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PC-File
PC-File was a flat file database computer application most often run on DOS. It was one of the first of three widely popular software products sold via the marketing method that became known as shareware. It was originally written by Jim "Button" Knopf in late 1982, and he formed the company Buttonware to develop, market, and support it. The program was usually distributed for the cost of diskettes by local PC user groups. There was no copy protection and a manual was distributed as a file on the same diskettes as the program. It was extremely simple to use and extremely stable. It ran on just about any PC, while competing commercial products costing hundreds of dollars were often picky and full of bugs. Knopf originally wrote the software for his own use to manage a church mailing list, on an Apple II. Later, he ported it to CP/M, and then to DOS. Other people heard about it, and started requesting copies. Eventually, the cost of sending out update disks inspired Knopf to in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrew Fluegelman
Andrew Cardozo Fluegelman (November 27, 1943 – July 6, 1985) was a publisher, photographer, programmer and attorney best known as a pioneer of what is now known as the shareware business model for software marketing. He was also the founding editor of both ''PC World'' and ''Macworld'' and the leader of the 1970s ''New Games'' movement, which advocated the development of noncompetitive games. Early life Fluegelman was raised in White Plains, New York.Rodgers, Michael (October 20, 1985).The Mysterious Death of a Man Who Loved Life. ''Image''. The San Francisco Examiner. p. 19. He graduated from Yale University in 1969. Career Attorney Following graduation, Fluegelman worked in Midtown Manhattan before moving to California and working for a law firm in San Francisco. He was admitted to the State Bar of California in January 1971. He resigned in 1972 without any particular plan about his future. Writing The following year, Fluegelman started working for the Whole Earth Catalo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jim Knopf
Jim Knopf, nicknamed Jim Button ("Knopf" meaning "button" in German) (October 20, 1942 – October 1, 2013), was considered by many to be one of the "fathers" of shareware (so named by fellow software veteran Peter Norton). As an IBM employee, he wrote a program to help with a local church congregation. When demand for his program consumed too much of his time, he quit IBM and created Buttonware. He released his first program, PC-File (a flat file database), in late 1982 as "user supported software". He has been quoted as saying this expression not only reflected the optional payment model, but also that comments from users drove the development of later releases. He collaborated with PC-Talk (communications software) developer Andrew Fluegelman to adopt similar names (PC-File was originally "Easy-File"), and prices, for their initial shareware offerings; they also agreed to mention each other's products in their program's documentation. Fluegelman referred to this distr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PC-Write
PC-Write was a computer word processor and was one of the first three widely popular software products sold via the marketing method that became known as shareware. It was originally written by Bob Wallace in early 1983. Overview PC-Write was a modeless editor, using control characters and special function keys to perform various editing operations. By default it accepted many of the same control key commands as WordStar while adding many of its own features. It could produce plain ASCII text files, but there were also features that embedded control characters in a document to support automatic section renumbering, bold and italic fonts, and other such; also, a feature that was useful in list processing (as used in Auto LISP) was its ability to find matching open and closed parenthesis "( )"; this matching operation also worked for the other paired characters: , and . Lines beginning with particular control characters n and/or a period (.) contained commands that were evaluat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flat File Database
A flat-file database is a database stored in a file called a flat file. Records follow a uniform format, and there are no structures for indexing or recognizing relationships between records. The file is simple. A flat file can be a plain text file (e.g. csv, txt or tsv), or a binary file. Relationships can be inferred from the data in the database, but the database format itself does not make those relationships explicit. The term has generally implied a small database, but very large databases can also be flat. Overview Plain text files usually contain one record per line. There are different conventions for depicting data. In comma-separated values and delimiter-separated values files, fields can be separated by delimiters such as comma or tab characters. In other cases, each field may have a fixed length; short values may be padded with space characters. Extra formatting may be needed to avoid delimiter collision. Using delimiters incurs some overhead in lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shareware
Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer. Shareware is often offered as a download from a website or on a compact disc included with a magazine. Shareware differs from freeware, which is fully-featured software distributed at no cost to the user but without source code being made available; and free and open-source software, in which the source code is freely available for anyone to inspect and alter. There are many types of shareware and, while they may not require an initial up-front payment, many are intended to generate revenue in one way or another. Some limit use to personal non- commercial purposes only, with purchase of a license required for use in a business enterprise. The software itself may be time-limited, or it may remind the user that payment would be apprecia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CP/M
CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initially confined to single-tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64 kilobytes of memory, later versions of CP/M added multi-user variations and were migrated to 16-bit processors. The combination of CP/M and S-100 bus computers became an early standard in the microcomputer industry. This computer platform was widely used in business through the late 1970s and into the mid-1980s. CP/M increased the market size for both hardware and software by greatly reducing the amount of programming required to install an application on a new manufacturer's computer. An important driver of software innovation was the advent of (comparatively) low-cost microcomputers running CP/M, as independent programmers and hackers bought them and shared their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bob Wallace (computer Scientist)
Bob Wallace (May 29, 1949 – September 20, 2002) was an American software developer, programmer and the ninth Microsoft employee. He was the first popular user of the term shareware, creator of the word processing program PC-Write, founder of the software company Quicksoft and an "online drug guru" who devoted much time and money into the research of psychedelic drugs. Bob ended his Usenet posts with the phrase, "Bob Wallace (just my opinion)." Biography Bob Wallace was born in Arlington, Virginia. He first worked on computers as a member of an Explorer Scout troop sponsored by Control Data Corp. in Bethesda, Maryland. His father was an economist who later became Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the administration of John F. Kennedy. Beginning in 1967, Wallace attended Brown University, where he worked on the pioneering hypertext File Retrieval and Editing System with Andries van Dam and Ted Nelson. After attending the University of California, Santa Cruz for two ye ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the low level language, lowest programming level, executable code consists of Machine code, machine language instructions supported by an individual Microprocessor, processor—typically a central processing unit (CPU) or a graphics processing unit (GPU). Machine language consists of groups of Binary number, binary values signifying Instruction set architecture, processor instructions that change the state of the computer from its preceding state. For example, an instruction may change the value stored in a particular storage location in the computer—an effect that is not directly observable to the user. An instruction System call, may also invoke one of many Input/output, input or output operations, for example displaying some text on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PC Magazine
''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online and offline, online editions started in late 1994 and have continued to the present day. Overview ''PC Magazine'' provides reviews and previews of the latest personal computer hardware, hardware and software for the information technology professional. Articles are written by leading experts including John C. Dvorak, whose regular column and "Inside Track" feature were among the magazine's most popular attractions. Other regular departments include columns by long-time editor-in-chief Michael J. Miller (corporate executive), Michael J. Miller ("Forward Thinking"), Bill Machrone, and Jim Louderback, as well as: * "First Looks" (a collection of reviews of newly released products) * "Pipeline" (a collection of short articles and snippets on computer-industry developments) * "Solutions" (which includes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for servers, and Windows IoT for embedded systems. Defunct Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows Mobile, and Windows Phone. The first version of Windows was released on November 20, 1985, as a graphical operating system shell for MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Windows is the most popular desktop operating system in the world, with Usage share of operating systems, 75% market share , according to StatCounter. However, Windows is not the most used operating system when including both mobile and desktop OSes, due to Android (operating system), Android's massive growth. , the most recent version of Windows is Windows 11 for consumer Personal compu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DBASE
dBase (also stylized dBASE) was one of the first database management systems for microcomputers and the most successful in its day. The dBase system includes the core database engine, a query system, a forms engine, and a programming language that ties all of these components together. dBase's underlying file format, the file, is widely used in applications needing a simple format to store structured data. Originally released as Vulcan for PTDOS in 1978, the CP/M port caught the attention of Ashton-Tate in 1980. They licensed it and re-released it as dBASE II, and later ported it to IBM PC computers running DOS. On the PC platform, in particular, dBase became one of the best-selling software titles for a number of years. A major upgrade was released as dBase III, and ported to a wider variety of platforms, adding UNIX, and VMS. By the mid-1980s, Ashton-Tate was one of the "big three" software publishers in the early business software market, the others being Lotus Dev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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