Background and Reception
LocoScript's developers, Locomotive Software, had produced Locomotive BASIC for Amstrad's CPC 464 home computer, introduced in 1984. For the Amstrad PCW, introduced in 1985, Locomotive produced the LocoScript word processor and Mallard BASIC, and also wrote the PCW's User Guide. These programs and a dot matrix printer were included in the price of the PCW, which was £399 plus VAT for the base model. The PCW, regarded as extremely good value for money, gained 60% of the UK home computer market, and 20% of the European personal computer market. According to Personal Computer World, the PCW "got the technophobes using computers".
LocoScript was regarded as easier to use than Wordstar and WordPerfect, which in the mid-1980s were the dominant word processors on IBM-compatible PCs, and many users needed no additional information beyond what the manual's "first 20 minutes" introductory chapter provided. The PCW's keyboard offered clearly labelled, one-press special keys for many common LocoScript functions, including cut, copy, and paste, while LocoScript's competitors required a wide range of key combinations that the user had to remember. Most of the program's other features were presented via a pull-down menu bar in which the top-level options were activated by function keys. The menu system had two structures, one for beginners and the other for experienced users. Locomotive Software's slogan for the product was "Everything you need, nothing you don't." However LocoScript version 1 was regarded as relatively slow.
When the PCW product line was discontinued in 1998, The Daily Telegraph said that the range of independently produced add-on software for LocoScript had contributed to the series' longevity.
LocoScript faded into obscurity because its developers were slow to produce a version for IBM-compatible PCs. By the time they released a version that ran under MS-DOS, Windows was becoming the dominant operating system. The developers of WordPerfect made a similar mistake, releasing their first Windows version in 1991, shortly after the second Windows version of Microsoft Word.
As late as 1993, a journalist found "special characters" much easier to produce on Locoscript than on PC word processing software.
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