I have a copy of WordStar running on an Franklin Ace 1200 (Apple II+ clone from 1983)... it runs WordStar via a Z80 peripheral card that runs PCPI CP/M while talking to the Apple 6502 to use the rest of the peripherals. So even then people were using workarounds to keep on running WordStar on newer hardware...
I still write letters with it and print them on my dot matrix printer. I certainly wouldn't reach for it over emacs in the modern era, though.
I always found it funny how many "plug in computers" existed as extensions back in the day. Lots of Z-80 cards or expansions for the 6502 based machines to run CP/M. The Sidecar and Bridgeboard for Amiga's to run x86 software... PPC cards (both Amiga specific and PCIe cards)..
But we also have crazy new stuff like this[1], which provides an FPGA based emulation platform which can work standalone but which can also plug into a Commodore 64 to use it's peripherals, and emulate a C64 with extra capabilities.
I'm an writer in my spare time, my writing PC is a basic text only FreeBSD install.
I use joe or vim and put everything in git for easy transfer and backup.
For me, I need as little destruction as possible, I even find auto spell check with its red underlining completely destructive when it comes to my flow of thoughts.
I similarly like using Emacs. Window and text, simple as it gets. Thanks to some tinkering, it will spell-check and even do fancy grammar checking if and when I tell it to, but otherwise, it just leaves me be.
Also a Programmers' Word Processor, indirectly: Borland editors (Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, etc.), JOE, and others, took many of the WordStar key combinations... [1]
Right, I've read that it was mainly those apps (and Lotus-123 being huge [1] even among them) that made the IBM PC and clones (the PC's we now take for granted, though much more powerful now of course), take off as a product category (i.e. become wildly successful) and sell in the millions (both the hardware and the apps) - right from the early days, the '80's, I mean. IBM released the IBM PC in 1981, I've read, though Apple and others were in the home market from the mid-'70's or so.
[1] I read somewhere long ago that it (spreadsheets, and Lotus may have been the first one) replaced what were also called spreadsheets - physical ones used by accountants in the US - large sheets of paper for doing accounting calculations, with maybe many joined together to get more area. So an innovation like a spreadsheet, where you could simulate such large joined-together sheets by scrolling up/down/left/right, was a boon and a huge productivity aid to them, also the fact that you could edit data in-place without overwriting/strikeout, etc. And of course, formulae and automatic recalculation.
When I started with Linux I used the Zed editor by Sandro Serafini, which used WordStar-like keybindings as well.
Interesting, how it seems to have completely disappeared from the web since then. The two "zed" editors I could find appear unrelated, as is the current "zed" Debian package. Only archive.org seems to still have the original web page
If anyone here ever came across a daily IT newsletter called Computergram, you will be glad to know that it was written (and laid oud) using WordStar until at least the mid-90s.
The newsletter had a multicolumn-format, and box-outs. These were arranged by using different margin settings and then running the paper through the printer multiple times. Erk.
I had a Brother daisywheel printer for my Superbrain, and I didn't like the options for chapter headings in text, as they didn't stand out enough for me. I wanted them to be bolder than normal bold. With the daisywheel I had only one font, not like a matrix printer which had all kind of fonts.
One bold tag around text like (b)example(b) made the printer retype that text one time. It turned out that (b)(b)(b)example(b)(b)(b) resulted in four times typing "example". This was hammered (literally) into the paper, so on the backside you could see and read the text as well. Using capitals, varying degrees of bold-repetitions, I could get what I wanted.
I have to wonder if he's ever tried vim. Seems like a lot of the features he likes are in vim as well. I'm sure a lot of this applies to emacs as well.
WordStar is not modal and that's one of the things he appears to like about it. I doubt vim is going to cut it - he seems to be using WordStar 7 under DOS emulation now.
He is evangelizing a writing program he has used extensively for 34 years. Don't place your bets on him dropping ship to another program that kinda does the same thing :)
I never used it much as a word processor, but WordStar was my favorite programming editor on CP/M. Of course that was long before the 1996 date of this article! I remember a few friends who also used it for their coding.
