Escriba

Escriba/Pluma is a WYSIWYG word processor for the OS/2 Presentation Manager interface. It does not attempt to go head-to-head with the large professional word processors available for OS/2 PM or Windows, but rather tries to provide a more modest set of functions. Normal text formatting is provided for, plus the program has the ability to handle graphics. All installed ATM fonts are supported, in all the native formats and in a wide range of sizes. Printer support is strictly through the OS/2 PM interface, providing output on any printer supported by that interface, including FAX and plotter devices.



History
The original programmer speaking: Pluma was the result of three things: my frustration at the time (early 1990s) with the state of word processors in general, my discovery of the Adobe Type Manager in OS/2 1.3, and my tendency to write what I need for myself rather than buying something off the shelf.

At the time, the only WYSIWYG word processor I knew of out there was Samna Ami, which was later acquired by Lotus and rebranded. That, however, worked only on Windows 2.11, and apart from how badly it worked (unless one happened to own a PostScript printer), I was in a state of opposition to Microsoft in those days. I had just got done spending a lot of money on hardware, software and documentation to learn to program with OS/2, and Microsoft dumped it and suggested we should buy everything new... for Windoze. For what was, at the time, a vastly inferior (though nicer looking) operating system. So I was quite ticked with Microsoft, and remained so until IBM pretty much abandoned normal people on OS/2 after Y2K.

Anyway, it took only a few days to cobble something useful together. After that, it was a matter of adding bells and whistles over time. After migrating the program to OS/2 2.0 and 32-bit C++, I released a version as shareware in early 1994, and in the end sold all of two dozen copies at US$30 apiece.

Sometime in early 1995, I got a note from Sam's Books, which was putting together the book "OS/2 Unleashed". They wanted permission to include a copy of Pluma on the CD included with the book. Permission granted, no problem.

The original name, "Pluma" was borrowed from Spanish, my second language. In that language, that word means both "plume" and "pen". In late 1995 I received a "cease and desist" letter from a company in Arizona I'd never heard of, Pluma Software, and as a result had to change the name.

By the time I had to do the name change, however, the code was showing some serious warts, and so apart from renaming the program, I chose to not release it for prime-time again until I had resolved those problems. In the end, I never did release a non-beta version again, though as a series of beta releases it did gain some more functionality.

I continued to use the program for myself until some time in 2001, at which time I migrated my personal work to Windows and bought myself a copy of Microsoft Office. All my professional work had switched to Windows several years earlier.

Versions

 * 1.00 (1994-03-18)
 * 1.01 (1994-03-21)
 * 1.02 (1994-04-01)
 * 1.03 (1994-04-25)
 * 1.04 (1994-05-09)
 * 1.05 (1994-05-11)
 * 1.06 (1994-05-12)
 * 1.07 (1994-05-20)
 * 1.08 (1994-05-27)
 * 1.09 (1994-06-17)
 * 1.10 (1994-07-08)
 * 1.11 (1994-07-20)
 * 1.12 (1994-09-13)

Renamed to Escriba


 * 0.90 (1995-06-13) + undo/redo, page count, page number
 * 0.91 (1995-07-20) + spell checker ISPELLER
 * 0.92 (1995-09-13) + NLS
 * 0.93 (1995-09-26)
 * 0.94 (1995-11-24) + DBCS
 * 0.95 (1995-12-27) + BMP GIF PCX import
 * 0.96b (1996-08-12) + TIFF import
 * 0.96c (1997-01-28) + barcodes, JPEG import
 * 0.96d (1998-01-19) + drag'n'drop, go to page, document titles, page header/footer

Download

 * Escriba version 0.96d - Binaries & Source Code
 * Escriba Source Code - Github

License

 * Open Source - GNU GPL V2

Author

 * Rick Papo