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I really liked the idea of automatic XSLT translations using tags. "View source" showing a bunch of XML instead of HTML had a great surprise factor at the time.
I found out about this format because of PowerShell DSC (the Microsoft equivalent of Ansible). The format itself is very neat, but the `Import-PowerShellDataFile` cmdlet is absolutely unhelpful at showing you where the error is if it cannot parse the PSD1 file.
Computer magazines of the era also did that with C64 listings because they were such a pain to type as is. They usually distributed a tool to type your program in first, and then published much more legible and plain text (non-PETSCII) code listings instead.
I remember having installed Win32s package to our Windows for Workgroups 3.11 machines at Osmangazi University in 1995. The idea was that Windows, as a 16-bit operating system, could run a subset of Win32 apps that were compatible with the Win32s API surface. However, the release of Windows 95 had almost immediately made it obsolete. I'm sure it was useful in certain scenarios, but our only win was Freecell. :)
The big win of Win32S was getting developers to build Win32 apps ahead of the Windows 95 launch. Especially Win32S was one of the necessary building blocks to convincing some game developers that Windows was finally a good platform for game development rather than just assuming Windows could be exited and returned to DOS. Windows 95's launch would have been a lot less smooth if Win32S hadn't paved a lot of the way.
> The idea was that Windows, as a 16-bit operating system, could run a subset of Win32 apps that were compatible with the Win32s API surface.
386 mode in Windows 2 (sold as Windows/386) and 3 was really a 32-bit operating system for 16-bit applications.
Win32s allowed some 32-bit apps to run on windows 3.1 and up. Including many versions of Internet Explorer (Microsoft also released ie as a 16-bit application, though).
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