In the past there have been numerous third party companies trying to compete with AB by providing their version of programming software for AB PLCs. The only one that did succeed was ICOM, which was eventually bought by AB. This was in good old DOS days. The guys who started ICOM I believe both worked for AB before branching out on their own. So they did have insider info.
There were several companies trying to do this in Windows world but they went under, I can't remember all their names off hand. I believe that there is a third party company right now that offers AB look alike programming to run on a PC (TOPDOC and now SoftPLC). Check them out, I have never used them so I can't say how good they are.
Taylor industrial software was another company that attempted to compete with AB. They did not make it. Dean Giancolla who was originally with AB plastics division worked for them. There were others but I can't remember anymore who they were.