Sawyer's article hints at this: "An Interface Designed For Touch Typists".
So now I'm curious: anyone else out there who used WordStar as a programming editor back in the day?
Many Science Fiction writers — including myself, Roger MacBride Allen, Gerald Brandt, Jeffrey A. Carver, Arthur C. Clarke, David Gerrold, Terence M. Green, James Gunn, Matthew Hughes, Donald Kingsbury, Eric Kotani, Paul Levinson, George R. R. Martin, Vonda McIntyre, Kit Reed, Jennifer Roberson, and Edo van Belkom — continue to use WordStar for DOS as our writing tool of choice.
Great article. My dad swore by WordStar, even as WordPerfect etc came up and got more popular. He was always tremendously productive hammering out his bids; at the time, I didn't get it (I was using the C64 then the Amiga at some point during this). It's great to see the love for WordStar retrospectively, will send this for his enjoyment now.
It requires a little bit of config as the default appearance is a bit bleh but if I have to do any kind of long form writing I reach for it straight away.
The font I use is "FS Me", it was designed in partnership with Mencap for legibility for people with learning disabilities[2] which doesn't apply to me (though some people might argue otherwise) but I've found it to be incredibly easy on the eye for long periods.
Zoho Writer, is one such word processor which has managed to retain a distraction free writing canvas, while still packed with features, found in a typical word processor.
WordStar was where I started back in the DOS days. Then WordPerfect, and now Microsoft Word, where I've remained for upwards of 20 years.
That said, I don't do organization for writing projects in Word itself -- for that, I'm using TiddlyWiki (stupid name, GREAT software).
I tried Scrivener briefly, but I found it too closed-ended and cramping of my style to be really worth it.
FocusWriter (also mentioned downthread) is a really nice little app, although it's best for banging stuff out rather than for full workflow. I end up going back to Word simply because of the revision tracking and annotation stuff.
Thinking about WordStar always gets my ire up, not about WordStar but by comparing a word processor that fit on a single 3 1/2" floppy and comparing that to the size of modern word processors that easily eat multiple Mb. I know that they are often adding features to increase audience, but I rarely do anything in the modern software that I couldn't do in WordStar. It seems like such a waste.
I grew up with [Professional Write][1] for DOS, and when I recently purged a bunch of my old floppies I came across some files in its proprietary format that I couldn't open.
[+] [-] TD-Linux|9 years ago|reply
I still write letters with it and print them on my dot matrix printer. I certainly wouldn't reach for it over emacs in the modern era, though.
[+] [-] vidarh|9 years ago|reply
But we also have crazy new stuff like this[1], which provides an FPGA based emulation platform which can work standalone but which can also plug into a Commodore 64 to use it's peripherals, and emulate a C64 with extra capabilities.
[1] http://www.vesalia.de/e_chameleon.htm
[+] [-] pvg|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itsoggy|9 years ago|reply
I use joe or vim and put everything in git for easy transfer and backup.
For me, I need as little destruction as possible, I even find auto spell check with its red underlining completely destructive when it comes to my flow of thoughts.
[+] [-] unwind|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Semiapies|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] univacky|9 years ago|reply
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/early-days-of-word...
I do have WordPerfect running on my old DOS PC as well as a CP/M P112 I built:
https://661.org/p112/
[+] [-] faragon|9 years ago|reply
[1] http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WordStarFamily
[+] [-] wordpressdev|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vram22|9 years ago|reply
[1] I read somewhere long ago that it (spreadsheets, and Lotus may have been the first one) replaced what were also called spreadsheets - physical ones used by accountants in the US - large sheets of paper for doing accounting calculations, with maybe many joined together to get more area. So an innovation like a spreadsheet, where you could simulate such large joined-together sheets by scrolling up/down/left/right, was a boon and a huge productivity aid to them, also the fact that you could edit data in-place without overwriting/strikeout, etc. And of course, formulae and automatic recalculation.
