Microsoft Word 6.x
The Microsoft Word word processor was first introduced for MS-DOS in 1983. Its design made use of a mouse and WYSIWYG graphics. Its crude WYSIWYG/mouse support was a direct response to the Apple Lisa/Mac, and VisiCorp Visi On. Initially it competed against many popular word processors such as WordStar, Multimate, and WordPerfect. Word for DOS was never really successful.
The Mac version was introduced in 1985 where it acquired a friendlier user interface and gained some popularity. A Microsoft Windows version was introduced in 1989, although Palantir WinText, NBI Legend, and Samna AMI/AMI Pro had beaten them to their own Windows platform. For a time Word for Windows competed with WordPerfect for Windows. There were also ports to OS/2, the Atari ST, and Unix.
The DOS, Mac, and Windows versions are quite different from each other, and each restarted their version numbering at "1.0". Later versions are bundled with Microsoft Office. Also see a complete list of word processors archived on Winworld.
Screenshots
Release notes
To bring version numbers in line across platforms, Microsoft bumped Word for Windows from version 2 to 6. Word 6 for Windows now requires Windows 3.1, with a version for NT. Word 6 for Mac requires at least a 68020 Mac or PPC CPU. Word 6 for DOS adds dropdown menus and TrueType font support. 6 is the last version for DOS.
By this time with all the other WYSIWYG editors and desktop publishers, Word 6 for DOS was an odd holdout. It maintained the same text mode fallback and minimal graphical formatting as the origional 1983 version.
Wanted: Manual scans.
Information
- Product type
- Application Word Processor
- Vendor
- Microsoft
- Release date
- 1993
- Minimum CPU
- 8088(DOS) 286(Win) 68020 or PPC(Mac)
- User interface
- GUI
- Platform
- DOS Windows MacOS
- Download count
- 94 (13 for release)
Microsoft Word 6.0 for DOS (3.5-720k) (5.25-1.2mb)
Microsoft Word 6.0 for DOS [European-Portuguese] (5.25-1.2mb)
