Word processors on the Amiga

In Serious Amiga series we look at word processors on the Commodore Amiga.
Transwrite
Wordworth
Wordperfect
Final Writer
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[@herdarkshadow834]

Great video which I really enjoyed. I’m one of those weird people that collects word processing software of yesteryear so this was perfect for me. I have Wordworth on an A600 that I use on occasion but in truth I prefer the DTP package Final Copy II which I used to write dissertations with back in 1993-4 on an Amiga 1200. These were printed out on an ear splitting Epson LQ100 the carriage action of which was so violent it could be heard and felt in the room below. *SCREECH BASH CRASH* It certainly was an experience writing back then. So, yeah, still like to use Final Copy II till this day and still have the ear shattering LQ100 to keep it company. 🙂

[@uplinkx1126]

Nowadays it means nothing, but Final Writer paired with a HP Deskjet 500C let you do some amazing stuff at home that was unheard of at the time. I mainly used it for DTP... it was very powerful for that. Before the Windows 95 wave rolled in, people were amazed by what I could make at home. (For most people, computers were such an oddity back then).

[@judgewest2000]

Love these type of videos. I think I missed the boat with word processing on the Amiga as my one and only tool for all things 'word processing' was CygnusEd which was clearly a text editor... but I didn't know that was its primary function at the time. In '95 I jumped to the PC after I saw some stuff some of my friends were producing on their Windows 3.1 machines with Microsoft Office and Works (and CorelDraw) which blew me away. Had I known Wordsworth existed... tbf I probably still would've jumped but I would've kept the Amiga as that was my childhood machine of passion.

[@eoinlundy]

I did all my university work on mine. Thanks

[@ericjohnson6105]

Amazing that someone is actually thinking of reissuing a new version of Final Writer. After getting out the Amiga from the closet, it is an interesting look into the Way Back machine.

[@pauledwards2817]

As an owner of FinalWriter I did learn that perhaps Wordperfect was clearly a quality product when looking under the microscope. Sadly I never did get something that suited. If I had the ability to go back in time I would have used TEX. Wordperfect liberated itself from the useless Amiga print drivers but lacked style sheets, something absolutely essential for document so any length.

[@BartSantello]

I used Final Writer in the 1990's where I used my Amiga3000 to run my business. It was an elegant program, well supported and in the mid-1990's when Commodore faded, the author provided a feature to convert documents to .RTF so they can be ported to a PC program like Microsoft Word.

[@RockTo11]

FInal Writer has a lovely GUI.

[@imalebowski]

WordPerfect is ok but it doesn't feel very Amiga-ish to use. I mostly use Protext and Excellence. I do prefer Final Writer 97 to WordWorth 7 on fast systems but they're both resource heavy. Pen Pal is another one I grew up with but it's not aged well. Really nice video, loving the series.

[@tlilmiztli]

Thanks a lot, vary interesting - some of them I know from the time I had Amiga, some are new. Thanks to you I am rediscovering and discovering so many things. I actually think about writing a book, I started it already but I think it would be amazing if I did it on Amiga in 2022 :D Who knows...

[@oleurgast730]

All this nice memorys. But actually the programm for text processing I used most was TeX, with LaTeX and MetaFont. I actually got my first tinitus printing my homework about calculating prices in civil eneneering in universtity on a NEC Pinwriter CP7. While TeX wasn't originaly an Amiga program but came from Unix, it was a quite good example for professional (but open source) software on the Amiga. It also was the only program handling exeptions for deviding words correctly (in German, "basic instinct" is "Urinstinkt". You can devide it after the first sybille (Ur-instinkt) but never after the second. You do not need to know german to gess what the meanig of the devided word becomes if doing so...). Also the program I used most was "Turboprint". While this nowerdays is still available for Linux, and many people do not think a lot about printer drivers, in it's days on the Amiga it was outstanding. You could define pins/jets as "defect" in the driver and it printed in half-row mode, subsituting the defect pixel by another pin/jet. Quite helpfull if you used a HP DJ 500 with manually refilled cadridges. Saved a lot of cost. Also using a 24pin dot-matrix printer it improved the quality by a lot. Instead of printing row by row, in high quality mode it moved only a part of a row, interleaving the needles. This cave a more even print in higher quality.

