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WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

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Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#91

Post by lproven »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #79
rhabarba wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. And it still is less annoying to use than some of its successors. (Your mileage is intended to vary.)

Yeah like WordPerfect. I remember all those strips people used to stick on their keyboards to remember all the weird function key combinations :) Though the "submerged" screen (where you could see all the markup control codes, not sure what it was called in the English feature) was a handy feature I kinda miss in modern word processors.

It was called "reveal codes".

http://wordperfect.helpmax.net/en/creating-and-managing-docu...

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#92

Post by lproven »

xbar wrote: post #66
zabzonk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could never get to grips with WP's use of function keys. In fact, I hate all software that uses function keys.

F7 to save. Seriously, if I could still use WordPerfect 4.2 today, I would. I would put up with 5.1 if necessary.

The Linux version is freeware now:

https://xwp8users.com/

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#93

Post by capableweb »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #42
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #9

Robert 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 :)

This rationale has completely convinced me that we will never see any new ASOIAF books from George Martin: even this very productive tool didn't help him finish new book in over a decade .

It's almost like the tool doesn't make the master, the master make the master.

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#94

Post by ngcc_hk »

alpaca128 wrote: post #32
eddieh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

Can vim do document and book oriented content like paragraph flow etc ?

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#95

Post by tangus »

gooseyard wrote: post #84
GekkePrutser wrote: post #76

I wish there was a console version of this. Linux really lacks a good writing app for console. All the text editors don't do on-the-fly word-wrapping (while not inserting a real line ending). Makes sense for a text editor that's normally used for config files and programming, but I would really want something more like a word processor. There's wordgrinder but it's not great for this, it has a proprietary format so I…

The venerable joe editor ( https://joe-editor.sourceforge.io ) is apparently very comfortable for Wordstar users. I used it for a few years in college before I could afford enough RAM to run emacs and although I never actually used Wordstar myself and cant compare it that way, I really liked using joe and can still remember a lot of the keybindings 20+ years later.

It lacks word wrapping tho.

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#96

Post by bolangi »

tssva wrote: post #47
zabzonk wrote: post #20

WordStar 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.

To give an opposite opinion form the same time period. I found WordStar much more difficult to come to grips with than WordPerfect. WordPerfect 4.2 with a XT layout keyboard is by far my favorite word processor experience to date.

XyWrite was the bees knees of that era, IMO. But far be it from me to make it a religious debate :-)

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#97

Post by app4soft »

lproven wrote: post #92
xbar wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

F7 to save. Seriously, if I could still use WordPerfect 4.2 today, I would. I would put up with 5.1 if necessary.

The Linux version is freeware now: https://xwp8users.com/

> The Linux version is freeware now

I can't see such statement on linked site; instead its clarifies to use "legitimate copy":

> This site provides information designed to assist an owner of a legitimate copy of a version of WordPerfect, who desires to use it on a current Linux distro, in doing so.

BTW, Here is Reddit thread[0] & screenshot[1] posted in comments.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/cgw9f5/using_wordper...

[1] https://i.imgur.com/mhZ4Ahm.png

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#98

Post by b112 »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #42
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #9

Robert 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 :)

This rationale has completely convinced me that we will never see any new ASOIAF books from George Martin: even this very productive tool didn't help him finish new book in over a decade .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR7XMkjDGw0

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#99

Post by DrTung »

geraldbrandt wrote: post #65
DrTung wrote: post #58

Long live WordStar and it's many brethren! I got addicted to it when coding Z80 assembler on CP/M in the late 70's and my life since then has been on a constant lookout for an equally good program in other OS's. In Linux and MacOS terminals there's Joe, a godsend. But since I use Qt a lot, of course the first thing I wrote was a Wordstar clone plugin for Qt Creator. Not possible to survive otherwise :-)

Where can I get that plugin?

https://gitlab.com/tungware/geezeredit

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#100

Post by app4soft »

dang wrote: post #56

As wila pointed out already, there was a previous thread about this project. (Reposts are fine on HN after a year, so this is not a problem - see the FAQ.) Maybe worth hauling out the comprehensive WordStar list though: WordStar: A Writer's Word Processor (1996) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26370252 - March 2021 (92 comments) WordStar: A Writer’s Word Processor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2089895…

WordStar Editor Family on TextEditors Wiki - https://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WordStarFamily

P.S. Few converters written in Python may be useful for those who has *.ws files:

WordStar2Markdown: https://github.com/kbarni/wsconvert

WordStar2txt: https://github.com/pstankiewicz/wordstar2txt

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