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WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

wordtsar.ca

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Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#111

Post by zikzak »

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…

I see you don't care for it but I often run Emacs in terminal mode (use cmd line option "-nw"). I always configure word wrap as well.

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#112

Post by simondotau »

AndresNavarro wrote: post #108
simondotau wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s a DOS VM running on vaguely modern hardware and it has a script to encrypt and back up the VM image periodically, then that’s fine. If he’s using antique hardware, then he’s being silly. That’s like racing a 1960s-era car: It’s fun and nostalgic as long as nothing goes wrong and you never have a crash.

Sometimes people make simple things very complex. As long as he regularly backup his work he could be using an old machine with no issues. Why does he need to backup a vm image, why encrypt it? I imagine you think he should be uploading the encrypted vm image to the cloud... Writers been doing without for centuries. But then again, what do I know... I drive a car made in 1980, a motorcycle from 1962 and use a termina…

Houses sometimes burn down. Occasionally, physical storage media catastrophically fails. When these things happen, you'd better hope that your backup process (a) worked, (b) was complete and (c) didn't suffer the same fate as the primary hardware. Hopefully the author is diligent and has backed up everything with sufficient frequency and with sufficient physical separation.

Whereas a VM backup means you can rehabilitate a functioning computer for the author with all of their data and __all__ of their esoteric configuration nuances in a matter of minutes. They can effectively have their computer reappear in front of them using any commodity hardware available off-the-shelf from any large town in Western civilisation—no need to rummage around your local community to track down esoteric, period-correct hardware components.

I don't think cloud backups are strictly necessary but given the size of a DOS virtual machine in its entirty, why the hell not? What are we talking about here, one or two megabytes after compression? That's less than one JPEG from a smartphone.

> I drive a car made in 1980

Don't crash.

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#113

Post by pwillia7 »

Torwald wrote: post #64
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 :)

His explanation of why WordStar is so good (I guess I agree with him, never used WS), reads as if you say to a programmer at gunpoint: Drink these five bottles of whisky first and then re-implement Emacs Org-Mode on a CP/M machine. The ctrl key and block commands are almost Emacs and the duble periods are the Org-Mode markup.

Yeah I was going to say -- just wait until this guy hears about org mode

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#114

Post by toast0 »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #82
geraldbrandt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joe (or jstar) is my go to console editor.

Does it still save bak files everywhere though? I used it for a while and it littered folders everywhere with them as it doesn't clean them up. I tried turning it off but an update came through that changed something and turned it back on, and then I came across nano which felt nicer :)

I actually like those ~ files everywhere, because it makes for an easy and (almost) universal undo. But it does make a mess, and I understand why you might not want them. I would be surprised if you can't turn them off, though... and I'm even more surprised they came back after an update, I wonder if you set it in the system config and not a personal config, so it got overwritten when you updated; but possibly the config value changed names too. :(

That's very frustrating, and I hope nano treats you well.

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#115

Post by webmaven »

dmd wrote: post #72
user-the-name wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't come back from that kind of thing that easily. Even if the current owner doesn't do that, who's to say who the owner will be tomorrow?

By that logic you can’t trust anything anywhere.

> By that logic you can’t trust anything anywhere.

Well, that's just an argument for only using services that are open source, such that you could self-host, and more importantly, someone else can stand up a new (paid or otherwise) hosting service in competition with the one that has gone bad.

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#117

Post by bombcar »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #109
bellyfullofbac wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^TW .. By default it word wraps files, so editing source files with long lines gets a bit annoying, I know one can save the default options, but I've used this shortcut a lot of times that I know it by heart.

True but as far as I remember it inserts a 'hard' line ending every time it wraps. Meaning you have to go back in and clean up all those line endings if you want to go back and edit a paragraph, otherwise everything ends up out of whack. What I'd prefer is an editor that wraps visually but only inserts line endings at the end of a paragraph (when enter is actually pressed).

Nano does this if it’s turned on. I can’t believe other editors don’t have a soft wrap option.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/122795/long-line-wr...

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#118

Post by [deleted] »

simondotau wrote: post #112
AndresNavarro wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes people make simple things very complex. As long as he regularly backup his work he could be using an old machine with no issues. Why does he need to backup a vm image, why encrypt it? I imagine you think he should be uploading the encrypted vm image to the cloud... Writers been doing without for centuries. But then again, what do I know... I drive a car made in 1980, a motorcycle from 1962 and use a termina…

Houses sometimes burn down. Occasionally, physical storage media catastrophically fails. When these things happen, you'd better hope that your backup process (a) worked, (b) was complete and (c) didn't suffer the same fate as the primary hardware. Hopefully the author is diligent and has backed up everything with sufficient frequency and with sufficient physical separation. Whereas a VM backup means you can rehabilit…

[deleted]

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#119

Post by dang »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #59
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 :)

Should include a 1996 tag. I go read this every few years thinking maybe I should learn WordStar... Just like I should learn Emacs for Org Mode. Then I slouch back off to Sublime Text, Scrivener, and Word. I still write drafts in fountain pen, though.

We added the year to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27345969 (thanks!) but also merged that thread into this one, since two WordStar threads on the front page at the same is one WordStar thread too many.

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#120

Post by retsibsi »

mabbo wrote: post #110
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 :)

Sawyer's "Calculating God" was the first book I would consider "real sci-fi" that I ever read, at around age 13 or so. A friend's older brother had recommended it to me and it blew my mind. It was, for me, the turning point from reading what I now recognize to be mostly trash (primarily very early 'Star Wars' expanded universe books) to instead looking for things that had real impact. Books that made me think. Not ev…

Which of his other books would you strongly recommend?
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