Weerakone S, Turner P J
Warwick Hospital.
Dent Update. 1998 Jul-Aug;25(6):241-6.
The three computer applications most widely used on personal computers are word processors, spreadsheets and databases. A word processor is essentially a program designed to create, print and store documents and letters. Microsoft Word and Lotus WordPro are examples. The term spreadsheet is used to describe a type of program that is designed to undertake financial, mathematical and even statistical calculations on rows and columns of numeric data. A spreadsheet program is useful for maintaining practice accounts, calculating simple statistics and trying out 'what if' scenarios on numerical data. A database is analogous to a card index system, and is used to store information in a format that facilitates rapid retrieval of data using a multitude of search methods. Many databases are capable of processing this information to generate data summaries, reports and charts based on the search criteria. In this article the basic features of word processing packages are described. Spreadsheets and databases will be discussed in a later paper.
个人电脑上使用最广泛的三种计算机应用程序是文字处理器、电子表格程序和数据库。文字处理器本质上是一种用于创建、打印和存储文档及信件的程序。微软Word和莲花WordPro就是例子。术语“电子表格程序”用于描述一种旨在对数值数据的行和列进行财务、数学甚至统计计算的程序类型。电子表格程序对于维护业务账目、计算简单统计数据以及对数值数据进行“假设分析”很有用。数据库类似于卡片索引系统，用于以一种便于使用多种搜索方法快速检索数据的格式存储信息。许多数据库能够处理这些信息，根据搜索标准生成数据摘要、报告和图表。本文描述了文字处理软件包的基本特征。电子表格程序和数据库将在后续论文中讨论。
