Amí
Encyclopedia
Ami was the name of a word processing program developed and marketed by Samna
in the late 1980s. It was the first WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) word processor and was an obvious threat to command driven word processors such as WordPerfect and Microsoft Word who borrowed their use model from the Wang word processor. (Samna was purchased by Lotus Software
in 1990.) Shortly after its introduction, the name of the program was changed to "Ami Pro."
Ami Pro was a significant competitor to Microsoft Word
and WordPerfect Corporation's WordPerfect
during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Ami preceded Windows
as well as versions of those two competing products. The developers of Ami Pro introduced a number of innovations in Ami Pro that were later adopted by other word processors. The notable feature of the Windows version of Ami Pro was the colorful SmartIcons.
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 mark, has replaced it with Lotus Word Pro
.
The 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. Most notably, 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.)
Note that Ami Pro used the 3 character file extension of ".sam" and Lotus Word Pro used the extension of ".lwp"
The change to the file extension name was necessary after Microsoft assigned the .sam file extension to spam files.
Users who removed accumulated spam files with a global delete command also eliminated their own document files.
Ami Pro still worked well on computers that didn't encounter spam.
Samna
Samna was an Atlanta, Georgia, USA based computer software company that was bought by Lotus Development Corporation in November 1990 for $65 million USD.Samna Word was a competitor in the DOS market for word processors in the late 80s...
in the late 1980s. It was the first WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) word processor and was an obvious threat to command driven word processors such as WordPerfect and Microsoft Word who borrowed their use model from the Wang word processor. (Samna was purchased by Lotus Software
Lotus Software
Lotus Software is a software company with headquarters in Westford, Massachusetts...
in 1990.) Shortly after its introduction, the name of the program was changed to "Ami Pro."
Ami Pro was a significant competitor to Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
and WordPerfect Corporation's WordPerfect
WordPerfect
WordPerfect is a word processing application, now owned by Corel.Bruce Bastian, a Brigham Young University graduate student, and BYU computer science professor Dr. Alan Ashton joined forces to design a word processing system for the city of Orem's Data General Corp. minicomputer system in 1979...
during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Ami preceded Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
as well as versions of those two competing products. The developers of Ami Pro introduced a number of innovations in Ami Pro that were later adopted by other word processors. The notable feature of the Windows version of Ami Pro was the colorful SmartIcons.
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 mark, has replaced it with Lotus Word Pro
Lotus Word Pro
Lotus Word Pro is word processor software produced by IBM's Lotus Software group for use on Microsoft Windows-compatible computers and on IBM OS/2 Warp. Word Pro can be obtained as part of the Lotus SmartSuite office suite....
.
The 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
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
.
The 16-bit Ami Pro had significant benefits, too. Most notably, 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.)
Note that Ami Pro used the 3 character file extension of ".sam" and Lotus Word Pro used the extension of ".lwp"
The change to the file extension name was necessary after Microsoft assigned the .sam file extension to spam files.
Users who removed accumulated spam files with a global delete command also eliminated their own document files.
Ami Pro still worked well on computers that didn't encounter spam.