SpeedScript is a

word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices ded ...

originally printed as a type-in MLX machine language listing in 1984-85 issues of ''

Compute! ''Compute!'' (), often stylized as ''COMPUTE!'', was an American home computer magazine that was published from 1979 to 1994. Its origins can be traced to 1978 in Len Lindsay's ''PET Gazette'', one of the first magazines for the Commodore PET c ...

'' and ''

Compute!'s Gazette ''Compute!'s Gazette'' (), stylized as ''COMPUTE!'s Gazette'', was a computer magazine of the 1980s, directed at users of Commodore's 8-bit home computers. Announced as ''The Commodore Gazette'', it was a Commodore-only daughter magazine of the ...

'' magazines. Approximately 5 KB in length, it provided many of the same features as commercial word processing packages of the 8-bit era, such as

PaperClip A paper clip (or paperclip) is a tool used to hold sheets of paper together, usually made of steel wire bent to a looped shape (though some are covered in plastic). Most paper clips are variations of the ''Gem'' type introduced in the 1890s or e ...

and

Bank Street Writer Bank Street Writer is a word processor for the Apple II, Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64, MSX, Macintosh, IBM PC, and IBM PCjr computers. It was designed in 1981 by a team of educators at the Bank Street College of Education in New York City, s ...

. Versions were published for the

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...

and 128,

Atari 8-bit family The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE, ...

VIC-20 The VIC-20 (known as the VC-20 in Germany and the VIC-1001 in Japan) is an 8-bit home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PE ...

, and

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

Versions

In April 1983 ''

'' published Scriptor, a word processor written by staff writer Charles Brannon in

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

and

assembly language In computer programming, assembly language (or assembler language, or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as Assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence be ...

, as a

type-in program A type-in program or type-in listing was computer source code printed in a home computer magazine or book. It was meant to be entered via the keyboard by the reader and then saved to cassette tape or floppy disk. The result was a usable game, ...

for the

. In January 1984 version 1.0 of his new word processor SpeedScript appeared in ''

'' for the

and

. 1.1 appeared in ''Compute!'s Second Book of Commodore 64'', 2.0 on ''Gazette Disk'' in May 1984, and 3.0 in ''Compute!'' in March and April 1985. Corrections that updated 3.0 to 3.1 appeared in May 1985, and the full 3.1 version appeared in a book published by Compute!, ''SpeedScript: The Word Processor for the Commodore 64 and VIC-20''. POKEs for the Vic and 64, to update 3.0 or 3.1 to 3.2, appeared in the December 1985 ''Compute!'' and the full 3.2 version was available on the January 1986 ''Compute! Disk''. The POKEs for the 64 were also included in the full SpeedScript 3.2 article when it was reprinted in the May 1987 ''Compute!'s Gazette'' issue and the full program, plus three additional utilities, were available on the May 1987 Gazette Disk. SpeedScript 3.2, alongside SpeedCalc, Fontmaker, and five other utility programs, was included in the special Best of COMPUTE! & GAZETTE disk/magazine in 1988. Also of note was the Reader's Feedback column in the January 1986 Compute! which had POKEs to eliminate the DISK or TAPE? question. There was, however, a typo in the listing and that was corrected in the March 1986 CAPUTE! column. Ports of V3 for the

and the

were printed in ''Compute!'' in May and June 1985 respectively. SpeedScript was written entirely in assembly language, and Compute! Publications later released book/disk combinations that contained the complete commented source code (as well as the machine language in MLX format) for each platform. A version of SpeedScript for

was created in 1988 by Randy Thompson and published in book form by Compute! Books. This version was written in

Turbo Pascal Turbo Pascal is a software development system that includes a compiler and an integrated development environment (IDE) for the Pascal (programming language), Pascal programming language running on CP/M, CP/M-86, and DOS. It was originally develo ...

with portions written in assembly language, and added incremental new features to the word processor such as additional printer commands, full cursor-control (to take advantage of the PC's Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys), and a native 80-column mode.

