing list or database.

• 1992

The Office Publisher (1988) 3 Publishing DOS

The Office Publisher is a powerful high-end, yet friendly, WYSIWYG desktop publishing program created by the large Canadian publishing company Print Three and sold under its spin-off, Laser Friendly. It was originally targeted at Print Three customers so they could create content on their own computers and then submit large publishing print jobs.

• 1.x

Wang Freestyle (1990) 4 Utility Publishing DOS

Wang Freestyle is an "annotation" program that operates by making screen shots of DOS applications, to which the user may then add hand-written notes using a stylus or add a voice recording with a telephone-like handset. It features a Macintosh-like desktop that displays the annotated documents graphically on a proprietary high resolution monitor, and integrates a form of mail and fax.

• 1.x