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Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

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Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#103

Post by phaedrus »

VALDOCS. I had an Epson QX-10 with a Z-80 processor, 256K, and green monochrome screen when 486's were out and the 1st gen Pentium was coming out, but with VALDOCS I was able to do all of my homework the same as anyone using the Microsoft Office Suite. (VALDOCS could do word processing, spreadsheets, and charts and graphs.) It was more responsive on an 8-bit computer than modern bloated Office software, and so much easier to use.

We also used WordPerfect for DOS at my high school. In my opinion, VALDOCS > WordPerfect > Microsoft Word, but guess which one won out in the market - I've despised having to use Office software for that reason ever since.

Looking this up again caused me to find this very nice article about the people who made VALDOCS: https://www.electronicdesign.com/blog/rising-star

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#104

Post by superkuh »

henry_flower wrote: post #49

Presto browser engine (from Opera 12) for a lightweight Electron alternative

I couldn't agree more. On this subject, I'm still seeding the leaked Opera 12 source w/presto. http://superkuh.com/opera12v15presto-source.torrent (full torrent dl'd is 222.6 MB)

But... browser engines are no longer browsers like they were in Opera's prime. They are operating systems with all the complexity that brings. I don't think presto could fill that role. That said, it'd make a great actual browser.

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#105

Post by Fnoord »

benologist wrote: post #6

Adobe Fireworks Jagged Alliance 2 Settlers 2 Heroes of Might and Magic

Game-wise, Warcraft 2, 3 and Dune 2 remakes. Tho I also loved C&C. I guess nostalgia or not yet feeling burned out by the RTS genre (which nowadays is irrelevant due to MOBA).

(Oh, and yeah, Settlers 2 was amazing.)

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#106

Post by alecr95 »

linuxlizard wrote: post #78

Brief, the text editor, from Underware. It's still the best code editor I've ever used. Super fast, underpins written in a Lisp-y dialect (later C-ish). The ^G feature would pop up a list box listing all functions in the file and I could select where I wanted to jump to. It's still a feature I wish I had in any modern editor.

I'm pretty sure sublime text 3 has a similar feature -- http://docs.sublimetext.info/en/latest/file_management/file_...

The shortcut is slightly different (ctrl + shift + r), but function is the same

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#107

Post by ghaff »

wgoodall01 wrote: post #70
cpcallen wrote: post #30

Aperture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_(software) I would happily pay for an update that fixed outstanding bugs and ensured compatibility with future versions of macOS. It would be nice to have some new features, too, but it is basically "good enough" as it is and I dread the day I can no longer run it. I'm really not sure what I will do. The claim that Photos was going to be a meaningful replacement for Ape…

Iirc, you can buy Lightroom 6 perpetually, no creative cloud needed. Might be worth looking into.

That's what I still use but it's getting long in tooth and you're starting to notice lack of support for new formats and the like. I wouldn't really recommend someone who isn't already using it to switch. I don't really mind the subscription because it's software I use frequently but I need to get around to cleaning out my catalog before I switch over.

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#108

Post by andrewmcwatters »

ioman wrote: post #46

Microsoft MapPoint. This was a phenomenal piece of mapping software and had features I haven’t been able to find in any of the online map replacements. When getting directions, you could designate a number of areas on the map as “avoid area”. You could map all sorts of census data. Want to colorize the map based on crime rate divided by median home price? No problem. You could import lots of data from a spreadsheet a…

> When getting directions, you could designate a number of areas on the map as “avoid area”.

It's noteworthy, because I've only seen this feature in Rolls-Royce navigation in recent times.

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