[Info-vax] Desktop office environments on VMS, was: Re: Final Orace release on VMS.

[Simon Clubley]

On 2020-11-16, Marc Van Dyck <marc.gr.vandyck at invalid.skynet.be> wrote:
> on 15/11/2020, Jan-Erik Söderholm supposed :
>>
>> VMS has never been a mainstream office desktop environment, outside of
>> the technical area, as far as I know.
>
> In a previous life, I developped financial trading software, and
> installed trading rooms where each trader desk was equipped with a
> VAXstation. VAX Clusters of 3 boot nodes and 50+ satellites. But yes,
> that was a long time ago, and in this business, costs were not really
> an issue... Was fun, though.
>

ALL-IN-1 was apparently popular during the 1980s, but office applications
on PCs killed that market stone dead.

WordPerfect was a viable third-party product on VMS for a while as well,
but PCs also killed that market stone dead. The unique feature in WordPerfect
was its Reveal Codes facility which also allowed the codes to be directly
edited and not just viewed.

WPS-Plus (a DEC word processor) was available on VMS at one point although
I know nothing about it and I don't know whether it had anything like
WordPerfect's Reveal Codes.

DECdirect also helped here for a while IMHO in being able to supply some
products directly without having to go through full sales procedures.

However, like Phillip's desired web browser, the VMS market for all these
products is long-dead and has long been replaced by PC-based applications.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.