A word processor (more formally known as document preparation system) is a computer A computer is a programmable machine that receives input, stores and manipulates data//information, and provides output in a useful format application Application software, also known as applications or apps, is computer software designed to help the user to perform singular or multiple related specific tasks. Examples include Enterprise software, Accounting software, Office suites, Graphics software and media players used for the production (including composition, editing, formatting, and possibly printing) of any sort of printable material.
Word processor may also refer to a type of stand-alone office machine, popular in the 1970s and 1980s, combining the keyboard text-entry and printing functions of an electric typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with a set of keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. From their invention before 1870 through much of the 20th century, typewriters were indispensable tools for many professional writers and in business offices. By the end of the 1980s, word with a dedicated processor (like a computer processor) for the editing of text. Although features and design varied between manufacturers and models, with new features added as technology advanced, word processors for several years usually featured a monochrome display and the ability to save documents on memory cards A memory card or flash card is an electronic flash memory data storage device used for storing digital information. They are commonly used in many electronic devices, including digital cameras, mobile phones, laptop computers, MP3 players, and video game consoles. They are small, re-recordable, and they can retain data without power or diskettes A floppy disk is a data storage medium that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic shell. Later models introduced innovations such as spell-checking programs, increased formatting options, and dot-matrix printing. As the more versatile combination of a personal computer A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator. This is in contrast to the batch processing or time-sharing models which allowed large expensive mainframe and separate printer In computing, a printer is a peripheral which produces a hard copy of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies. Many printers are primarily used as local peripherals, and are attached by a printer cable or, in most newer printers, a USB cable to a computer which serves as a document became commonplace, most business-machine companies stopped manufacturing the word processor as a stand-alone office machine. As of 2009 there were only two U.S. companies, Classic and AlphaSmart The AlphaSmart is a brand of portable, battery powered, word-processing keyboards manufactured by NEO Direct, Inc. , currently owned by Renaissance Learning, Inc, which still made stand-alone word processors.[1] Many older machines, however, remain in use.
Word processors are descended from early text formatting tools (sometimes called text justification tools, from their only real capability). Word processing Word processing is the creation of documents using a word processor. It can also refer to advanced shorthand techniques, sometimes used in specialized contexts with a specially modified typewriter was one of the earliest applications for the personal computer A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator. This is in contrast to the batch processing or time-sharing models which allowed large expensive mainframe in office productivity.
Although early word processors used tag-based markup A markup language is a modern system for annotating a text in a way that is syntactically distinguishable from that text. The idea and terminology evolved from the "marking up" of manuscripts, i.e. the revision instructions by editors, traditionally written with a blue pencil on authors' manuscripts. Examples are typesetting instructions for document formatting, most modern word processors take advantage of a graphical user interface A graphical user interface (sometimes pronounced gooey) is a type of user interface item that allows people to interact with programs in more ways than typing such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment with images rather than text commands. A GUI providing some form of What You See Is What You Get WYSIWYG , is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed during editing appears very similar to the final output, which might be a printed document, web page, slide presentation or even the lighting for a theatrical event editing. Most are powerful systems consisting of one or more programs that can produce any arbitrary combination of images An image is an artifact, for example a two-dimensional picture, that has a similar appearance to some subject—usually a physical object or a person, graphics Graphics are visual presentations on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, computer screen, paper, or stone to brand, inform, illustrate, or entertain. Examples are photographs, drawings, Line Art, graphs, diagrams, typography, numbers, symbols, geometric designs, maps, engineering drawings, or other images. Graphics often combine text, and text, the latter handled with type-setting Typesetting is the composition of text material by means of types capability.
Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh (1984), the AT&T Unix PC (1985), Atari ST (1986), SCO UNIX, OS/2, and Microsoft Windows ( is the most widely used word processing software. Microsoft estimates that over 500,000,000 people use the Microsoft Office Microsoft Office is an office suite of interrelated desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. Microsoft Office was introduced by Microsoft in 1989 for Macintosh, with a version for Windows in 1990. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of Office suite,[2] which includes Word. Many other word processing applications exist, including WordPerfect WordPerfect is a word processing application, now owned by Corel. Bruce Bastian, a Brigham Young University graduate student, and BYU computer science professor Dr. Alan Ashton joined forces to design a word processing system for the city of Orem's Data General Corp. minicomputer system in 1979. Bastian and Ashton kept the rights to the (which dominated the market from the mid-1980s to early-1990s on computers running Microsoft's MS-DOS MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating systems offering a graphical user interface (GUI), operating system An operating system is the software on a computer that manages the way different programs use its hardware, and regulates the ways that a user controls the computer. Operating systems are found on almost any device that contains a computer with multiple programs—from cellular phones and video game consoles to supercomputers and web servers. Some) and open source Open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology. Before the term open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; open source applications OpenOffice.org Writer OpenOffice.org Writer is the word processor component of the OpenOffice.org software package. Writer is a word processor similar to Microsoft Word and Corel's WordPerfect, with some of their features, AbiWord AbiWord is a free and open source software word processor. It was originally started by SourceGear Corporation as the first part of a proposed AbiSuite. Development stopped when SourceGear changed their focus to Internet appliances. AbiWord was adopted by some open source developers and AbiWord continued to be developed. The name "AbiWord&, KWord KWord is a free word processor, a member of the KOffice project and of the K Desktop Environment, and LyX LyX is a document processor following the self-coined "what you see is what you mean" paradigm (WYSIWYM), as opposed to the WYSIWYG ideas used by word processors. This means that the user only has to care about the structure of and information within the text, while the formatting is done by LaTeX, an advanced typesetting system. LyX is. Web-based word processors, such as Google Docs Google Docs is a free, Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, form, and data storage service offered by Google. It allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating in real-time with other users. Google Docs combines the features of Writely and Spreadsheets with a presentation program incorporating technology, are a relatively new category.
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Characteristics
Word processing typically implies the presence of text manipulation functions that extend beyond a basic ability to enter and change text, such as automatic generation of:
- batch mailings using a form letter and an address database (also called mail merging);
- indices of keywords and their page numbers;
- tables of contents with section titles and their page numbers;
- tables of figures with caption titles and their page numbers;
- cross-referencing with section or page numbers;
- footnote numbering;
- new versions Revision control, also known as version control, source control or software configuration management , is the management of changes to documents, programs, and other information stored as computer files. It is most commonly used in software development, where a team of people may change the same files. Changes are usually identified by a number or of a document using variables (e.g. model numbers, product names, etc.)
Other word processing functions include "spell checking" (actually checks against wordlists), "grammar checking" (checks for what seem to be simple grammar errors), and a "thesaurus" function (finds words with similar or opposite meanings). Other common features include collaborative editing, comments and annotations, support for images and diagrams and internal cross-referencing.
Word processors can be distinguished from several other, related forms of software:
Text editors Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code (modern examples of which include Notepad Notepad is a simple text editor for Microsoft Windows. It has been included in all versions of Microsoft Windows since Windows 1.0 in 1985, BBEdit BBEdit is a proprietary text editor made by Bare Bones Software. It was originally developed for Macintosh System Software 6 and is now available for Mac OS X, Kate, Gedit gedit is a UTF-8 compatible text editor for the GNOME desktop environment, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. Designed as a general purpose text editor, gedit emphasizes simplicity and ease of use. It includes tools for editing source code and structured text such as markup languages), were the precursors of word processors. While offering facilities for composing and editing text, they do not format documents. This can be done by batch document processing systems, starting with TJ-2 and RUNOFF and still available in such systems as LaTeX Latex as found in nature is a milky sap-like fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants . It is a complex emulsion consisting of proteins, alkaloids, starches, sugars, oils, tannins, resins, and gums that coagulates on exposure to air. It is usually exuded after tissue injury. In most plants, latex is white, but some have yellow, orange, or (as well as programs that implement the paged-media extensions to HTML HTML, which stands for HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It is written in the form of HTML elements consisting of "tags" surrounded by angle brackets within the web page content and CSS Cascading Style Sheets is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics (that is, the look and formatting) of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can also be applied to any kind of XML document, including SVG and XUL). Text editors are now used mainly by programmers A programmer, computer programmer or coder is someone who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software. One who practices or professes a formal approach to programming may also be known as a programmer analyst. A, website designers, computer system administrators, and, in the case of LaTeX Latex as found in nature is a milky sap-like fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants . It is a complex emulsion consisting of proteins, alkaloids, starches, sugars, oils, tannins, resins, and gums that coagulates on exposure to air. It is usually exuded after tissue injury. In most plants, latex is white, but some have yellow, orange, or by mathematicians and scientists (for complex formulas and for citations in rare languages). They are also useful when fast startup times, small file sizes, editing speed and simplicity of operation are preferred over formatting.
