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lproven
8,777karma·4,928submissions·December 30, 2013
about
Tall dark black-clad atheist skeptic biker SF fan; writes, mainly about computers, for a living.
# Work
Currently the FOSS & cloud correspondent for the Register.
https://www.theregister.com/Author/Liam-Proven
Work email: lproven+hn@sitpub.com
# Personal
Comments here (or anywhere else, unless otherwise stated) are personal opinion and not on behalf of any employer.
Based in Douglas, Isle of Man.
Quick info:
https://about.me/liamproven/
Personal blog:
http://lproven.dreamwidth.org/profile
Tech blog:
http://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/profile/
Socials:
https://social.vivaldi.net/@lproven
https://bsky.app/profile/lproven.bsky.social
https://x.com/lproven
https://meet.hn/city/im-Douglas
recent activity (4,928 total)
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Hi. Article author here. This is true. There are a lot of "abandonware" versions of all sorts of apps out there. It is almost trivially easy to find a copy of WordPerfect for DOS and install…
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Hi. Article author here. It's a fair cop! I did totally forget about that. I will grab a copy and give it a try -- thank you!
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Hi. Article author here. No, not really. I am a Linux and Mac user. I don't run or use Windows unless I really need it – for instance for reflashing firmware. The modern version of WordPerfect is…
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Hi. Article author here. Most people – me included – reckoned that Word 5.1 for the Mac was the last, best version. If you grab the ShapeShifter VM that I describe and link to in the blog post, and l…
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Hi. Article author here. I supported WordPerfect for various law practices in the courts around Chancery Lane in London well into the MS Office era. The main reason was not templates; it was the word-…
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Hi. Article author here. May I suggest that you read to the end of something before you comment? To address your point about the Linux version: I do not think that you are correct. Corel Corp, which i…
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Hi. Article author here. Robert Sawyer and George Martin are fans of WordStar. I supported it in the 1980s. It is a very clunky, awkward program by modern standards; that is why WordPerfect complete…
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Hi. Article author here. I link to that site several times in the blog post – but I also explicitly point out that the DOS version is _not_ freeware. There is no such thing as Corel 1-2-3 and never wa…
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Hi. Article author here. It does not describe the MacOS version. Its primary focus is the native Linux version. Did you stop reading after a couple of paragraphs, but still comment? You make me wond…
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It isn't exactly a secret. :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-9
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That is my impression. Microware is still around and selling OS-9: https://www.microware.com/
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:-) You're welcome. It did come and go fairly quickly. It was an attempt to make an open, cross-platform rival to iTunes, but you needed the Apple, MS etc. apps installed to get the codecs & …
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TBH I thought this was obvious. The name "Songbird" was previously used by Mozilla, a large, well-known and fairly wealthy organization which is still around and has a world-famous product. …
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It was released for free in 1998: https://www.itprotoday.com/windows-78/corel-release-free-wor... http://www.iitk.ac.in/LDP/FAQ/pdf/WordPerfect-Lin…
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The Linux version is freeware now: https://xwp8users.com/
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It was called "reveal codes". http://wordperfect.helpmax.net/en/creating-and-managing-docu... …
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Is Mozilla Songbird so forgotten now? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songbird_(software) Is the reason Firefox is called "Firefox" forgotten? It was "Phoenix",…
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Try kinto: https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto
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The "Windows key" is just Microsoft branding. It was called the Super key before that, and it dates back to the 1970s. Here's an example on a Sun keyboard, labelled with a diamond:
htt…
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Check out kinto.sh, which does this for you: https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto
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> I'm guessing a lot of people here were never exposed to a world like DOS Which is why, 16 years ago, I took over that article and fleshed out a stub into something more descriptive, with exa…
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Yup. ThreadX from Express Logic, now part of Microsoft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThreadX …
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Here you go -- exactly what you asked for. FOSS, available today. https://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/show/Software%... …
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Yes, I thought so too, and I also thought it sounded like a shame because the tiny scraps of information I'd heard sounded good. But there's no info about it on that website. Is there anywhe…
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Hardly. CP/M-68K was quite well known and it is still in use today -- for instance, here is a modern, build-it-yourself 68008 machine that runs CP/M-68K:
https://hackaday.io/…
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ARK files are from an early forerunner to PKZip, which evolved from a program called PKArc. They're just compressed file archives. https://techtinkering.com/articles/compress…
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This isn't the only impressive bit of code Paul Dunn has, er, done. He also wrote absolutely my favourite tool for writing ZX BASIC programs, BASin. https://arda.kisafilm.org/blog…
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Pretty much true -- but Dr Kildall's company was huge in its time, its product dominated the infant PC industry, and of course dictated the design of MS-DOS 1.x. His influence was great. Nelson&#…
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One of the most important half-a-dozen living figures in the world of computing, and almost totally unrecognised. He deserves more respect.