MindWrite is word processor software for early Macintosh computers running classic Mac OS. It was released in 1986 by MindWork Software, making it among the earliest 3rd party word processors on the platform. It was later distributed by Access Technologies, who then transferred their Mac software to a spinoff, DeltaPoint. Sales continued with DeltaPoint at least into the early 1990s.
The key feature of MindWrite was its integrated outliner, a system that allowed documents to be organized in a hierarchy and then re-arranged with drag-and-drop operations. After the release of the pioneering ThinkTank, such systems were considered to be a new way to organize knowledge and perform workflows. MindWrite was the first program to cleanly integrate an outliner with a word processor. and this generated considerable press for the product. The system was otherwise fairly simple in terms of style and layout options and initially lacked a spell checker, issues that were always noted in reviews. Additionally, it was very slow.
An outliner was added to Microsoft Word version 3. When Microsoft began offering software bundles for the Mac, sales of alternative solutions slowed. The product changed hands several times before going dormant in the 1990s. It cannot be used on Macintosh systems higher than 7.0.
History
Cary Wyman and Dennis Moncrief formed AthenaSoft to produce Icon Review, an early mail order catalog of software for the recently-released Macintosh. The ultimate goal was to build up a client base which they would then use as the basis for marketing their own software. The program was first advertised as MultiWrite in Icon Review's Summer catalog, which arrived in June. However, the program was not ready at this point, and did not ship until 20 November 1986, which led to "a huge number of complaints."
This arrangement with AthenaSoft worked for a time, but as work on MindWrite continued it proved too difficult to manage and Wyman split off MindWork Software in 1987. Looking for a distributor, in late 1987 MindWork was purchased by Access Technologies, a minicomputer software vendor whose primary product was a spreadsheet program known as 20/20. Access felt that it needed to shift into the microcomputer market as the power of these platforms grew. This led Access to purchase both MindWork and Data Taylor, creators of the Mac spreadsheet Trapeze.
Not long after, Access decided to wind up operations entirely and began looking for potential purchasers. They spun out their Mac products under the DeltaPoint name in order to simplify the offering. The remaining minicomputer portion was purchased by Computer Associates. DeltaPoint continued on its own, using sales of MindWrite and Trapeze to fund the development of a new program, DeltaGraph. DeltaGraph would go on to be a best-seller and continues to be offered through a new developer. Wyman later developed a new word processor for the Mac, Taste, which DeltaPoint distributed in the early 1990s.
Description
MindWrite will appear familiar to any user of early classic MacOS software, especially MacWrite. It does, however, offer many more features. For one, in contrast to MacWrite which allowed only one document to be opened at once, MindWrite allowed four to be opened in separate windows and text could be easily cut and pasted between them. It supported much larger documents, which would have to be broken up into parts in MacWrite. It allowed a new layout ruler to be inserted at any point, easing layout changes. It also allowed editing with both the mouse and cursor keys, although it did not allow text selection using the keyboard, only movement. Some of the more advanced features included a word count, and the ability to mark sections as being changed.
The most notable feature, however, is the outliner system. The document could be marked up with section separators, which defined the levels. A user-selected marker, normally a diamond, appears beside paragraphs. Additional text is normally added at the same level but can be dragged to become a sub-level using the mouse. Sections can be collapsed or expanded by clicking on their marker and can be displayed as empty or with the first line of text when in the collapsed state. When the user moves the mouse over one of the section markers the pointer turns into a hand, and holding down the mouse button shows it being "pinched" and thus indicating it can be moved. The outline is used as the basis for both the table of contents (TOC) and an optional paragraph numbering feature; one oddity is that the table of contents matches the style of the text in that section header, making the formatting of the TOC difficult.