Claris MacWrite Pro was the natural successor to [Claris MacWrite

Claris MacWrite Pro was the natural successor to [Claris MacWrite
II][1], but was it a matter of too little too late in the battle for
the Macintosh desktop, for this word processor?

MacWrite Pro Was flrst announced at around the same time that System 7
was released ? roughly two years before its 1993 debut. ? During which
time Microsoft had established something of a stranglehold on high-end
word processing with [Word 5.1][2], while integrated packages such as
Claris's own [ClarisWorks 2.0][3], released the same year as MacWrite
Pro 1.0, has a word processing module that's nearly as polished as
that delivered by MacWrite II.

> Why the delay?
>
> An obvious question to ask is, "why did this program take so long to
> appear?" The answer ? at least, the answer based on industry rumour,
> which is the only one you're likely to get ? is that two factors
> delayed the product's release. First of all, some problems were
> discovered late in the testing process, which meant a delay of some
> sort was inevitable. But then, according to sources, most of the
> MacWrite Pro development team were "poached" by another software
> publisher, which meant that a new set of programmers had to be
> brought in. The upshot of all this is that the program has been
> almost totally re-written in the last 18 months or so.
>
> ? Excerpt: [MacFormat magazine issue 02, May-June, 1993][4]

* DL #1: Spanish &dash; Preinstalled copy, incomplete but otherwise
functional.

* DL #2: US English &dash; Original install images in Disk Copy 6
compressed format in a StuffIt v5 .sit archive. Requires
installing in a System 7+ environment.

* DL #3: US English &dash; Original install images in Disk Copy 4.2
.image format in a StuffIt v2 .sit archive. Suitable for System 6
& 7 environments, can also be drag mounted from host into a
running Mini vMac window to install.

MacWrite Pro 1.0 reportedly has more than 130 new features or
improvements on MacWrite II.
Here's a few of those new features, as an example:

* Floating Tools, Styles and Text Format palette
* Paragraph and character styles, which can be saved and used in
other documents
* Automatic table creator
* International spelling checker - French, German, Italian and
Spanish can be added
* New icon on tool-bar for easy multiple column creation
* On-screen changing of margins, headers, footers and columns
* Auto-save feature
* Mail Merging
* Insertion of date, time and page number available
* Find and replace, works for text styles as well as just words
* Text and graphic frames can be placed anywhere In the document.
Graphics can be scaled and cropped
* Publish and Subscribe information sharing system is supported

To activate: On MacWrite Pro's 1st run, it will want personalization.
A serial entry is optional, not required. Anything made up can be used
as a serial, or simply left as is, and it will still work (see
screenshots 4 & 5).

See Also: [MacWrite Pro 1.5v3][5] (68k & PPC), and [MacWrite Pro 1.5v1 DE][6] (German)

Compatibility
Architecture: 68k

68k encoded ? also runs OK in PowerPC Macintosh.

Minimum Requirements:
Macintosh Plus
2 MB RAM
2.5 MB RAM under Mac OS 7
System 6.0 and newer

[1]: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macwrite-ii-10v2
[2]: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/microsoft-word-51-0
[3]: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/clarisworks-2
[4]: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/mac-format-02-magazine-april-may-1993
[5]: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macwrite-pro-15
[6]: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macwrite-pro-15v1-german