Talk:History of Microsoft Word

Magic Wand acquisition by Microsoft
Les Pinter has stated Microsoft bought out Magic Wand word processor a year before the initial release of Microsoft Word. Pinter assumes that Magic Wand served the source base Microsoft used to derive Word from. While the claim is dubious, the fact of acquisition (which itself was never disputed AFAIK), shows the moves of Microsoft in preparing to enter the word processing market. Some prior discussion and sources can be found at Articles for deletion/Magic Wand (software). Does this fact worth mention in the article? — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 06:20, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
 * See also User talk:Black Kite. -- Trevj (talk) 08:50, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Microsoft Word for UNIX Systems Release 5.1
There is no mention in the article of the UNIX version of Word. I personally supported users of this in a small company in the early 90s. There's still mention of it here: SCO UNIX Operating System It was a practically identical experience to using Word 5.1 on DOS.

Here's a press release from 1991 about it. Also mentions release 5.0 : The Santa Cruz Operation announces Microsoft Word for UNIX Systems Version 5.1 Emlynoregan (talk) 01:52, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

"it was followed by four very similar versions that were not very successful"
This doesn't really seem right. Word 5 was pretty successful iirc. Seems to be treating all of Word pre Windows as "mostly harmless"! Emlynoregan (talk) 01:56, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Word 2000 Description Missing
Word 2000 is mentioned several times - and referenced back from later versions. Shouldn't it have its own section? ZagrebMike (talk) 11:01, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

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Why does "History of Microsoft Word" start in 1990?
There was a Windows version in 1983 and Macintosh in 1985. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeffkw (talk • contribs) 19:57, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Why does Word to this day identify itself as "OpusApp"?
"Opus" seems to have been the (internal?) name of one of the earliest versions, see here: https://computerhistory.org/blog/microsoft-word-for-windows-1-1a-source-code

And it is still the name of the main window control (or something) today as of 2023: https://i.imgur.com/Xhii4sj.png

It would be interesting to know more about "Opus" in the article. DavidGPeters (talk) 14:46, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Source of MS Word
Microsoft Word was developed using a CPM program called the Magic Wand, written by Mike Griffin of Houston, Texas and sold to Bill Gates on September 24th, 1980 by Les Pinter, COO of Small Business Applications. Charles Simonyi and his team devoted several years to rewriting the Magic Wand's Intel Z-80 code into C++. 172.83.228.5 (talk) 19:09, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Do you have a reliable source for that information? - ZLEA  T \ C 01:12, 31 December 2023 (UTC)