Borland Sprint: Difference between revisions
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A [[DOS]] word processor released by [[Borland]] France in late 1987 and in the rest of the world in the summer of 1988. Because the tool is a hodgepodge of old editor and formatting code from the | A [[DOS]] word processor released by [[Borland]] France in late 1987 and in the rest of the world in the summer of 1988. Because the tool is a hodgepodge of old editor and formatting code from the 70s blended with more modern code intended to make the product match and in some cases exceed the feature sets of their competitors alongside a number of features not available elsewhere (and some not that common even today), it made the Sprint package seem at the time of its release both forward-thinking and outdated at the same time. It sold very well in France but bombed in most other places and was discontinued in 1989. | ||
==History== | |||
Borland hired the management and development teams from the French office of MicroPro, but they had managed to make MicroPro's WordStar the most popular word processor in France by changing some of its features to better suit local usage and in other ways properly localising it at a time when most packages were merely translated and some not even well. | |||
;Alternative User Interfaces | ;Alternative User Interfaces | ||
The package had a concept they called "Alternative User Interfaces" or | The package had a concept they called "Alternative User Interfaces" or AUIs, where you could create skins and command presets that either made the package work exactly like you wanted it to or could be used to create functional emulations of other word processing packages and editors. Borland supplied a variety of user interface emulations with the package but announced that they would later be de-bundling it from Sprint and selling it as an add-on package. But as it was shipped Sprint included UI emulations of but not limited to: [[EMACS]], Wang, MultiMate, [[Microsoft Word]], FinalWord II, [[Borland Sidekick]], WordPerfect and WordStar. Note that not all of them were documented in the supplied user manual | ||
;OS/2 version | ;OS/2 version | ||
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* Release 1.01 for most other language versions (equal to French version 1.02). | * Release 1.01 for most other language versions (equal to French version 1.02). | ||
== | ==Publications== | ||
* [[Kris A. Jamsa]]; Gary Boy: ''Using Sprint: The Professional Wordprocessor'' - Osborne McGraw-Hill 1987, ISBN 0-07-881291-7 | |||
* [[Kris A. Jamsa]]: ''Using Sprint: The Professional Wordprocessor'' - | |||
;Reviews | ;Reviews | ||
* [ | * [//books.google.com/books?id=dDoEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA47 A review of Borland Sprint 1.0] - InfoWorld 1988 | ||
== | ==Links== | ||
* [http://www.sci.wsu.edu/math/faculty/barnes/borland/sprint.htm Un-Official HomePage for the Borland Sprint Editor] - Most of the links on that page are dead but the site still has the old CompuServe collection of Sprint scripts and utilities. | |||
;Documentation | |||
* [https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_borlandsprrsGuide1988_15636163 Borland Sprint Users Guide] - from Archive.org | |||
* [https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_borlandsprerenceGuide1988_14545015 Borland Sprint Reference Guide] | |||
* [https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_borlandsprancedUsersGuide1988_19247474 Borland Sprint Advanced Users Guide] | |||
* [https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_borlandsprernativeUserInterfaces1988_1420521 Borland Sprint Alternative User Interfaces] | |||
* [ | |||
[[Category:DOS word processors]][[Category:Software written in C]] | |||
Latest revision as of 01:16, 13 September 2023
A DOS word processor released by Borland France in late 1987 and in the rest of the world in the summer of 1988. Because the tool is a hodgepodge of old editor and formatting code from the 70s blended with more modern code intended to make the product match and in some cases exceed the feature sets of their competitors alongside a number of features not available elsewhere (and some not that common even today), it made the Sprint package seem at the time of its release both forward-thinking and outdated at the same time. It sold very well in France but bombed in most other places and was discontinued in 1989.
History
Borland hired the management and development teams from the French office of MicroPro, but they had managed to make MicroPro's WordStar the most popular word processor in France by changing some of its features to better suit local usage and in other ways properly localising it at a time when most packages were merely translated and some not even well.
- Alternative User Interfaces
The package had a concept they called "Alternative User Interfaces" or AUIs, where you could create skins and command presets that either made the package work exactly like you wanted it to or could be used to create functional emulations of other word processing packages and editors. Borland supplied a variety of user interface emulations with the package but announced that they would later be de-bundling it from Sprint and selling it as an add-on package. But as it was shipped Sprint included UI emulations of but not limited to: EMACS, Wang, MultiMate, Microsoft Word, FinalWord II, Borland Sidekick, WordPerfect and WordStar. Note that not all of them were documented in the supplied user manual
- OS/2 version
An OS/2 CLI version was announced at the USA release of the DOS version as being basically a couple of months away, and that a PM version of Sprint would be shipped in the summer of 1989, but as Borland had already by then a history of announcing OS/2 products that actually no work had been done on, and as all of their OS/2 development products and the actual development team had migrated to Jensen and Partners International a year earlier, it is not known if there was ever any work done on an OS/2 version.
- Versions
- Release 1.50 for the French version of Sprint.
- Release 1.01 for most other language versions (equal to French version 1.02).
Publications
- Kris A. Jamsa; Gary Boy: Using Sprint: The Professional Wordprocessor - Osborne McGraw-Hill 1987, ISBN 0-07-881291-7
- Reviews
- A review of Borland Sprint 1.0 - InfoWorld 1988
Links
- Un-Official HomePage for the Borland Sprint Editor - Most of the links on that page are dead but the site still has the old CompuServe collection of Sprint scripts and utilities.
- Documentation