[@piyushkhengar]

Really enjoying your videos lately, Mikey! This was great. I think I used Final Writer for my GCSE coursework, and the built in notepad tool in earlier years using the Sapphire font (oh dear).

[@DogwafflDan]

I was a huge fan of Final Writer. Wrote several books in it.

[@amigaspeaks]

As a German fellow in the beginning (late 80s, early 90s) I used Beckertext I, II and III. After Data Becker stopped development, I switched to Wordworth. There were so many word processor apps for the Amiga... Scriptum, UBM-Text, Vizawrite, Excellence, Shakespeare, ProWrite, Maxon Word, Scribble, Personal Write and I guess many more. Great times!

[@RichardTroupe]

I enjoy these videos... Thank you! It's interesting to explore a side of the Amiga that is rarely talked about. I'd love to use mine for productivity nowadays.

[@MikeyGRetro]

Glad your enjoying. Worth giving it a go, got nothing to lose :-)

[@deterlanglytone]

Glad to see this video going about. I usually only see the Amiga discussed in regards to the games, or sometimes art programs, and not enough in regards to the productivity stuff like word processor. The Amiga is a bit before my time, it was still around when i was a child but it had already split from Commodore as a brand by the time I can remember, so its interesting to see this aspect actually discussed.

[@danfan4707]

I used Protext from Arnor back in 1994 to write my college dissertation because it was the only Amiga word processor that could do footnotes and Polish characters. It was a proper powerhouse on the text front although you could include images on their own line. I had great fun (I had few friends) hacking the printer drivers because you could create your own characters and print them on a noisy Panasonic dot matrix printer. Also, as it bypassed to some degree the Amiga printer drivers, you had access to all the printer fonts such as double-height fonts. Later on I used Final Writer, which was fun... Nowadays I use LaTeX for pretty much everything.

[@tkd4]

I was a wordworth user. I really loved it. I did download the pc version to try and it was ok. There was also Amiga writer that was available late in the amigas life.

[@desiv1170]

Great vid!!!! Similar to my history a bit, although I did do some word processing on my 64 (Fleet System 2). And I did a bit of Wordstar before that... But my first Amiga word processor was Transwrite, and I used the heck out of that... ;-) I did eventually get a copy of WordPerfect, and it was much more powerful. I ended up using that a bit more as I could save the docs in WP format and save them to a PC Format floppy for using on non-Amiga machines as well... And it was (is) a REALLY powerful word processor... I actually hadn't used either FinalWriter or Wordworth until I got back into the Amiga several years ago... Both nice, but I generally use Wordworth 7 now when on the Amiga.

[@plechaim]

Excellence is also pretty good but Wordworth has always been my favourite :)

[@vcv6560]

Thank you, I discovered your work looking for Amiga spreadsheet videos. With wordprocessing I started with Scribble! which was basic and text '87, what sold me was it had spell check. 40,000 word dictionary which at the time was amazing. Does anybody remember looking up spelling with a traditional one?! For there I went to ProWrite, which was attractive because it allowed you to integrate graphics - which Wordperfect didn't (and wp was expensive). That really mattered, because when WP4 was on Amiga the PC was getting 5.0/5.1 which the demo file had text flowing around a box of graphic (a plane as I remember). This was 1988 and they didn't have it on the Amiga so I went with Pro Write. It was strong in its WYSWG but the print was shabby, even talking to a laser printer the text was blockly and very dot-matrix like. So enter Final Copy (the predecessor to Final Writer), it was WYSWYG and most important had Postscript! I would write on my Amiga at home, copy files to PC formatted floppy with CrossDOS and take it to work, load on my machine and send the Postscript file to the Apple Laserwriter. That was fine printing and really professional. Anyway too many words, thanks again for the great videos. I just subbed to your channel.

