The Emergence of the Tempus-Word Project

Tempus-Word was originally a product of the German company CCD. This enterprise saw itself positioned exclusively in the TOS market. Then it worked hard on the effort to establish itself together with the "Milan project" a new TOS platform. The Milan project failed. For CCD it was the final economic blow, because all resources were bound up in development for TOS; further development, for example for Windows or Mac OS, had not taken place.

To return to the public with Tempus-Word, some hurdles brought about by the closure of CCD had to be overcome. At last, in Spring 2003, the waiting came to an end with the definition of the conditions for a new start of Tempus-Word. Now at last a restart could begin.

The leading role has Claudio Kronmüller who possesses the copyright on the program sources and who has developed Tempus-Word continuously. Dr. Manfred Lang, for a long time a Beta tester of the program versions cultivated by Claudio Kronmüller, already functioned as technical and customer adviser. Norbert Simon takes care - just as before at CCD - of the organizational and marketing technical aspects, as well as the documentation.

Undoubtedly all partners are conscious that the world is not really waiting for a word processor under TOS. The original TOS (=Atari) community has substantially shrunk. Certainly, with operating system emulators TOS can operate on PC and Mac; in the contest with the text systems of these operating systems this is however no contest advantage.

Nevertheless, in spite of these specialised conditions - if one has no original Atari computer - Tempus-Word is a text system which holds its own. Tempus-Word shows its special strength in the production and care of long documents. Programs from large and well-known companies can only match that with difficulty - if indeed they can at all.

Besides, the hardware needs of Tempus-Word - even with TOS emulation - are quite modest. So it can be used extremely effectively even on PC hardware considered to be obselete. These are sufficient reasons to continue to maintain Tempus-Word and is the motivation that drives the Tempus-Word Project.