Byline was an early desktop publishing program targeted squarely at DOS users. The box proudly proclaims: "Because Byline works the way you do, you don't waste time with a mouse or a new graphics environment." It does not support mice at all. It has a WYSIWYG preview, but the interface is not interactive.
Byline might be thought of as a "middle ground" publishing program, with more functionality than a typical low-end budget oriented publishing program, but still targeted at lower-end business and home users.
It supports multiple typefaces, columns, rulers, borders, headlines, automatic kerning, bullets, and graphic sizing and scaling. It works with dot-matrix printers as well as laser printers.
It did gain a following among DOS users, but was eventually overtaken by mouse/GUI based publishing tools such as PageMaker and Ventura Publisher.
Reportedly, Byline was written in the Forth programming language.
Download name | Version | Language | Architecture | File size | Downloads |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Byline 1.0 (1988) (5.25-360k) | 1.0 | English | 13.47MB | 0 | |
Byline 1.0 Manuals (1988) | 1.0 | English | 78.55MB | 0 |