Lotus 1-2-3

Lotus 1-2-3

Developer(s)	IBM
Stable release	9.8 / 2002
Development status	Discontinued
Operating system	Microsoft Windows, Mac OS
Type	Spreadsheet
License	Proprietary
Website	www.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/123/

Lotus 1-2-3 is a spreadsheet program from Lotus Software (now part of IBM). It was the IBM PC's first "killer application"; its huge popularity in the mid-1980s contributed significantly to the success of the IBM PC in the corporate environment.^[1]

Beginnings

Lotus 1-2-3 3.0 for DOS.

The Lotus Development Corporation was founded by Mitchell Kapor, a friend of the developers of VisiCalc. 1-2-3 was originally written by Jonathan Sachs, who had written two spreadsheet programs previously while working at Concentric Data Systems, Inc.^[2][3] To aid its growth, in the UK, and possibly elsewhere, Lotus 1-2-3 was the very first computer software to use television consumer advertising.^{[citation needed]}

1-2-3 was released on January 26, 1983 and immediately overtook Visicalc in sales. Unlike Microsoft Multiplan, it stayed very close to the model of VisiCalc, including the "A1" letter and number cell notation, and slash-menu structure. It was cleanly programmed and relatively bug-free, as well as speed gained from being written completely in x86 assembly language (this remained the case for all versions until 4.0 when Lotus switched to C) and wrote directly to video memory rather than use the slow DOS and/or BIOS text output functions.^{[citation needed]}

This reliance on the specific hardware of the IBM PC led to 1-2-3 being utilized as one of the two litmus test applications for true 100% compatibility when PC clones started to appear in the early- to mid- 80s. 1-2-3 was used to test general application compatibility, with Microsoft Flight Simulator being used to test graphics compatibility. Because spreadsheets use large amounts of memory, 123 spurred the drive for greater RAM capacities in PCs and especially the event of "expanded memory" which allowed greater than 640k to be accessed.

Lotus 123 became the first "killer app" for PC compatibles, especially as it was available exclusively on that platform and no other computers. Many thousands of PCs were sold solely for the purpose of running 123, and its near-monopoly of the spreadsheet market remained unchallenged for a decade.

User features

The name "1-2-3" stemmed from the product's integration of three main capabilities. Along with being a spreadsheet, it also offered integral charting/graphing and rudimentary database operations.

Data features included sorting data in any defined rectangle, by order of information in one or two columns in the rectangular area. Justifying text in a range into paragraphs allowed it to be used as a primitive word processor.

It had keyboard-driven pop-up menus as well as one-key commands, making it fast to operate. It was also user-friendly, introducing an early instance of context-sensitive help accessed by the F1 key.

Macros in version one and add-ins (introduced in version 2.0) contributed much to 1-2-3's popularity, allowing dozens of outside vendors to sell macro packages and add-ins ranging from dedicated financial worksheets like F9 to full-fledged word processors. (In the single-tasking MS-DOS, 1-2-3 was sometimes used as a complete office suite. All major graphics standards were supported; initially CGA and Hercules, and later EGA, AT&T, and VGA. Early versions used the filename extension "WKS".^[4] In version 2.0, the extension changed first to "WK1",^[5] then "WK2".^[6] This later became "WK3" for version 3.0^[7] and "WK4" for version 4.0.^[8]

Version 2 introduced macros with syntax and commands similar in complexity to an advanced BASIC interpreter, as well as string variable expressions. Later versions supported multiple worksheets and were written in C. The charting/graphing routines were written in Forth by Jeremy Sagan (son of Carl Sagan) and the printing routines by Paul Funk (founder of Funk Software).^{[citation needed]}

There is also a version of 1-2-3 for the HP 200LX, a palmtop released by Hewlett-Packard, a port for Tandy's Deskmate and for Apple's Mac OS in 1991.

Rivals

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Lotus 1-2-3 inspired imitators, the first of which was Mosaic Software's "The Twin", written in the fall of 1985 largely in the C language, followed by VP-Planner, which was backed by Adam Osborne. These were able to not only read 1-2-3 files, but also execute many or most macro programs by incorporating the same command structure. Copyright law had first been understood to only cover the source code of a program. After the success of lawsuits which claimed that the very "look and feel" of a program were covered, Lotus sought to ban any program which had a compatible command and menu structure. Program commands had not been considered to be covered before, but the commands of 1-2-3 were embedded in the words of the menu displayed on the screen. 1-2-3 won its case against Mosaic Software. However when they sued Borland over its Quattro Pro spreadsheet in Lotus v. Borland, the courts ruled that it was not a copyright violation to merely have a compatible command menu or language. In 1995, the First Circuit found that command menus are an uncopyrightable "method of operation" under section 102(b) of the Copyright Act. The 1-2-3 menu structure (example, slash File Erase) was itself an advanced version of single letter menus introduced in VisiCalc.

Decline

Microsoft's early spreadsheet Multiplan eventually gave way to Excel, which debuted on the Macintosh in 1985. It arrived on PCs with the release of Windows 2.x in 1987, but as Windows was not yet popular, it posed no serious threat to Lotus's stranglehold on spreadsheet sales. However, Lotus suffered technical setbacks in this period. Version 3 of Lotus 1-2-3, fully rewritten from its original macro assembler into the more portable C language, was delayed by more than a year as the totally new 1-2-3 had to be made portable across platforms and fully compatible with existing macro sets and file formats. The inability to fit the larger code size of compiled C into lower-powered machines forced the company to split its spreadsheet offerings, with 1-2-3 release 3 only for higher-end machines, and a new version 2.2, based on the 2.01 assembler code base, available for PCs without extended memory. By the time these versions were released in 1989, Microsoft was well on its way to breaking through Lotus's market share. During the early 90s, Windows grew in popularity and along with it Excel, which gradually displaced Lotus from its leading position. A planned total revamp of 1-2-3 for Windows fell apart and all that the company could manage was a Windows adaptation of their existing spreadsheet with no changes except using a graphical interface. Additionally, several versions of 1-2-3 had different features and slightly different interfaces.

1-2-3's intended successor, Lotus Symphony, was Lotus's entry into the anticipated "integrated software" market. It intended to expand the rudimentary all-in-one 1-2-3 into a fully-fledged spreadsheet, graph, database and word processor for DOS, but none of the integrated packages ever really succeeded. 1-2-3 migrated to the Windows platform, where it remains available as part of Lotus SmartSuite.

See also

Computer science portal

• As Easy As
• Comparison of office suites

References

External links

• Lotus website
• 1983 The PC Era--Lotus 1-2-3
• Review of Lotus 123 version 1.0 from December 1982 Byte magazine
• Free viewer for Lotus SmartSuite products (EXE)
• File Format Documentation for Lotus 1-2-3
• Oral history interview with Jonathan Sachs discusses the development of Lotus 1-2-3, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota
• Screenshots of Lotus 1-2-3 V.1.00 for Mac OS