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What were the MS-DOS programs that the moricons.dll icons were intended for?

(devblogs.microsoft.com)
279 points rbanffy | 4 comments | 13 May 25 11:06 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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90s_dev ◴[16 May 25 13:31 UTC] No.44005319[source]▶
Word Perfect!!! I'm almost positive that was the editor they taught me in the early 1990s in grammar school! (We called it grammar school back then, for it was the 1800s.) And yet I had never seen or used it since. This brings back so many memories. I was sitting next to a girl named Dana, the only Dana I ever met.
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onionisafruit ◴[16 May 25 14:20 UTC] No.44005851[source]▶
It was huge back then, but it tanked in the transition to Windows. I kept using the DOS version for years after that because I had muscle memory for WordPerfect’s shortcuts and liked the reveal codes feature.

Also I’ve met two Danas that I can remember. Both were lovely people.

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MBCook ◴[16 May 25 14:26 UTC] No.44005923[source]▶
Yep. It was THE program. A bit like how Office was THE program in the late 90s and in the 2000s before Google Docs really started taking off.

The kind of thing people bought computers for. You didn’t need a computer. You needed Word Perfect.

I still remember the little card you could put above the function keys on your keyboard that showed you what alt-F7 or ctrl-F9 did. Each modifier was a different color.

First program I remember seeing people really use on a computer when I was a kid.

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1. jimbob45 ◴[16 May 25 18:59 UTC] No.44008765[source]▶
A bit like how Office was THE program in the late 90s and in the 2000s before Google Docs really started taking off.

This is wishful thinking. Google Docs is only hovering around 10% market share.

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2. MBCook ◴[16 May 25 19:37 UTC] No.44009054[source]▶
That seems low to me, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it’s not dominant. However it has an awful lot of mindshare.
3. frosted-flakes ◴[16 May 25 19:42 UTC] No.44009115[source]▶
Google Docs has a feature set more in line with Wordpad (the stripped down word processor that comes with Windows) than Office Word. I can't understand how anyone can use it for anything at all without running into its limitations, so I'm not surprised it's not all that popular outside of basic shared documents.
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4. MBCook ◴[16 May 25 21:56 UTC] No.44010119[source]▶
I would say Works, it’s much more than Wordpad.

The vast majority of documents people write for within Google Docs’ limitations. I wouldn’t use it for a book or maybe a dissertation. But it works great for a lot of day to day internal business documents.