Word Processors

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How many typewriters are you likely to find in an office today? Probably none, but in the mid-1960s they were plentiful. That was when IBM coinedthe term "word processing" to market their Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter, also known as the MTST. It was very different from other typewriters because it recorded words on magnetic tape and printed them on paper at the same time. Each tape could store many documents, making it possible to retrieve any of them for later printing, or for generating multiple copies of the same document. This was the first device to allow semi-automatic production of personalized letters: after the user typed the names and addresses, the machine took over and completed the task.

The MTST underwent many transformations, and in 1974 it used internal storage along with external storage on magnetic tapes or cards. However, fast typists could not reach their full potential because it was still a mechanical device. It was not until the introduction of CRT-based word processing equipment in 1976, with the Wang Computer System, that operators were released from the constraints of mechanical printing devices.

By the mid-1970s customer demand provided the thrust for a new industry: special-purpose computers dedicated to word processing. New vendors of word processors, such as Wang Laboratories, surpassed IBM in sales and product innovation. Word processors have undergone many transformations while evolving from dedicated units to multi-purpose personal computers that can perform several functions, including word processing, database management, and accessing the Internet. "Word processor" nowrefers primarily to the software used create and manipulate text documents, rather than to the hardware on which the software is run.

Most word processing systems provide, in a single software package, all the necessary tools that users need to produce a finished document, from entering and editing text, to formatting and proofreading it, and finally to saving and printing it. Here are the steps one would follow to create a document using a word processing program.

A word processing document starts as an empty window on the computer screen with a flashing cursor bar that indicates your location in the document. As you type, the cursor moves to the right, and the characters are displayed on the screen and stored in the computer's memory. You can fix your typing mistakes at any time by pressing the Delete or Backspace keys. Word processors are equipped with the "word wrap" feature, which automatically moves a word to the next line once a line has reached its full capacity. Therefore, the only time you need to press the Return or Enter key is when you want to begin a new line, such as at the end of a paragraph. On typewriters, a typist had to press the return key to begin a new line of text.

Word processors make it easy for you to change and rearrange your work in many different ways. For example you can easily:

• Navigate to different parts of a document by scrolling;
• Search for and replace specific words or phrases throughout a document;
• Insert text at any point;
• Delete text from any section;
• Move text from one part of a document to another;
• Copy text from one part and duplicate it in another section of the same document or to another document.

This refers to arranging a document so it will look the way you want it to once it is printed. All word processors allow you to format individual characters, lines, paragraphs, or whole documents. WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) systems also give you a good view on screen of what the final product will look like.

Formatting characters affects the size of the characters (point size), their style (typeface, sometimes called font), and whether they are underlined, written in italic, or displayed in bold, heavy type. The formatting of lines and paragraphs determines the spacing between lines of text, the placement of indents or tabs, and the finished length and position of the lines of type on a page. Document formatting applies to margin settings, as well as headers and footers—blocks of text that appear at the top and bottom of every page.

Other text formatting features give you the ability to:

• Create documents with variable-width multiple columns;
• Perform automatic footnoting;
• Generate table-of-contents and indexing for books and other long works;
• Create and format multicolumn tables;
• Attach hidden text, pop-up notes, or audio notes that can be seen or heard by the user but do not show up in the final document;
• Incorporate graphics created with other applications.

Word processing does not end with editing and formatting. Most high-end word processors also include a built-in outliner, spell checker, grammar and style checker, thesaurus, mail merger, and indexer. As word processors become more powerful, they take on many features previously found only in desktop publishing (DTP) software such as merging graphics, tables, and text into one document. Many word processors are capable of producing professional-quality books and periodicals, so the line between word processors and DTP programs is likely to fade with time.

Ida M. Flynn

Office Automation Systems; Productivity Software; Wang, An.

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Lee, J. A. N. Computer Pioneers. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 1995.

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