catch up with all the new capabilities that could have been added in the same time without a rewrite. Therefore, Word 6.0 for Windows and Macintosh were both derived from Word 2.0 for Windows code base. The Word 3.0 to 5.0 for Windows version numbers were skipped (outside of DBCS locales) in order to keep the version numbers consistent between Macintosh and Windows versions. Supporters of Pyramid claimed that it would have been faster, smaller, and more stable than the product that was eventually released for Macintosh, and which was compiled using a beta version of Visual C++ 2.0 that targets the Macintosh, so many optimizations have to be turned off (the version 4.2.1 of Office is compiled using the final version), and sometimes use the Windows API simulation library included. Pyramid would have been truly cross-platform, with machine-independent application code and a small mediation layer between the application and the operating system. More recent versions of Word for Macintosh are no longer ported versions of Word for Windows. Later versions of Word have more capabilities than merely word processing. The drawing tool allows simple desktop publishing operations, such as adding graphics to documents. Microsoft Office Word 95 Word 95 was released as part of Office 95 and was numbered 7.0, consistently with all Office components. It ran exclusively on the Win32 platform, but otherwise had few new features. The file format did not change. Word 97 Word 97 had the same general operating performance as later versions such as Word 2000. This was the first copy of Word featuring the Office Assistant, "Clippit", which was an animated helper used in all Office programs. This was a takeover from the earlier launched concept in Microsoft Bob. Word 97 introduced the macro programming language Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) which remains in use in Word 2016. Word 98 Word 98 for the Macintosh gained many features of Word 97, and was bundled with the Macintosh Office 98 package. Document compatibility reached parity with Office 97 and Word on the Mac became a viable business alternative to its Windows counterpart. Unfortunately, Word on the Mac in this and later releases also became vulnerable to future macro viruses that could compromise Word (and Excel) documents, leading to the only situation where viruses could be cross-platform. A Windows version of this was only bundled with the Japanese/Korean Microsoft Office 97 Powered By Word 98