[@MikeyGRetro]

Not too many words, it's interesting to find out how everyone used these tools. And you make a good point which I don't cover at all looking back on these applications which is price. Pro Write seems to be a favourite with alot here too so I'll probably do another video covering more word processors. Postscript is one of those technologies that has stood the test of time really when you think it's still used today.

[@JohnnyReb1976]

I've used WordsWorth 7 for some stuff while in college, on a native non-interlaced gfx screen of my A1200 with Blizz1220+4 and a 3.5" hdd somehow stuffed inside. Late 1999 and early 2000 it was, and I didn't feel in any way stifled compared to using MS Word. I do remember images have a fixed position and not move if you add or remove lines before them, found it a little vexing, but other than that it was a great product. Looks great even today when I run it in a 24-bit RTG environment.

[@Leofwine]

I use Wordworth (version 5, I believe) on my resurrected Amiga 500. It's not a daily driver, more a vintage machine taken on regular joyrides. I keep all my recreational stuff on it, which includes countless fantasy stories and the story of how that Amiga ended up with me.

[@_jonnyp]

I remember printing out many school homeworks and assignments with Interword, which came on a CU Amiga coverdisk (Aug '93). One of the main reasons I used it was because it "just worked" with my Citizen ABC 24 printer. I seem to remember having issues printing with other word processors as I wouldn't have had a clue about printer drivers at the time!

[@MikeyGRetro]

Luckily we had an Epson dot matrix which seemed to work with Wordworth and Transwrite. It was mono so I remember when printing out greetings cards it would be outline black and white and I'd colour them in afterward with pencils.

[@slowlymakingsmoke]

I have never really thought about before, but the words, “word processor” is such an old term harking back to the early days of mainframes. Funny really. Looking at my shelf of Amiga software, I see Pro Write which I used as a teenager. Anyone else used that one?

[@MikeyGRetro]

A few people have mentioned Pro Write I am going to be checking it out. I'm just amazed by all the comments I've had so far on a subject I wasn't too sure would get much attention.

[@SoulPoetryandOtherWorks]

It would be interesting to have seen your take on Amiga Writer as an addendum. This came out after the Amiga stopped being mainstream. I remember doing an awful lot of coursework on Kindwords 2 before moving on to Wordworth 1.1 as its successor. I stuck with Wordworth until version 6.

[@joerhorton]

I used Transword on the ZX Spectrum, it came free with the 48k.

[@Turrican]

I still use Wordworth 7 and occasionally I use ProText, which was also a popular package for word processing. Never tried Final writer but I do use Final Calc! Great vid.

[@RasVoja]

Is WW7 better then AW and how?

[@MikeyGRetro]

Thanks, I'm going to try ProText as there been a few comment about it. :-)

[@timothydeters6165]

@@MikeyGRetro There's always the upcoming version of Finalwriter i.postimg.cc/v87FTNj6/grafik-1.png

[@allan.n.7227]

Nice flash back.. I personally used Wordworth and Final Writer III on the Amiga.. On C64 I used The Write Stuff (Busy Bee software) and InterWord (Danish software)

[@RasVoja]

IS WW better then AW?

[@allan.n.7227]

@@RasVoja to be hounest I don’t know. Wordworth was quite impressive - but also pretty sluggish on my stock a600/1200s

[@RasVoja]

@@allan.n.7227 AW introduced old Word 6.0 compatibility and I believe True Types. Can last WW match that? Sadly AW cant be bought from Alinea at present time :(

[@allan.n.7227]

@@RasVoja Sorry.. Can't remember ..;)

[@davidhadaway2181]

I still using Final Writer under emulation sadly as I don't own a real amiga nowadays ( wish I still had my 1200 and 500) but I refuse to pay silly money for them. It's a very capable program and using postscript drivers prints very well to my hp envy printer. I use Word when I have to but nostalgia brings me back when I don't need all the advanced features of the Microsoft package. Final writer is still excellent and was ahead of its time back in the day. Cheers

[@MikeyGRetro]

Thats good that you got printing setup as well for it. Emulation can give you a nice fast Amiga on the cheap. Sounds like a nice setup :-)

[@johnwiesen4440]

I used Kind Words on my A500. It worked ok for me.