[+] [-] Tomte|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avian|9 years ago|reply
Interesting, how it seems to have completely disappeared from the web since then. The two "zed" editors I could find appear unrelated, as is the current "zed" Debian package. Only archive.org seems to still have the original web page
https://web.archive.org/web/20120520234205/http://zed.c3po.i...
[+] [-] Angostura|9 years ago|reply
The newsletter had a multicolumn-format, and box-outs. These were arranged by using different margin settings and then running the paper through the printer multiple times. Erk.
^KS
[+] [-] hollander|9 years ago|reply
One bold tag around text like (b)example(b) made the printer retype that text one time. It turned out that (b)(b)(b)example(b)(b)(b) resulted in four times typing "example". This was hammered (literally) into the paper, so on the backside you could see and read the text as well. Using capitals, varying degrees of bold-repetitions, I could get what I wanted.
[+] [-] magnat|9 years ago|reply
Still better than CSS.
[+] [-] Gaelan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pvg|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abricot|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Stratoscope|9 years ago|reply
Sawyer's article hints at this: "An Interface Designed For Touch Typists".
So now I'm curious: anyone else out there who used WordStar as a programming editor back in the day?
[+] [-] jhallenworld|9 years ago|reply
I wrote this emulator to allow me to use CP/M wordstar in Linux:
https://github.com/jhallen/cpm
Screen I/O just uses the terminal emulator and does not open another window. I'd like to see a DOS emulator that works like this.
[+] [-] hollander|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juanre|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shakna|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] howard941|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] searchfaster|9 years ago|reply
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/05/14/george_r_...
[+] [-] TAForObvReasons|9 years ago|reply
Many Science Fiction writers — including myself, Roger MacBride Allen, Gerald Brandt, Jeffrey A. Carver, Arthur C. Clarke, David Gerrold, Terence M. Green, James Gunn, Matthew Hughes, Donald Kingsbury, Eric Kotani, Paul Levinson, George R. R. Martin, Vonda McIntyre, Kit Reed, Jennifer Roberson, and Edo van Belkom — continue to use WordStar for DOS as our writing tool of choice.
[+] [-] partycoder|9 years ago|reply
WordStar for DOS with blue or black colors was easier on the eyes than the Windows version.
[+] [-] sundvor|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noir_lord|9 years ago|reply
It requires a little bit of config as the default appearance is a bit bleh but if I have to do any kind of long form writing I reach for it straight away.
The font I use is "FS Me", it was designed in partnership with Mencap for legibility for people with learning disabilities[2] which doesn't apply to me (though some people might argue otherwise) but I've found it to be incredibly easy on the eye for long periods.
[1] https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/ [2] http://i.imgur.com/uKVODsM.png
[+] [-] littleweep|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krptos|9 years ago|reply
Zoho Writer, is one such word processor which has managed to retain a distraction free writing canvas, while still packed with features, found in a typical word processor.
[+] [-] bootload|9 years ago|reply
working with wordstar meant the turbo pascal editor was easier to use. [0]
[0] http://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/user/userse32.html
[+] [-] genjipress|9 years ago|reply
That said, I don't do organization for writing projects in Word itself -- for that, I'm using TiddlyWiki (stupid name, GREAT software).
I tried Scrivener briefly, but I found it too closed-ended and cramping of my style to be really worth it.
FocusWriter (also mentioned downthread) is a really nice little app, although it's best for banging stuff out rather than for full workflow. I end up going back to Word simply because of the revision tracking and annotation stuff.
[+] [-] dwe3000|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ddp|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mwexler|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imron|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Brendinooo|9 years ago|reply
I grew up with [Professional Write][1] for DOS, and when I recently purged a bunch of my old floppies I came across some files in its proprietary format that I couldn't open.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfs:Write
[+] [-] shakna|9 years ago|reply
Personally, I had a copy of WordStar 2000, which was completely incompatible with everything else.
However, most versions of WS used seven bits for ASCII, and one bit for formatting. Destroyed extended ASCII and internationalisation.
But WS went through a few formats in its lifetime.
[0] http://justsolve.archiveteam.org/wiki/WordStar