Before WordPerfect: Program Editor

Precursor to WordPerfect - Program Editor. I posted some time ago looking for a WordPerfect-like editor that pre-dated WP that I used to use. As with many things, the thought would nag me from time to time. Back in the mid/late 90's, I helped the local newspaper move articles from electronic word processing files to their webpage news section. It was tedious to say the least. As I thought of that, I could not remember the name of the program I used. I reached out to an acquaintance, who used to work with the same local paper and who helped run the dialup freenet we had at the time, to see if he could remember it. Sure enough, he remembered: Program Editor. The recalled history goes something like this: Professor at BYU creates Program Editor which then eventually becomes WordPerfect shortly afterward. When he told me this, I recalled the newspaper owner telling me that story back when he handed me the floppy disk. In fact, he would hand me a disk with the program on it plus several files with the week's news articles. I would save the text to be posted online (the exact steps elude me, but I think I used Windows 95 to run a DOS window then use copy/paste to move the text from the Editor window to a text file, then edit the text file for html to be ftp'd to the site - that might not be exactly right, I have slept a time or two since those days). In any case, I thought I would share this in case any other DOS die-hard wanted to take a trip down memory-ish lane. BTW, if parts of the history aren't quite right, feel free to add corrections below.

The Goodbye Letter: Compute!'s Gazette 1995

Gazette masthead, recreated by David Henderson

 While falling down the rabbit hole that is nostalgia-induced Internet diving, I came across an archive of every issue of COMPUTE!'s Gazette ever published. I read through the very first issue. It brought back a flood of memories from my childhood - the ads, the "new" technology, the type-in programs. 

I skimmed through a few other issues before jumping down to the FINAL issue ever produced. The magazine ran from 1983 through 1995. The last set of issues were fully disk-based. And on that lest Gazette disk, I found a heartfelt letter that announced the end of the magazine's publication.

I am posting it here for your perusal and for posterity. 

 Gazette, February 1995

64/128 VIEW: Time to Say Goodbye

By Tom Netsel

In July of 1983, a new magazine devoted to the Commodore VIC--20 and the Commodore 64 hit the newsstands. Founded by Robert Lock and edited by Thomas Half hill, that magazine was called COMPUTE!’s Gazette. After almost 12 years, numerous editors, and several changes in format, Gazette ceases publication with this issue. This is the last Gazette. 

When Gazette started, Commodore was selling more than 100,000 VIC-20s and 64s each month. Dozens of software suppliers were rushing products to this rapidly growing market. The initial press run for Gazette was 175,000 copies, up from an originally planned 75,000. And all this was at a time before the 64 itself really took off to become the most popular home computer ever built, selling more than 14 million worldwide.

If you look back at that first issue, you'll notice that Fred D'Ignazio had a column that was called "Computing for Kids." Jim Butterfield’s name appeared on the masthead as an associate editor. You'll find their final columns in this issue.

Larry Cotton is another long time contributor. His "Beginner BASIC" column has been a regular feature for many years.

A few years ago, I was looking for someone to write a GEOS column. It had been an on and off feature in Gazette, but readership surveys told me that there was considerable interest in this operating system from Berkeley Softworks. I went searching for someone to write a monthly column. I'll have to thank Robert Nellist for recommending Steve Vander Ark for the job. Robert and Steve had been corresponding for some time about GEOS, and he suggested I get in touch with Steve. I did and Steve agreed to supply Gazette with a column each month.

Sometime later, I wanted a column to pay tribute to the great work being done by programmers who offered their work as public domain. Steve volunteered to do it and added "PD Picks" to his busy schedule. It was about that time that Robert wrote me a letter complaining in a good natured fashion that while Gazette had gained a columnist in Steve, Robert had lost a pen pal.

The junior member of the Gazette columnists is David Pankhursto The author of fantastic spreadsheets, Calc and Calc II, David took over the reins of "Programmer's Page" a little more than a year ago. Each month he has supplied a number of good programming tips from his own library and from those submitted by our readers.

I'd like to thank all these gentlemen for their great contributions to Gazette, without their help, this magazine couldn't have lasted a fraction of the time it did.

Last, but by no means least, I want to thank all of you readers who have submitted programs to Gazette over the years. My biggest regret is that I still have so many good programs here that I'll never be able to publish. My budget allowed me to buy only so many each month and I still have almost 30 submissions still in my Pending basket. Gazette had a number of staff programmers in its early days, but it has been our readers who have supplied the bulk of the programs that we've published over the years. To all of you who have submitted a program, I offer you my thanks. Without your submissions, this magazine would have folded years ago.

Gazette's closing follows shortly on the heels of COMPUTE's demise, but it is for totally different reasons. COMPUTE was bought and closed because a competitor didn't want the competition and was hoping to convert those subscribers to its publications. Gazette is closing simply because there aren't enough Commodore enthusiasts subscribing to make Gazette profitable.

So what's going to happen to your subscriptions? You'll have one of three options, but as I write this the week before Christmas, I don't know all the details as yet„ We are talking with other publishing companies that may have an interest in taking on our outstanding subscriber liability. If one of these companies takes over, then you will be offered a Commodore-related publication equal in value to the number of Gazette issues yet unmailed.

