Development History
Development began in 1994 following a decision to replace Ability Plus, an existing DOS based integrated package, and a first release was made in 1995 called Ability for Windows and consisted of modules for word processing, spreadsheet, database and communications (a terminal program).
A second version was released in 1998 called Ability Office 98. The framework for the entire suite was changed from Borland's Object Windows Library to Microsoft Foundation Class Library resulting in better performance and the database was re-written to use the Microsoft Jet Database Engine.
Since then, modules have been added (an image editing module in 2000 and a presentation module in 2004) but the architecture has broadly remained the same with the step to a fully Unicode version being made in 2008. Ability Office is 100% C++, entirely 32-bit and uses the Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 compiler.
Read more about this topic: Ability Office
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