July 20, 1989
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ACE Microsystems Ltd, the Brentford, Middlesex company that develops applications using the venerable Filetab-D language, which was around long before anyone started talking about fourth generation languages or, more bovinely, 4GLs just to show how clever they are and to ensure that no-one who over-hears them will have a clue what they are talking about, has come out with a version of its LEX-WP word processor, developed using Filetab, which can be used in place of DEC’s WPS-Plus within the All-In-1 office automation environment, offering All-In-1 users a powerful word processor with an integrated database and an unrivalled number of advanced features, including support for PostScript printers and the facility to add functions and related applications in Filetab; users can also run the same LEX-WP on Ultrix and MS-DOS machines as well as on VAXes running DEC’s VMS; prices under VMS start at UKP3,100.

DisplayWrite was a family of word processors from IBM in the 1980s. They were quite good in many ways, but never made it into the GUI era. DisplayWrite 3, for example, does not even have italics — it really is like a typewriter on a computer.

The default file format on DisplayWrite is a binary format. The default file extension is .TXT, but they are not what we think of as text files (I used to use DW3 as the extension). I have seen the odd request on the web about how to read old DisplayWrite files, so I thought I would document it here.

The trick is to go via WordPerfect 5.1 format, which can be read in by LibreOffice, because of the amazing stability of the WordPerfect file format.

First, download this convert.exe utility that used to come with WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS (I have no idea how long the link will remain live):

ftp://ftp.corel.com/pub/WordPerfect/wpdos/5x/convert.exe

https://ftpmirror.your.org/pub/misc/ftp.corel.com/pub/WordPerfect/wpdos/5x/

This website lets you freely view documents created with Dos and Windows Word Processors dating as far back as 1970’s, as well as convert and download them as fully formatted and editable Microsoft Word documents. It handles more than 50 once-popular word processors including:•WordPerfect•Old versions of Word•WordStar•Multimate•IBM Displaywrite•XyWrite•Leading Edge WP•and many more