The other option is that you may elect to take the remainder of your subscription out in Gazette disk products. The specialty disks that we offer, such as SpeedScript and the GEOS Collection, are examples.

The final option is to simply request a refund of the remainder of your subscription. Each unmailed issue is worth approximately $2.50. 

As I said, negotiations have just started and I don't know what the outcome will be. You will be contacted shortly with an explanation of your options. I'm sure some of you will be getting letters asking you to renew your Gazette subscriptions. These mailings are scheduled months in advance and some undoubtedly will be mailed out after I write this. Please ignore them.

Normally, publications close and readers learn about it after the fact. With Gazette being on dii»k and having a short production time, I was able to convince the powers that be to give me this final issue in order to say good. bye. As I said, I don't yet have all the answers but I was at least able to offer some word of explanation as to why you won't be getting any more Gazette's after this one.

COMPUTE Publications will still be around, but involved with online publishing. COMPUTE Online has been on America Online for 18 months and it will continue, but with a new name. Starting in February, it will be called I-Wire. It will also be on the Internet with a world wide web home page. I have been the online editor during this time and I will continue with my duties there and as editor of Saturday Review Online.

Once again, thank you for your support over the years. Keep those 64s and 128s humming. It's been a pleasure. 

Gazette, February 1995

Online in the "Early Days"

I received my first computer when I was in about 8th or 9th grade: a Commodore 64 with a tape drive. A few months later, I had a 1541 floppy drive and a modem. And my world changed forever.

In those days, we didn't have a worldwide, publicly used communications network. Yes, the Internet was there, but very few people (in the scheme of the population and compared to today) knew what it was and how to take advantage of it.

Forgive me if my timeline gets a bit wonky here, it's been a few sleeps since I have thought about these early days and though Google helps put some of it together, much of it seems to be lost to annals of an unrecorded history.

I don't remember if I started using CompuServe first or if I was surfing BBSs first, but I believe it was the latter. BBSs were Bulletin Board Systems where one could use a modem to dial up (yes, using actual phone lines) another person's computer, enter a username and password, and post messages to other users. Hence, the "bulletin board" nomenclature. It was, in effect, an electronic post-it note system. When your time was up (sessions were time-limited to allow for other people to call in), you were kicked off and someone else would dial up, sign in, and reply or leave messages of their own. It was all VERY asynchronous.

Then, we had services like CompuServe, which boasted "rooms and rooms" of places for people to post messages based on topics and/or content interests. Of course, CompuServe became much more than that over time before finally getting swallowed up by America Online. CompuServe had a place where people could type to each other in realtime! Today, that seems all rather blasé, but in those days, it was a free-for-all technological marvel.

Now, you have to understand that this was all text-based in those days. We didn't have the "web." Heck, the WWW wouldn't even be a thing until 1993 or so. Sure, there were other ways to get around the Internet, but nothing that was the graphical/video overload we have today (Er, today being 2018. Should this be read by some future generation, this article will seem like words on an ancient scroll, I'm sure).

We also had the advent of things like "FidoNet" (A national BBS that replicated data from system to system, allowing anyone anywhere to dial a local number yet read messages from everywhere!) and ultimately services like the aforementioned America Online, PeopleLink, and a myriad of others. In each of these cases, though, the end user had to use phone lines to dial a number in order to gain access to the system.

The prevalence of BBSs was huge. We're talking hundreds of thousands of individuals using their own computers to host places for people to dial in. For several years, I ran one based loosely on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, called "Arthur's Den" (See how punny I was?). At first, I ran it at night because I was using the family's home phone number to do it. Can you imagine? Publishing your family's home phone number out there for the world to call in at 2am? But, that's what we did. Eventually, I was allowed to have my own phone with a new number. I was in 9th grade. BBSs were so popular, there were entire magazines dedicated to listing them each month! That would be like having a magazine today that attempted to list every website address each month. Insane.

As technology changed, we moved from text-based online services to graphical. We now had "icons" and email and chat rooms and games we could play through the online services and BBSs. You could have an avatar to represent you online (Okay, so it was a pixelated static image, but still).

I actually met my first long-term girlfriend through the BBS I ran. We dated for two years. She had signed in to my system and I happened to be sitting near the computer at the time. In those days, you could not multitask: your computer did one thing at a time. So, if it was running your BBS, you weren't doing anything else with it. She came on, and if memory serves, she had requested a chat  with the sysadmin (me). The software I used on my C64 allowed for the one logged in user and the system administrator to chat in realtime. She had a question about something on the system and we ended up chatting well beyond the allowable time period. As a sysadmin, I could extend user's time at will. Time went by and we eventually discovered that we lived about half a mile from each other. We met face-to-face one day and ended up dating for two years. Who knew Internet dating had such simple beginnings, right?

Over time, services came and went. Dial-up phone lines (for the majority of folks) were replaced by ADSL and eventually DSL, Cellular, Satellite, etc. But, those early days of entering a phone number, having the software and hardware work together to make a digital connection, and then seeing the world come onto your computer screen were unlike anything that had come before, and "blogging" wasn't even a word yet.