<snip>
> How did anyone productively use these software packages before e-mail? :)
>
> Joel L. Hammer
Occasionally released printed publications from the application providers
("Tip of the Month" column, and receive a voucher for a mouse if your tip is
published...) was one thing that happened.
And some applications had one or more associated monthly magazines (which
these days are predominately Internet based, if they survive at all), not
necessarily published by the application provider. (I still sometimes see
printed magazines in newsagencies whose primary focus is on using Autocad,
for instance.)
I suspect that some larger cities may have once had local user associations,
in which members would meet on a monthly basis. (I have now attended two
meetings of Protel users in Sydney, with the details of place and time of
both meetings initially advised on this forum; past precedent suggests that
future such meetings will not happen more than once a year.) Such
associations exist for other aspects of PCs, such as Linux users, OS/2
users, Delphi users, etc (but these days they are more often than not
"on-line", so social considerations have subsequently become a more
significant aspect of the customarily less frequent physical gatherings).
And I recall that specialist applications were typically provided with a
comprehensive set of printed documentation. As such, there would be a
"Beginner's Learning Guide", a "Reference Manual", a "Script/Macro Feature
Reference Manual", a "Supplementary Utilities Reference Manual" (a typical
aspect in the DOS era), etc.
Ah, those were the days... :) But "back then", there was *much* less code
involved, so while the capability was not as comprehensive as is the case
today, it was also not too difficult to document what features were
provided, and relatively comprehensively (and there were not so many places
for bugs to hide out in the code either).
Email does go back a fair way though. I have an interest in the Rubik's cube
puzzle, and other puzzles of similar nature (the 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 version are
known as "Rubik's Revenge" and the "Professor Cube" respectively), and while
surfing the Internet on one occasion to find associated Websites, I found
some postings of old email messages. They were predominately between people
with an academic background, who were discussing assorted aspects of solving
these cubes, and related aspects (how to move just edge pieces, or how to
solely rotate centre pieces, etc), and the earliest of these messages were
originally posted as far back as 1982 (maybe even 1981). But email goes back
even further than that, to wit back to the early 1970s (but almost entirely,
if not totally entirely, within military and academic circles during that
era). But in saying this, I am still well aware that *widespread*, and
general public, usage of email is *much* more recent...
Regards,
Geoff Harland.
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