User:Scribe45TW

LAZY WRITER

Lazy Writer is a word processor created entirely by David Welsh, using Z80 Assembler programming, and introduced for the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I computer in 1979. The TRS-80 was a popular early microcomputer and, once it was introduced in 1977, a number of programmer/entrepreneurs created word processors for it. Other popular word processors for the the TRS-80 were Radio Shack's Scripsit and NewScript from a company called ProSoft.

As David spent time with his TRS-80 and became increasingly proficient as a programmer, he formed a business partnership with two other men to write custom software. Initially, they did business as ABC Sales, then later as AlphaBit Communications. The idea was to do custom work for a business, then use the same code to sell software to similar businesses. As their plans developed, David decided they needed a word processor to prepare documentation for the software they intended to develop and sell. As David worked on programming a word processor, His wife, Theresa, became the first tester and wrote a user manual for the software, which they named Lazy Writer. As they realized other people would like to have an affordable word processor, they decided to sell the word processor as an off-the-shelf software package.

Limitations of the TRS-80
The TRS-80 had many limitations as a word processing machine. The Model I displayed only 64 characters across the screen, and, as released, it displayed only upper case characters. There were soon modification kits to allow lower case. The TRS-80 had no hard drive, and floppy drives were an expensive add-on. The system came with a cassette tape player, which was used to save and load programs. However, Lazy Writer was designed to load from a 5-inch floppy disk. It did not load the entire program at once because of the limited memory, but used “overlays,” meaning it loaded the parts of the software that the user invoked.

Software for the TRS-80 had to work with the user’s Disk Operation System (DOS) and there were a number of alternative DOSes. Lazy Writer was compatible with all of them, but later versions shipped with a mini version of Multidos, developed by Vernon Hester, so the user could put it in the floppy drive and boot right into the word processor.

Features
Lazy Writer generally received high marks in the computer magazine reviews. It was full-featured, letting the user type text, insert and delete text, save text to floppy disk and embed codes to indicate how the text should be printed. Printers were generally either dot matrix or daisy wheel, and special features of the printer could only be used if the software sent the appropriate codes to the printer. Lazy Writer came with a variety of printer drivers that sent the needed string of “escape codes” to printers to activate printer functions such as boldface, underlining and double wide characters (for dot matrix printers). Previously, owners of printers with these features could only use the features by programming the codes into BASIC programs.

Some of Lazy Writer’s innovative features:

- Headers and Footers that automatically added text at the top or bottom of each page

- Page numbering

- A primitive Help file

- User defined macros

But early users were more impressed by things that would later seem simple... such as find and replace, right and left margin changes within text, justification, block moves, and the ability to print part of the document or stop the printing anywhere in the text

Lazy Writer also came with a number of “extension” programs that gave it even more features. There was LazyMerge (mail merge), LazyDoc (boilerplate paragraphs), LazyCom (send text over a modem), and LazyFont (print with fancy fonts). If your computer crashed while you were typing text, your text was not lost. Lazy Writer could get it back. If a file had disk errors, Lazy Writer could load the entire file with the errors flagged for correction.

Versions of Lazy Writer existed for the Model I, the Model III, and the Model IV, with features added over the years it was sold. David Welsh and a small staff worked from an office in suburban Detroit and sold copies of Lazy Writer all over the world, with many users in Australia, where a TRS-80 clone machine (the Dick Smith System-80) was sold. They were in business until the TRS-80 became obsolete in the late 1980s, as the computer world turned to MSDOS machines and Radio Shack abandoned the TRS-80 line. By 1990, David maintained a Post Office box for the few remaining sales.

Retrospective
In 2007, which was the 30th anniversary of the introduction of the TRS-80 in 1977, David and Theresa Welsh published a book about their experiences in the early software industry. The book is Priming the Pump: How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark the PC Revolution. It is based on the personal experiences of David and Theresa Welsh, as well as interviews with many microcomputer pioneers who were involved with the TRS-80.