Its funny, but I bet more people had the Wordstar keyboard shortcuts in muscle memory than actually used Wordstar.
WordTsar, a WordStar Clone
31–40 of 144 posts
Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone
#32Robert j. Sawyer is also a prominent wordstar diehard who ought to be interested in this project :) he wrote an interesting rationale for his use of wordstar. https://www.sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm I wonder if learning proper use of vim motions would cover most of these use cases today :)
Many authors use WordStar. Here is George R. R. Martin taking about WordStar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5REM-3nWHg I think, and I believe it has been suggested to Robert J. Sawyer, that Emacs keys are very similar to WordStar in the use of cords (or prefixed keystrokes). WordStar has ^Q as a prefix whereas Emacs has ^x, ^c, and ^h, etc. [edit] Add bit about Emacs
Both Vim and Emacs can bind almost any(1) kind of input with the right configuration. Emacs has a lot of them in the default configuration, Vim just a bit using e.g. the leader key and Ctrl-W for window/split navigation.
But in the end it's about efficient keyboard-focused controls and it seems for many WordStar was the first one that fit the bill.
(1) except inputs consisting of multiple keys at once; terminals don't detect keyup/keydown events. Maybe Emacs can do it, I'm not familiar enough to know.
Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone
#33WordStar was a really good programming editor, if you put into text mode. I wrote a lot of C and assembler code using it back in the 1980s. And it was a good word processor - much easier to get to grips with than WordPerfect, IMHO.
WordTsar doesn't do non-document mode... though I'm thinking about it.
Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone
#34WordStar was a really good programming editor, if you put into text mode. I wrote a lot of C and assembler code using it back in the 1980s. And it was a good word processor - much easier to get to grips with than WordPerfect, IMHO.
I use JOE as my programming (and general purpose) editor, which is modeled after WordStar in a lot of ways. Once, I happened upon a WordStar installation and was able to use it just fine, because I already knew the concepts (I think the command prefix isn't ^K though, so it felt a bit off?)
Joe (or jstar) is my go to console editor.
Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone
#35Seems nice and I will give it a try! Now a question: there is some obvious reason for using AGPL for a desktop GUI application (not a web app, a server, etc.)? AGPL would be my license to go in the later cases, so it would protect the project from being SaaSSed, but I could not find an advantage for graphical desktop apps yet.
I honestly can't remember why I chose the AGPL.
Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone
#36Why host the project on SourceForge? Just force of habit? Other code forges don't look better enough to justify the effort of moving? Or are there actively good things about SourceForge these days?
Are you asking the author(s) of a project that emulates a decades-old word processor so that people don't have to learn to use a newer word processor to learn to use a newer code hosting platform? I guess this project is the very embodiment of "force of habit"...
Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone
#37Why host the project on SourceForge? Just force of habit? Other code forges don't look better enough to justify the effort of moving? Or are there actively good things about SourceForge these days?
There are a fair number of projects from the old days that just never bothered to move. I don't think anyone chooses to host new projects there
Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone
#38Silly me. I read that as Worldstar
Same here. Then I started thinking, what does a WorldStar alternative look like?
Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone
#39Why host the project on SourceForge? Just force of habit? Other code forges don't look better enough to justify the effort of moving? Or are there actively good things about SourceForge these days?
Was not SourceForge bundling malware with open source project releases?
That was the moment when I decided to drop SourceForge forever.
Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone
#40Silly me. I read that as Worldstar
I thought this was going to be a dashcams only version of WorldStar.