Word for Windows Due by January, Microsoft Says
 
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
BOSTON (Microbytes Daily News Service) --- Users of Microsoft
Windows will have another choice of word processor come January,
when Microsoft's Word for Windows program is slated to reach
dealers' shelves, the company announced here Tuesday. The $495
program, which makes extensive use of the click-and-drag
icons-and-menus approach, combines typical text editing functions
with page-layout capabilities associated with desktop publishing
packages.
 
The program is more similar to Word for the Macintosh, and
competitors Ami Professional (from Samna) and Legend (from NBI),
than it is to the PC version of Word. According to Microsoft vice
president Mike Maples, Word for Windows is "a superset of Mac
Word," and according to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, there's
about 40 percent common code between the two programs. As another
company official put it, if you've used Mac Word, you'll be able
to quickly pick up on Windows Word. However, the new Windows
edition is designed to be more functional as a package for mixing
text and images on a page.
 
In a demonstration of the program's use of "absolute position
graphics," a Microsoft official picked a graphic image off the
page and moved it to another column while in page-preview mode;
the software quickly reformatted the text to accommodate the
image's new placement. Word will work with most graphics formats,
including TIFF, PIC, CGM, HPGL, and Autocad.
 
Being a Windows application, Word can link documents with
information from other programs if they conform to the Dynamic
Data Exchange protocol. If you pull an Excel spreadsheet file
into the page, for example, and then later make a change to that
file, the program will also make the changes to the spreadsheet
in the document. But with the new Word's "paste link" function,
the connection works the other way too: If you alter the data in
the spreadsheet you've integrated into your text document, the
program will update the original Excel file accordingly.
 
The new program's other prominent features will include a
simplified process for setting up tabular data; a help system
that you can activate by clicking on a word or function to get an
appropriate dialog box or explanation; style sheets; ability to
read and write documents from other word processors, including
WordPerfect and WordStar (and Mac Word using the Rich Text
Format); a means of retrieving data from external databases;
ability to customize the menus; and a macro language that Gates
said is "similar to structured BASIC."
 
Word for Windows will run on an 8-MHz 286-based system with 640K
of memory, Microsoft says. The program works "with today's
Windows" (2.11) and comes with a runtime version. "We are testing
the product with future versions of Windows and expect it to run
right out of the box," said Jeff Raikes, general manager of the
company's Office Business Unit.
 
The company is "hard at work" on Word for Presentation Manager
and will announce some details at the upcoming Comdex, Raikes
said. "We expect to have the first word processor for PM," Gates
said.
 
Contact: Microsoft, 16011 NE 36th Way, Box 97017, Redmond, WA
98073-9717; (206) 882-8080; fax (206) 883-8101.
 
                              --- D. Barker
 
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