I think you are correct about the deskview stuff, and yes os/2 was a pretty big deal. But prior to that my vague recollection was that ms-dos was the thing.

I worked at a company that produced an editor for os/2 for the publishing industry, and it was pretty slow as you say.

However, I know at least one exception to the reveal codes urgency. My Mother, who is 79, would still be using reveal codes if there was a way to do it on her current xp laptop. She never cared for the windows version at all.