Ami[1] was the name of a word processing program developed and marketed by Samna in the late 1980s,[2] which was later purchased by Lotus Software in 1990.[3][4] Shortly after its introduction, the name of the program was changed to "Ami Pro".
| Original author(s) | Samna |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Samna |
| Initial release | 1988 |
| Stable release | 1.2
|
| Type | Word processor |
Ami Pro was a significant competitor to Microsoft Word and WordPerfect Corporation's WordPerfect during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The developers of Ami Pro introduced a number of innovations in Ami Pro that were later adopted by other word processors.
At the time that Ami Pro was introduced, the word processing market was dominated by WordPerfect. Both Ami Pro and Microsoft Word made inroads into WordPerfect's market share. Eventually, Microsoft Word overtook WordPerfect as the dominant player and Ami Pro was discontinued.
IBM, the present owner of the Lotus brand, renamed it Lotus Word Pro.
Overview
editThe 16-bit Ami Pro had significant limitations, most notably that it was unable to display the bottom of one page and the top of the next at the same time. The limitations were so severe that Lotus completely re-wrote the program from scratch when developing the 32-bit version for Windows 95.
The 16-bit Ami Pro had significant benefits, too. It was possible to easily control formatting with paragraph styles that were set with function keys, and were locked in for the whole paragraph. (They were not erased with the deletion of the last character of the paragraph, as they are with Microsoft Word.)
Ami Pro used .SAM as its file extension, while Lotus Word Pro used .LWP.
References
edit- ^ "Lotus in Accord To Acquire Samna". The New York Times. November 2, 1990.
- ^ Reviews:Windows-Based Samna Ami Takes WYSIWYG Approach, by John Lombardi, page 61, 13 Feb 1989, InfoWorld
- ^ Ami Pro 1.2:Strong ease of use, graphics, by Derek Slater, page 40, 1 Jul 1991, Computerworld, ...Lotus purchased Ami Pro developer Samna Corp. for $65 million in late 1990...
- ^ Samna Bundles Ami With Its Unix-Based Samna IV, by Martin Marshall, page 33, 21 Nov 1988, InfoWorld