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27-608: A variant form usually has a very similar appearance and meaning as its base form. The mechanism is intended for variant forms where, generally, if the variant form is unavailable, displaying the base character does not change the meaning of the text, and may not even be noticeable to many readers. Unicode defines two types of variation sequences: Variation selector characters reside in several Unicode blocks: Variation selectors are not required for Arabic and Latin cursive characters, where substitution of glyphs can occur based on context: glyphs may be connected together depending on whether

54-410: A rich text attribute. For other glyph substitution, the author's intent may need to be encoded with the text and cannot be determined contextually. This is the case with character/glyphs referred to as gaiji , where different glyphs are used for the same character either historically or for ideographs for family names. This is one of the gray areas in distinguishing between a glyph and a character: If

81-468: A family name differs slightly from the ideograph character it derives from, then is that a simple glyph variant or a character variant? Character substitutions may also occur outside of Unicode, for example with OpenType Layout tags. As of Unicode version 16.0, standardized variation sequences specifically for emoji/text presentation are defined for base characters in twenty blocks: Other standardized variation sequences are formed with base characters in

108-508: A problem to Apple : the Mac was planned to be launched in 1983, with a new user interface paradigm , but no third-party software would be available for it, nor could users easily write their own. Users would end up with a computer that did nothing. In order to fill this void, several members of the Mac team took it upon themselves to write simple applications to fill these roles until third-party developers published more full-fledged software. The result

135-509: A relationship with many Apple employees, many of whom were on the Macintosh development team. He agreed to lead the MacWrite development team on a semi-official basis. Before it was released, MacWrite was known as "Macintosh WP" (Word Processor) and "MacAuthor". Allegedly, Steve Jobs was not convinced of his team's abilities, and secretly commissioned another project just to be sure ; its development

162-421: A thesaurus. The result was a suite of products that all look and work the same way, and are able to read and write each other's formats. The resulting MacWrite Pro, released in early 1993, was a major upgrade from previous versions. Reviewers almost universally praised the new release as offering all the required tools while still being very easy to use. However, development had been slow; one developer claimed it

189-409: A word processing program. MacWrite established the conventions for a GUI -based word processor, with such features as a toolbar for selecting paragraph formatting options, font and style menus, and a ruler for tabs, margins, and indents. Similar word processors followed, including the first GUI version of Microsoft Word and WriteNow, which addressed many of MacWrite's limitations while adhering to much

216-432: Is because formatted text is not necessarily binary, it may be text-only, such as HTML , RTF or enriched text files, and it may be ASCII-only. Conversely, a plain text file may be non-ASCII (in an encoding such as Unicode UTF-8 ). Text-only formatted text is achieved by markup which too is textual, while some editors of formatted text like Microsoft Word save in a binary format. Formatted text has its genesis in

243-469: The classic Mac OS , but few other problems were addressed. Things changed in the later 1980s with the introduction of MacWrite II. The main changes for this release were an updated user interface, a number of new "style" capabilities, and the inclusion of Claris' file translator technology, XTND . MacWrite II was the first really new version of the software, and was based on a word processing engine purchased from Quark, Inc. By 1989 Word already dominated

270-622: The Mac and GUIs in general. MacWrite's inclusion with the Macintosh discouraged developers from creating other word processing software for the computer. Apple unbundled the software with the introduction of the Macintosh Plus, requiring customers to purchase it for the first time. Strong sales continued, and Apple eventually let MacWrite and MacPaint languish with no development resources assigned to improving them. Unfortunately this plan backfired. Users flooded Apple with complaints, demanding newer versions that would keep pace with new features in

297-437: The Mac with about 60% market share, but the introduction of MacWrite II changed things dramatically; by 1990 Word had dropped to about 45% of the market, and MacWrite had risen to about 30%. This seemed to demonstrate that it would be worth developing further, but Claris did not respond quickly with updated versions. Microsoft, on the other hand, did, and soon introduced Word 4.0. MacWrite's share once again started to erode. In

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324-552: The Mac, while at the same time developers flooded Apple with complaints about there being any possibility of an upgrade. Apple finally decided the only solution was to spin off the products as a separate company, Claris . Claris formed in 1987 and re-released the existing versions of the Apple products under their own name. Initially it seemed Claris was as uninterested in developing MacWrite as Apple had been. Several minor upgrades were released to allow MacWrite to run on newer versions of

351-718: The beginning or end of the file (e.g. in Microsoft Word ). Formatted text documents in binary files have, however, the disadvantages of formatting scope and secrecy. Whereas the extent of formatting is accurately marked in markup languages, WYSIWYG formatting is based on memory, that is, keeping for example your pressing of the boldface button until cancelled. This can lead to formatting mistakes and maintenance troubles. As for secrecy, formatted text document file formats tend to be proprietary and undocumented, leading to difficulty in coding compatibility by third parties, and also to unnecessary upgrades because of version changes. WordStar