Later desktop publishing Desktop publishing combines a personal computer and WYSIWYG page layout software to create publication documents on a computer for either large scale publishing or small scale local multifunction peripheral output and distribution programs were specifically designed to allow elaborate layout for publication, but often offered only limited support for editing. Typically, desktop publishing programs allowed users to import text that was written using a text editor or word processor.
Almost all word processors enable users to employ styles, which are used to automate consistent formatting of text body, titles, subtitles, highlighted text, and so on.
Styles greatly simplify managing the formatting of large documents, since changing a style automatically changes all text that the style has been applied to. Even in shorter documents styles can save a lot of time while formatting. However, most help files refer to styles as an 'advanced feature' of the word processor, which often discourages users from using styles regularly.
Document statistics
Most current word processors can calculate various statistics Statistics is the formal science of making effective use of numerical data relating to groups of individuals or experiments. It deals with all aspects of this, including not only the collection, analysis and interpretation of such data, but also the planning of the collection of data, in terms of the design of surveys and experiments pertaining to a document. These usually include:
- Character In computer and machine-based telecommunications terminology, a character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllabary in the written form of a natural language count, word count The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Most word processors can do automatic word counts; Unix-like systems include a program wc specifically for word counting. Different word counting programs may give varying results, depending on the definition of "word", on the text segmentation algorithms, and on, sentence In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, often defined to indicate a grammatical and lexical unit consisting of one or more words that represent distinct concepts. A sentence can include words grouped meaningfully to express a statement, question, exclamation, request or command count, line count, paragraph A paragraph is a self-contained unit of a discourse in writing dealing with a particular point or idea. Paragraphs consist of one or more sentences. The start of a paragraph is indicated by beginning on a new line. Sometimes the first line is indented. At various times, the beginning of a paragraph has been indicated by the pilcrow: ¶ count, page A page is one side of a leaf of paper. It can be used as a measurement of documenting or recording quantity count.
- Word, sentence and paragraph length.
- Editing time.
Errors are common; for instance, a dash surrounded by spaces — like either of these — may be counted as a word.
Typical usage
Word processors have a variety of uses and applications within the business world, home, and education.
Business
Within the business world, word processors are extremely useful tools. Typical uses include:
- legal copies Copyright law in the United States is part of federal law, and is authorized by the U.S. Constitution. The power to enact copyright law is granted in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, also known as the Copyright Clause, which states:
- letters A letter is a written message from one party to another. The role of letters in communication has changed significantly since the 19th century. Historically, letters were the only reliable means of communication between two persons in different locations and letterhead A letterhead is the heading at the top of a sheet of letter paper. It usually consists of a name and an address, and a logo or corporate design, and sometimes a background. Letterhead may also refer to a piece of letter paper imprinted with such a heading
- memos
- reference documents
Businesses tend to have their own format and style for any of these. Thus, versatile word processors with layout editing and similar capabilities find widespread use in most businesses.
Education
Many schools have begun to teach typing and word processing to their students, starting as early as elementary school. Typically these skills are developed throughout secondary school in preparation for the business world. Undergraduate students typically spend many hours writing essays. Graduate and doctoral students continue this trend, as well as creating works for research and publication.
Home
While many homes have word processors on their computers, word processing in the home tends to be educational, planning or business related, dealing with assignments or work being completed at home, or occasionally recreational, e.g. writing short stories. Some use word processors for letter writing, résumé creation, and card creation. However, many of these home publishing processes have been taken over by desktop publishing programs specifically oriented toward home use. which are better suited to these types of documents.
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Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:13:35 GMT+00:00
WalletPop (blog) Microsoft Word still ranks as the standard word processor . Apple has its Pages word processor , as well, which has a version on the iPad. ...
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an individual Operating System for Windowing options Always provide your user with an exit menu option WordProcessor java shows code for menus note that it does not process any words menued WordProcessor
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Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:43:12 GM
Information This listing is for 1 x Tandy WP-2 portable . word processor. which is sold as untested only. Requires 6V 200mA DC power supply or 3 x AA rechargeable batteries. Please note; this item is sold as only, no warranty applies, ...
