They got their big break in Spring 1983 when ComputerLand, the largest chain of computer retail stores in North America, agreed to stock WordPerfect. Compared to MicroPro's WordStar, its closest rival and industry forerunner in 1983, WordPerfect was incredibly feature-rich. They decided to stop updating the release numbers on the box, instead just updating the release date stamped on it. This added to the growing belief that SSI was producing poor-quality software. Several minor releases quickly followed in the coming months into 1983, including versions 2.21, 2.23 and 2.24, apparently changed only by the addition of more printer drivers and to correct bugs. It featured a 30,000-word dictionary, support for newspaper-style columns, and proportional spacing, as well as automatic footnotes, a four-function math package, and a built-in print spooler.

Sold as WordPerfect 2.20, it went out to a total user base of around 600. It was ported to MS-DOS the day after Thanksgiving, 1982.

Bruce and Alan believed the screen should not be cluttered with control codes and key sequences, instead just having a blank 'page' you could start typing on. SSI*WP was very different to the then popular Wang standard for word processing. Relying on word-of-mouth marketing, their word processor was pitched at other Data General users. Once the product was in use, the two retained the rights to the software, and together with Don Owens formed Satellite Software International (SSI) in September 1979, to sell it under the name 'SSI*WP' in 1980. all on the screen embedded into the text). Ashton had spent the summer of 1977 writing the specifications for a word processing package, having seen a Wang standalone word processing system and wanted to build a system that eliminated the need to print a document just to see what it would look like (most word processing systems displayed formatting characters, line feeds, page feeds, centering, tabs, etc.

Bruce Bastian was a BYU graduate who worked with his Computer Science professor Alan Ashton on the project. It started life as a university development at Brigham Young University for use on a Data General minicomputer for the City of Orem, UT. The most prolific word processor for DOS during the 1980s and early 90s was WordPerfect.

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