378-504: The body text by special characters, such as angle brackets in HTML . For example, this text: is marked up in HTML thus: The italicised text is enclosed by an opening and a closing italics tag. In LaTeX , the text would be marked up like this: Most markup languages can be edited with any text editor , needing no special software . Many markup languages can also be edited with specialized software designed to automate some functions or present

405-498: The character is the initial character in a word, the final character, a medial character or an isolated character. These types of glyph substitution are easily handled by the context of the character with no other authoring input involved. Authors may also use special-purpose characters such as joiners and non-joiners to force an alternate form of glyph where it would not otherwise appear. Ligatures are similar instances where glyphs may be substituted simply by turning ligatures on or off as

432-559: The following fourteen blocks: As of 13 September 2022, ideographic variation sequences are defined for base characters in nine blocks: Rich text In computing , formatted text , styled text, or rich text , as opposed to plain text , is digital text which has styling information beyond the minimum of semantic elements: colours, styles ( boldface , italic ), sizes , and special features in HTML (such as hyperlinks ). Formatted text cannot rightly be identified with binary files or be distinct from ASCII text. This

459-454: The late 1980s, Claris started a massive upgrade series to produce the "Pro" line of products. The main change would be to integrate all of their products with a consistent GUI based on that of FileMaker . This included a common toolbar running down the left side of the screen, and a number of standardized tool palettes. In addition, the Pro series also used common international spelling dictionaries and

486-427: The mid-1990s, MacWrite was no longer a serious contender in the word processing market, development ended around 1995, and it was completely discontinued in 1998 due to dwindling sales. When the Mac was first being created, it was clear that users would interact with it differently from other personal computers. Typical computers of the era booted into text-only disk operating system or BASIC environments, requiring

513-471: The output as WYSIWYG . Since the invention of MacWrite , the first WYSIWYG word processor, in which the typist codes the formatting visually rather than by inserting textual markup, word processors have tended to save to binary files . Opening such files with a text editor reveals them embedded with various binary characters, either around the formatted text (e.g. in WordPerfect ) or separate from it, at

540-622: The pre-computer use of underscoring to embolden passages in typewritten manuscripts . In the first interactive systems of early computer technology, underlining was not possible, and users made up for this lack (and the lack of formatting in ASCII) by using certain symbols as substitutes. Emphasis, for example, could be achieved in ASCII in a number of ways: Surrounding by underscores was also used for book titles: Look it up in _The_C_Programming_Language_. Formatting can be marked by tags distinguished from

567-534: The same user interface. The original Mac could print to a dot matrix printer called the ImageWriter , but quality was only adequate. The later LaserWriter laser printer allowed dramatically better output, at a price. However, the possibilities of the GUI/MacWrite/LaserWriter combination were obvious and this, in turn, spurred the development of desktop publishing , which became the "killer app" for

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594-597: The user once done. MacWrite MacWrite is a discontinued WYSIWYG word processor released along with the first Apple Macintosh systems in 1984. Together with MacPaint , it was one of the two original " killer applications " that propelled the adoption and popularity of the GUI in general, and the Mac in particular. MacWrite was spun off to Claris , which released a major update in 1989 as MacWrite II . A further series of improvements produced 1993's MacWrite Pro , but further improvements were few and far between. By

621-420: The users to type in commands. Some of these programs may have presented a graphical user interface of their own, but on the Mac, users would instead be expected to stay in the standard GUI both for launching and running programs. Having an approachable, consistent GUI was an advantage for the Mac platform, but unlike prior personal computers, the Mac was sold with no programming language built-in. This presented

648-438: Was MacWrite and MacPaint, which shipped free with every Macintosh from 1984 to 1986. The MacWrite development team was a company called Encore Systems, founded and led by Randy Wigginton , one of Apple's earliest employees, and included Don Breuner and Ed Ruder (co-founders of Encore Systems and also early Apple employees; Gabreal Franklin later joined Encore Systems as President.) Wigginton, who had left Apple in 1981, maintained

675-511: Was a popular word processor that did not use binary files with hidden characters. OpenOffice.org Writer saves files in an XML format. However, the resultant file is a binary since it is compressed (a tarball equivalent). PDF is another formatted text file format that is usually binary (using compression for the text, and storing graphics and fonts in binary). It is generally an end-user format, written from an application such as Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org Writer, and not editable by

702-411: Was eventually released as WriteNow . The first versions of MacWrite were rather limited, supporting only the most basic editing features and able to handle just a few pages of text before running into performance problems. (Early versions of MacWrite held the entire document in memory, and early versions of the Macintosh had relatively little free memory.) Nevertheless, it increased user expectations of

729-406: Was primarily due to extremely demanding quality assurance requirements. By the time MacWrite Pro was released, Word completely dominated the word processor market. Pro did little to address MacWrite's rapidly dwindling market share, which briefly stabilized at about 5% of the market before starting to slide again. Sales were apparently dismal, and it was one of the first products Claris abandoned in

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