[@RasVoja]

Never heard of, more

[@rebeccaschade3987]

I'm in the process of moving, but once that is done, I will be using my Amiga for writing. I have Perfect Writer, but it appears to be a different version, because in mine, the toolbars are at the top. The floppes don't say which version, only that it's the Norwegian version. Anyway, I'll most likely be using it with RTG to get a bit higher resolution, which will be better for word processing.

[@TheThore]

There is also VizaWriter for only text letters. PageSetter or AmigaFox for DTP. And the worst of all is Papyrus Office, as everybody bought a demo version for the price of the full.

[@roberthazelby4424]

Great video. Transwrite was also the first word processor I used. My favourite is Wordworth 7 and a package I still use on occasions today. I want to love Final Writer but the font rendering is so poor. Your video demonstrates that failing perfectly.

[@StingyGeek]

Back in the day these things were 'killer apps' for me. A decent WP made me ditch the Amiga; the move to WP 5.1 on a cheap-ish Amstrad pc clone (286, VGA) for a uni student was an amazing advance (for my use case) from anything the Amiga could offer. And then of course there was Win 311 and the MS Office suite that was just amazing. Now, you could look at productivity suites and look at a program 10 years ago and today, and honestly it's very hard to see much of valuable change. But back then...well, the speed of change was through the roof and was incredibly exciting. That said, the Amiga was the 'go to' machine between the Commodore 64, and the IBM clones, and for quite a long period of time I can recall using my Amiga, smugly, while others were using their XT CGA IBM and just thinking.....really??!!!! You gotta be kidding. But the productivity software, probably even on the IBM XT, if I cared at the time ;) was a cut above. For those who look at WP 5.1 and think 'shit, that looks basic', it was a very powerful, distraction free, text based word processor. Graphics weren't that relevant at the time - a decent printer probably couldn't print graphics well anyway, and a standard printer for a home person might have been a black and white dot matrix.

[@km3481]

Nice video. FYI final writer has a arexx script on aminet that writes pdf files. Works perfect.

[@MikeyGRetro]

Thanks for sharing this. Will take a look. :)

[@jesuszamora6949]

Interesting how this looks. I can imagine most of these being FAR better experiences than the Wordperfect 5.1 DOS experience I had growing up as an American. That said, I wonder how practical it even would be today. Can you still get the printers to work after all this time?

[@MikeyGRetro]

Check out my WinUAE printing video, and also David's comment in this video. It's possible with emulation to print with these programs using Postscript.

[@myawen_]

Was Transwrite capable of font size change formatting?

[@wildcat189]

I used to love Vizawrite but can't find an ADF of it anywhere...

[@MikeyGRetro]

Hopefully Turran FTP or someone on the EAB forums will be able to help find it. I've never heard of that Word processor so would be interesting to see what it is like.

[@wildcat189]

@@MikeyGRetro Hey Mikey I found a copy of it in my stash and did a copy to ADF. Let me know how I can get it to you.

[@MikeyGRetro]

@@wildcat189 in the about page on the channel is my email. That's probably the best way. Thanks :-)

[@JamesEzell]

Is WB 3.2 comparable with most older software and games?

[@RasVoja]

Yes

[@krecikowi]

yes

[@RasVoja]

For me its crucial and bread and butter. Amiga Writter is it still the king?

[@MrLukealbanese]

What is Amiga Writer? never heard of that one.

[@MikeyGRetro]

Not tried Amiga Writer, thanks I'll check that one out. :-)

[@MrLukealbanese]

@@MikeyGRetro EAB archives has the 2.2 iso as it's no longer on sale Mike

[@systemchris]

Ever tried protext?

[@lolat330]

Still using Protext, on an emulated Amiga as the range of features that it has for simple text bashing is beyond compare.

[@Dwarfboysim]

Anyone use Excellence?

[@RasVoja]

No, I believe AmigaWritter was best, but might be wrong

[@imalebowski]

Yes Excellence is very good on 1.x. I also use Protext which I find better than WordPerfect on Amiga.

[@RasVoja]

@@imalebowski Where did you get pro text, never heard of? Is it still on sale