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Author Topic: Office System changelog  (Read 9574 times)

stepleton

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Office System changelog
« on: August 30, 2022, 04:16:38 pm »
Is there a resource anywhere that describes the differences between all the various versions of the Office System and all the Tools? Even marketing documents would be helpful. Someone on 68kmla asked what the differences were between Office System v2 and v3, and I didn't really know the answer comprehensively. Fielding a different question to what was asked, I tried to recall differences between 1.x and 3.x off the top of my head and came up with just these:

  • (Under the hood) Different filesystem: there were three (I think) versions of the Lisa OS FS, and the OS version 3 filesystem supported HFS-style hierarchical directory structures for the first time. (Previous versions were a bit like MFS: you may have seen folders in the Finder/Desktop, but the underlying filesystem was flat.)
  • (Under the hood) More hardware support: the Widget and the 3.5" drive required changes introduced in versions 2+ of the Office System.
  • System font for menus, dialogues is more condensed.
  • User fonts allow you to choose text size and font face independently of each other.
  • Colour printing introduced for LisaDraw and other tools; support for the Canon Inkjet Printer.
  • Spellchecking for LisaWrite.
  • I think better copy/paste support between tools was touted for 7/7, but I don't have a reference for that.
  • Surely many bugfixes...
  • ...

Could we come up with a better idea of an Office System changelog? For the A+, even between minor versions? (E.g. 1.2 fixed the serial port bugs in 1.0.)
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blusnowkitty

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Re: Office System changelog
« Reply #1 on: August 30, 2022, 04:37:45 pm »
The "Desk" menu application switcher seems to have been added in 3. You're probably right that 2 is closer to 1; I half wouldn't be surprised if the only real difference were the changes needed to remove the Twiggy drivers and add the Sony driver.

Somewhat related, but one time in a different community someone told me a story about how one day they were browsing eBay, found a couple of ex-Apple ProFiles, and then didn't bid on them for one reason or another and now they're kicking themselves because "they probably had the lost Lisa Office System 4 source code on them." Is anyone aware of any plans to make an Office System 4 before things ultimately turned towards Macintosh/MacWorks?

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stepleton

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Re: Office System changelog
« Reply #2 on: August 30, 2022, 05:34:25 pm »
Quick note: I think that that 2.0 will run on a Lisa 1 and will make use of the Twiggy drive. (This is the setup that they have at the Large Scale Systems Museum/Museum of Applied Computing Technology in Pittsburgh.)

I've never heard of an Office System 4, for what it's worth!

Good shout about the Desk menu as a 3.x development...
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rayarachelian

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Re: Office System changelog
« Reply #3 on: August 30, 2022, 08:18:25 pm »
Main thing between 2.0 and 3.x is the rewrite of QuickDraw in assembly making LOS 3.x much faster.

Yes, file systems changed quite a bit.
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You don't know what it's like, you don't have a clue, if you did you'd find yourselves doing the same thing, too, Writing the code, Writing the code

rayarachelian

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Re: Office System changelog
« Reply #4 on: August 31, 2022, 11:01:55 am »
Another thing is that (most of?) the apps for 3.0 are the same as for 3.1, at least those are the latest released on the TechIS CDs.
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You don't know what it's like, you don't have a clue, if you did you'd find yourselves doing the same thing, too, Writing the code, Writing the code

compu_85

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Re: Office System changelog
« Reply #5 on: August 31, 2022, 03:46:21 pm »
In addition to the Quickdraw rewrite, the later version of the OS supports the Canon inkjet.
I believe file transfers are also faster in 3 vs. 2.

Overall, the speed difference between OS 2 and OS 3 is quite dramatic.

-J
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