apparently completed in November 1987, but for unknown reasons was not released until well into the late summer of 1988. ST Writer Another of the Tramiel family's goals after taking over Atari was to introduce an entirely new GUI-based computer, which emerged as the Atari ST in the summer of 1985. Concerned about the same issue that caused the Atari 800 to be seen dismissively, they had programmer Dan Oliver port the existing assembler language AtariWriter screen editor code to the ST while John Feagans converted the layout and formatting handlers to the C programming language. In two weeks, a version of AtariWriter Plus was up and running as ST Writer. Running on the new machine gave the program many advantages. Memory was no longer limited, and the program was capable of handling very large documents. It also had a natural 80-column display, and was extremely fast. The program was so similar to the original it could exchange files with no edits. As useful as the program was, it was not GUI-based, and was released for free while Atari began the search for a GUI program to replace it. Several GUI word processors soon emerged, some by the end on 1985, and ST Writer development at Atari ended. By this time it had garnered a major following of its own, and the replacements were seen as second rate in comparison. The company eventually allowed avid user Bruce Noonan to take over development. He continued releasing the product through a number of major versions, even adding a limited GUI for menu access, with the last releases well into the 1990s. Reception Reviews of AtariWriter were generally very positive, complaining mostly about the lack of printer drivers, mail merge and spell checking. ANALOG magazine's review starts by describing how easy the program is to use, noting the review is being completed on the program only hours after it arrived. After complaining that other printers were not supported, noting the Epson in particular, the article concludes "The AtariWriter has good documentation, is reasonable easy to learn and to use, doesn't seem to leave you hung up anywhere and has sufficient commands and flexibility to meet the needs of those who are most likely to use it... After a series of strikeouts, Atari has a hit on their hands." Antic magazine lauded its speed, simplicity, undo command and called it "fool proof". The only