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The Last Word 3.0 Reference Manual
12-76
So what’s next for The Last Word? With the advent of video enhancements such as
VBXE, larger memory capacities as standard on Atari 8 computers, almost unlimited
mass storage, and readily available flash cartridges, the time seems right for a fully
WYSIWYG word processor for the Atari 8. Many commendable attempts at graphical
operating systems (or applications employing GUIs) have been made on the Atari
since the mid Eighties. One of the earliest was Diamond GOS by Alan Reeve, which
closely emulated the look and feel of GEM on the Atari ST. Sadly it was let down by a
lack of application support, which seems to be where many GUI operating systems fall
down. More recently we’ve seen many ambitious GUIs, but none have seemed quite
as cohesive and useable as GEOS on the Commodore 64, which was written in the
1980s. My intention is ultimately to make The Last Word the centrepiece application
for a new Atari GUI which is able to take advantage of the hardware enhancements
we’ve seen over the past few years.
In the meantime, I hope to release various add-ons for LW 3.0 such as a spelling-
checker, character map, calculator, and a programmer’s toolkit. There’ll also be a
special VBXE-compatible edition of LW 3.0 at some point, offering clearer 80 column
fonts (in fact it will do away with the need for special 80 column fonts altogether) and
faster operation in 80 column mode. There’s also the possibility of a cartridge-based
version of the program one day, or at least a cartridge version of the GUI it will
eventually run on.
12.6 DEVELOPMENT
There are still many features I’d like to implement in future versions of LW. These
include:
Proportional fonts available in different typefaces with underline, bold and italic
effects.
Larger, seamless text buffers capable of holding files up to 32K.
Support for mouse input, complete with a menu system and dialogues.
Whether any of these features see the light of day remains to be seen. Only with the
advent of fast PC based emulation and through the medium of Internet-based
communities has The Last Word finally seen the light of day. It’s still fun to see what
can be done with the 8-bit Atari!