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 70's 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some not that common even today) , it made the Sprint package seem at the time of its release both forward thinking and outdated at the same time.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. | 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 70's 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some not that common even today) , it made the Sprint package seem at the time of its release both forward thinking and outdated at the same time.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. | ||
;Alternative User Interfaces | |||
The package had a concept they called "Alternative User Interfaces" or AUI's, 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]] and [[WordPerfect]], [[WordStar]]. Note that not all of them were documented in the supplied user manual | |||
;Versions | ;Versions | ||
Revision as of 05:48, 14 January 2016
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 70's 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.
- Alternative User Interfaces
The package had a concept they called "Alternative User Interfaces" or AUI's, 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 and WordPerfect, WordStar. Note that not all of them were documented in the supplied user manual
- Versions
- Release 1.50 for the French version of Sprint.
- Release 1.01 for most other language versions (equal to French version 1.02).
Links
- The unofficial Borland Sprint homepage - Most of the links on that page are dead but the site still has the old Compuserve collection of Sprint scripts and utilities.
- Documentation
- Borland Sprint Users Guide - From Archive.org
- Borland Sprint Reference Guide - From Archive.org
- Borland Sprint Advanced Users Guide - From Archive.org
- Borland Sprint Alternative User Interfaces - From Archive.org
- User manuals from Bitsavers.org
- Reviews
- A review of Borland Sprint 1.0 - From InfoWorld magazine - 1988
- A review of Final Word II - From InfoWorld magazine - 1986
History
Originally released around 1980 by Mark of the Unicorn as MINCE, a CP/M text editor that had some EMACS like functionality and UI.
Authors & publishers
- Jason Linhart (MOTU)
- Craig Finseth (MOTU)
- Scott Layson Burson (MOTU)
- Brian Hess (MOTU)
- Bill Spitzak (MOTU)
- Mark of the Unicorn
- Borland France