80-column updates

The original versions of SpeedScript were designed for the 40-column Commodore 64 and the 22-column VIC-20. When the

Commodore 128 The Commodore 128, also known as the C128, C-128, C= 128,The "C=" represents the graphical part of the logo. is the last 8-bit home computer that was commercially released by Commodore Business Machines (CBM). Introduced in January 1985 at the ...

was released, featuring an 80-column display, many users requested an updated version of SpeedScript to take advantage of this new capability. In June 1986, ''Compute!'s Gazette'' published SpeedScript-80, a short

patch Patch or Patches may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Patch Johnson, a fictional character from ''Days of Our Lives'' * Patch (''My Little Pony''), a toy * "Patches" (Dickey Lee song), 1962 * "Patches" (Chairmen of the Board song) ...

for SpeedScript 3.0 or higher, which enabled the use of the VDC's new 80-column capabilities on a Commodore 128 running in 64 mode. However, this did not take advantage of the C128's expanded memory, and a few minor commands were eliminated due to the alterations to the existing code. SpeedScript 128 in action

A native version for the C128 called SpeedScript 128, written by Bob Kodadek, was finally released in October 1987 Compute!'s Gazette. This version eliminated the problems of the patch and took full advantage of the C128's 80-column screen, its expanded memory and the enhanced keyboard. A later update (SS128-Plus) appeared in September 1989 Compute!'s Gazette, adding full text justification, tab setting, and online help. In December 1987, ''Compute!'s Gazette'' published ''Instant 80'', a utility for the C64 version of SpeedScript that allowed 80-column document previewing (though not editing) on a standard C64. This was done by using half-width characters on a high-resolution graphics screen.

Utilities

Although SpeedScript did not include a built-in

spell checker In software, a spell checker (or spelling checker or spell check) is a software feature that checks for misspellings in a text. Spell-checking features are often embedded in software or services, such as a word processor, email client, electronic di ...

, additional utilities were soon published. In December 1985, SpeedCheck was published in ''Compute!'s Gazette''. This external utility accepted SpeedScript files (as well as those from compatible word processors, such as ''

'') and spell-checked them against a user-defined dictionary. An enhanced 80-column version for the C128, SpeedCheck 128, was published in September 1988. Another utility, ScriptSave, was developed to provide automatic saving functionality to the Commodore 64 version of SpeedScript 3.0. This program would set up a timer program to save documents to disk, before loading and running SpeedScript itself. Several additional utilities were published in the May 1987 issue of ''Compute!'s Gazette'' along with SpeedScript 3.2. ScriptRead was developed to identify and preview SpeedScript documents on a disk, with the ability to scratch any files no longer needed. This was an important addition as on a single-drive system there would be no way to save work if the disk became full. SpeedSearch provided full-text search of all SpeedScript documents on a disk, returning a count of how many times the searched word or phrase was used in each document. Date and Time Stamper introduces a program to the disk drive that adds time stamps to files on disk, then executes SpeedScript.

Reception

In a review of four word processors, ''

The Transactor ''The Transactor'' was a computer magazine directed at users of Commodore home computers. In contrast to other Commodore-focused publications such as ''Commodore Magazine'' and ''COMPUTE!'s Gazette'', ''The Transactors popularity was based o ...

'' in May 1986 praised SpeedScript as "extremely sophisticated", citing its large text buffer, logical cursor navigation, and

undo Undo is an interaction technique which is implemented in many computer programs. It erases the last change done to the document, reverting it to an older state. In some more advanced programs, such as graphic processing, undo will negate the las ...

command. While criticizing its lack of right justification, the magazine concluded that SpeedScript was not only "an easy winner" among budget-priced word processors, but also "a serious contender even when compared with the higher priced programs". SpeedScript was sufficiently popular to receive coverage in reference works, such as the "Wordprocessing Reference Guide" of

Karl Hildon Karl may refer to: People * Karl (given name), including a list of people and characters with the name * Karl der Große, commonly known in English as Charlemagne * Karl Marx, German philosopher and political writer * Karl of Austria, last Austria ...

's ''Inner Space Anthology'' and

Mitchell Waite Mitchell Waite is an American computer programmer, author and publisher of programming books and the mobile app iBird. Birding app first published by Mitch Waite Group in 2008iBird Pro for the Apple iPhoneHis first book "Projects in Sight, Sound ...

's ''The Official Book for the Commodore 128''.

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

's Kermit software for Commodore computers supported transferring SpeedScript files.

Gallery

References

{{Word processors 1984 software Word processors Atari 8-bit family software Apple II word processors Commodore 64 software Commodore 128 software VIC-20 software Assembly language software Commercial software with available source code