 | |
| Developer(s) | GST Computer Systems |
|---|---|
| Initial release | December 1985 |
| Final release | 3.20TT
/ early 1991 |
| Operating system | Atari TOS, others |
| Type | Word Processor |
| License | Proprietary |
1st Word is a word processor program for the Atari ST developed by GST Computer Systems and published in 1985. It was given away with all ST systems from December 1985 for the next two years. Although it was relatively well received, it was a very simple program, lacking most power features and was very slow when working in large documents. In spite of any limitations, its wide availability made the program's .DOC file format became a de facto standard for the platform and was widely supported by other programs like desktop publishing systems.
1st Word Plus was a greatly improved version released by GST when the bundling deal ended in 1987. This addressed performance issues and added dozens of features that made it one of the faster and most feature-packed word processors on the platform. Among its more notable additions were a spell checker, mail merge, and support for footnotes and similar long-document editing features. This became one of the best-selling programs on the ST and saw a number of revisions over its lifetime. Plus was later ported to the Acorn Archimedes and IBM PC under GEM as First Word Plus.
In 1990, an entirely unrelated program known as 1st Word Plus 4.0 was released by Compo Software. This used a new file format, and while it could load files from the original 1st Word, the older versions could not read the newer files.