FullWrite Professional

Article summary

FullWrite Professional was a word processor application for the Apple Macintosh, released in late 1988 by Ashton-Tate. The program was notable for its combination of a true WYSIWYG interface, powerful long-document processing features, and a well regarded outliner. It was also noted for its high resource demands, bugs, and its very late release. Despite these problems, FullWrite developed a faithful following and some amount of commercial success. Douglas Adams used FullWrite as his primary word processor for some time. Douglas Hofstadter published several of his books directly from FullWrite, notably Le Ton beau de Marot. The product changed hands in the aftermath of Ashton-Tate's early 1990s business failure, and most of its problems were addressed in a major upgrade in 1995. By this point Microsoft Word dominated the Mac word processor market and the improved FullWrite never became particularly widely used. Since 1998, the product has been available as freeware for the classic MacOS.

Key claims

1. release date: 1988 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95
2. release date: 1984 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95
3. release date: 1986 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95
4. release date: 1987 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95
5. release date: 1987 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95
6. release date: 1989 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95
7. release date: 1988 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
2. The record states that the release date is "1988". What evidence would count against this claim?
3. The record states that the release date is "1984". What evidence would count against this claim?
4. The record states that the release date is "1986". What evidence would count against this claim?
5. The record states that the release date is "1987". What evidence would count against this claim?
6. The record states that the release date is "1987". What evidence would count against this claim?
7. The record states that the release date is "1989". What evidence would count against this claim?
8. The record states that the release date is "1988". What evidence would count against this claim?
9. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
10. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1366575863