Spread sheet and Word processing

[IanM]

...or Sperrylink (splink) emails? Very exciting when the little envelope icon appeared. 1987 ish

 

[HampshireHog]

Ha...missed again. The first word processing package I used - back late 80s I guess, was something pre-Windows that required me to manually enter formatting control characters around the text...cant recall what it was called. Mind you that was a bit of an upgrade from my early uni days when I was still doing my programming by punching cards.

WordPerfect?

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

WordPerfect?

Don’t think so…I think it was a very early Unix tool that we used with either a DEC PDP-11 or VAX

Anyway…these days I just use Google Sheets…does everything I need in my similar retirement days.

 

[cliveb]

Don’t think so…I think it was a very early Unix tool that we used with either a DEC PDP-11 or VAX

Early Unix typesetting was definitely done with nroff (or troff). All the man pages are formatted with nroff.

But if you're talking about Unix on PDP11s, that would be latest 70s/early 80s.

 

[rulefan]

Lotus 123 I didn’t know that was still a thing

I started my computer life on an IBM 705. The only one in the UK at the time. I don't think there was ever another one.

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

Early Unix typesetting was definitely done with nroff (or troff). All the man pages are formatted with nroff.

But if you're talking about Unix on PDP11s, that would be latest 70s/early 80s.

It was around 1985-87 at a guess - one of the senior systems engineers was using it as a way of reducing his reliance on the secretaries to type up his reports. It never really caught on and something else - name eludes me - came along that was easier. And then one day one of my colleagues showed me the fancy Microsoft PC the dept. had purchased as he had to use a thing called Matlab for his complex control theory stuff.