I have a new post up on Stone Tools, in which I look at PaperClip, specifically on the Atari XE (thanks to the Altirra emulator). While writing about CAD-3D on the Atari ST the name PaperClip came up a couple of times, especially in conjunction with Antic Magazine. Independently, it came up while researching Bank Street Writer as well. I felt the hand of fate pushing me to take a look, so I did.
Looking into PaperClip’s publisher, Batteries Included, also gave me an opportunity to talk a little about Electronic Arts and their fumbling attempts to break into non-gaming software markets. This piece also answers the question, “When does frustration outweigh the delights of a piece of software?”
Thanks always for this community’s continued support and reading!
What is Stone Tools?
Stone Tools is a retro-enthusiast blog devoted to 8/16-bit productivity software; no games, just work. I spend weeks learning each program and give my lighthearted read on how it was seen, how it works, and what we might learn from it today. Side discussions on contemporary issues, historical timelines, old advertisements, and more supplement each retrospective.
An interesting post that explores another application I never used or heard much about as a non Commodore/Atari user. It’s remarkable that such limited software, even by the standards of the time, was used for production work like writing a magazine.
What printer emulator tool did you use? Is it specific to an Atari printer?
The Altirra emulator has four built-in printer emulations, all Atari models. The 820, a 40-column dot matrix printer. The 1020, a pen plotter that outputs on special 11.5cm wide paper rolls, but can fit 80 columns within that narrow space. The 1025 and 1029, both 80-column dot matrix printers. I used the 1025 for the article, and did an experiment with the 1020, just to see what the plotter emulation looked like. It’s neat!
The output can be viewed in the emulator as a kind of long form-feed single image, and exported as low or high resolution PNGs or as a PDF. The PDF looks good, but Affinity wouldn’t parse its custom embedded font for some reason, so I used the 300 dpi PNG exports instead
The font is unusual; I wrote to the emulation developer directly to get the scoop. It doesn’t have full ASCII character definitions, for example. It only has dot patterns that represent what the original hardware would have put down as requested by printer codes. Ultimately, those patterns combine and converge visually into human-readable letterforms, but that’s not how they are defined internally.
I remember seeing the ads for this word processor. I had no idea it was originally part of an office package for the Commodore PET. Interesting.
Watching the “load of the macro” was funny. I got it instantly when the splash screen came up, “Uh oh…” Doesn’t look like a well-developed feature.
As I think I’ve covered before, my experience/preference with early word processors on 8-bits was with Apple Writer. I also kind of liked Bank Street Writer. Both felt easy to use.
The one I preferred on the Atari was AtariWriter Plus for the 130XE. I got it in 1988. Compared to an experience I had several years earlier with the Atari Word Processor, which ran on the 800, it was tons better. The Atari Word Processor just felt clunky as all get out. I remember reading many years later one reason why: It had you save each page of your document as a separate file!! I remember it also had a print preview, which took some getting used to, because it used some display list trick, and a high-res mode to “display” each page of your document, as it would be formatted, but you couldn’t read it. It just showed these “dots and lines” in a page layout, which was supposed to “give you and idea” of how the layout would look, but it got it all on the screen, at least.
I found AtariWriter Plus easy to use. It had a spell checker that allowed you to put in your own supplemental dictionary (I forget how that was stored/loaded). It didn’t have a sophisticated set of features, just really the essentials. Another nice feature was it had a kind of WYSIWYG print preview. Though, since the whole package only used the native 40-column Graphics 0 text display, it had you scroll around your document to see how it was formatted. However, you could see everything; the top, bottom, left, and right margins, accurately portrayed, and you’d see exactly how each an every word would sit on the page (and you could read it). I didn’t have a big problem with the scrolling.
I used AWP through most of college on my 130XE for writing my papers, and it worked out fine.
it would be interesting, I think, to supplement your series on word processors with a series on IDEs (or if we go far enough back, line/text editors with a focus on programming). This article showed some really interesting overlap and interaction between the two, and I think it’s a sort of overlooked realm of productivity software. Since they’re useless to the average person who uses a computer for “productivity” software primarily (word processors, spreadsheets, art and music programs), and programmers generally don’t find typical productivity software very interesting unless they’re complaining about it.
That’s how Protext got started. Arnor Ltd originally wrote MAXAM, an assembler/editor for the Amstrad CPC. It came on a 16K EPROM, and you could start it instantly by typing |M.
The editor was so good as a general-purpose reliable text editor that people started buying MAXAM just for the editor. It was almost a word processor, and soon after, Arnor launched Protext, which was a great word processor in 16K of code. It was ported and expanded to run on CP/M+, Atari ST, Amiga and MS-DOS.
Even though Arnor is long gone, there are still some UK computer journalists who go a bit misty-eyed for Protext. It runs quite nicely under dosbox.
(and re: Paperclip — I think there are some TPUG members who worked at Batteries Included. Someone gave a talk about them years ago, and I know a couple of members were trying to collect (and deprotect) every piece of Commodore software that Paperclip ever wrote.)
I’m glad you liked it! It’s going to be a while before I get back to the Atari 8-bits. I hope the coming topics will still be of interest to you, despite that.
I have Smeagol/Gollum conversations regularly about how far into the weeds I should go with the definition of “productivity software.” I probably mostly agree with the idea of IDEs being something to cover, especially the more they lean in a HyperCard direction (which I covered). I’ve not yet made up my mind yet on something like “Adventure Construction Set,” a tool for making games that is not itself a game. I’ve also not yet made up my mind if something like Emacs should be covered.
I guess, in my mind, the developer community has been a pretty well-served subset of the retro community. Look at how many videos on YouTube talk about learning 6502 assembly vs. how many teach you how to use VisiCalc (not just history lessons). From a “trying to find something new to teach readers” perspective, I’m inclined to steer away from pure development stuff. I think there are others more suited (who already know the languages of the past) to handle that. But, I’m just thinking aloud here.
That said, if there is something that broke out in a new direction, even as (especially as!) a failed experiement, I’m absolutely willing to consider it for a future post.
Protext sounds really nice; I just read a couple of reviews for the ST. I’m pretty unfamilar with the European scene, and intend to address this shortcoming this year.
If those TPUG members could find a copy of PaperClip Elite for the Amiga, that would be sweet.