These apps have been "lost" for one single reason: they weren't FLOSS. There's plenty of software written in the 1980s that has been maintained since and is used today on modern platforms, because its code was made available under a suitable license. Proprietary software is a dead end, and proprietary online services only more so.
The Lost Apps of the 80s
21–30 of 123 posts
Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s
#22I still use microEmacs, which floated around the intertoobs in the 1980s. Of course, I've modified it substantially over the years, most recently adding color syntax highlighting and Unicode. D version: https://github.com/DigitalMars/med C version: https://github.com/DigitalMars/me The "extension language" is it's so easy to just add some code and recompile it, there's no point in adding an extension language. I like…
But why use a μEmacs when you can use actual Emacs, with its comprehensive scriptability? μEmacsen made sense on older platforms like CP/M and MS-DOG, but they're pointless today.
Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s
#23I still use microEmacs, which floated around the intertoobs in the 1980s. Of course, I've modified it substantially over the years, most recently adding color syntax highlighting and Unicode. D version: https://github.com/DigitalMars/med C version: https://github.com/DigitalMars/me The "extension language" is it's so easy to just add some code and recompile it, there's no point in adding an extension language. I like…
But why use a μEmacs when you can use actual Emacs, with its comprehensive scriptability? μEmacsen made sense on older platforms like CP/M and MS-DOG, but they're pointless today.
I use mg because it's super fast
Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s
#24Isn't Notion pretty close to what's being described here? Sort of weird combination of networked spreadsheet, relational database, writing + notetaking app?
There's been an explosion of competitors and imitators, too. Some, like Roam, definitely have a utopian 1980s hypertext ethos.
Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s
#25People who weren't alive at the time may not appreciate how different the commercial app ecosystem was: how many more options, how much less concentrated. Here is a PC Magazine cover from 1988: https://archive.org/details/PC-Mag-1988-02-29 . It boasts a review of 55 different word processors. All of them would have been commercial; none of it was free, let alone open-source. It wasn't just word processors. Here is a…
Those annual PC Magazine Best Printer of 19XX that weighed the same as a tome - but they really tested in depth - now we just go to the local PC store and buy a crappy $99 inkjet on special from HP/Epson or Canon.
Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s
#26I'm actually missing working OLE (Object Linking and Embedding). I used to like it in MS Works in the 90ies: I could insert an area from a Works spreadsheet into a Works document and have it auto-update (you could choose if it should link the data or copy it.)
I works perfectly fine today in Windows applications like Office.
Sadly nobody has figured out something like OLE for the web - cut and paste is a hit and miss affair.
Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s
#27I wonder if Ozzie considers Groove to be one of the products he expended energy on and failed. From my perspective it seemed to actually be succeeding as a deeply network-aware thick client for collaborative knowledge work when Microsoft acquired it and killed it off. Or if not outright killed it, then managed it to death by strapping it to the SharePoint boat anchor. I wouldn't count that as a failure per-se. It did…
I think OneDrive had its origins in Groove back in the day.
No, SkyDrive was always centralized server-side without any of the conflict resolution coauth concepts that Groove had. It was a completely separate project.
Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s
#28I still use microEmacs, which floated around the intertoobs in the 1980s. Of course, I've modified it substantially over the years, most recently adding color syntax highlighting and Unicode. D version: https://github.com/DigitalMars/med C version: https://github.com/DigitalMars/me The "extension language" is it's so easy to just add some code and recompile it, there's no point in adding an extension language. I like…
But why use a μEmacs when you can use actual Emacs, with its comprehensive scriptability? μEmacsen made sense on older platforms like CP/M and MS-DOG, but they're pointless today.
I've used real Emacs in the past. I scripted extensions to it. It turns out that just adding code to microEmacs isn't any harder than scripting.
Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s
#29Whenever this comes up, I always ask, even though I can anticipate the answer: has anyone cloned Lotus Improv, either literally or ideologically? The closest thing I've used recently that was close was probably Airtable, but that's more an iterative improvement on FileMaker/Access, with a web focus, than really a competitor to Improv. There also used to be a Java desktop app, but it wasn't targeted for casual desktop…
Flexisheet was created to be a clone of Improv for Gnustep, but it was abandoned long ago. You could compiled the source.
https://flexisheet-orphans.blogspot.com/2006/10/circa-2002-l...
Sourcecode : https://github.com/gnustep/gap/tree/master/user-apps/FlexiSh...
Review of alternatives: https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=546563
Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I works perfectly fine today in Windows applications like Office.
Sadly nobody has figured out something like OLE for the web - cut and paste is a hit and miss affair.
The XML-based surface syntax for HTML5 can seamlessly embed data from arbitrary XML namespaces. It's just a matter of supporting this feature in the browser.