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WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

wordtsar.ca

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Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#121

Post by gramie »

zabzonk wrote: post #55
tssva wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

I was used to WP´s function keys; I don´t have much trouble switching between editors and word processors.

The thing that WordPerfect had that I still miss was ¨Reveal Codes¨, which would show you the exact placement and ordering of normally invisible codes (bold on/off, mark for index, hard page break, etc.)

Being able to see exactly what has screwed up your document´s formatting was a godsend. In MS Word it´s often easier to just recreate a document than to try and fix the screwed up formatting of an existing document.

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#122

Post by AndresNavarro »

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…

> Don't crash

That's good advice in any vehicle :)

I think you are missing my point. I only say just because something is available doesn't meant you should use it. Life is not always about minimizing risk, or effort or maximizing productive output.

You can (should) do offsite backups, and even if you don't life doesn't end if you lose some of your work. Not everyone needs to rebuild their setup in milliseconds. If my house burned down my custom configuration would be the last of my worries don't know about you.

But, well. To each their own.

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#123

Post by simonblack »

filmgirlcw wrote: post #71

Text editors (whether it is for prose or code or math or whatever) are such a personal thing that it is always interesting to read about how and why people use certain tools. WordStar had already been supplanted by WordPerfect (and to a lesser-extent, Microsoft Word), before I was even born, so I can’t even pretend to romanticize WordStar and its UX (which would drive me crazy, the same way Emacs drives me crazy), bu…

Text editors ... are such a personal thing

Sooner or later, you get imprinted with one. It may not be the first one you use, or maybe not the last one you tried.

I got imprinted with WordStar in the mid 1980s. I still use WordStar itself when I program in CP/M. And I use jstar (one of the 'joe' alter egos that pretends it's WordStar) when I program in C on Linux.

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#125

Post by simondotau »

AndresNavarro wrote: post #122
simondotau wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Don't crash That's good advice in any vehicle :) I think you are missing my point. I only say just because something is available doesn't meant you should use it. Life is not always about minimizing risk, or effort or maximizing productive output. You can (should) do offsite backups, and even if you don't life doesn't end if you lose some of your work. Not everyone needs to rebuild their setup in milliseconds. If m…

I wholeheartedly agree with all of the above—assuming that you are your own client. If you have the knowledge and can weigh the pros and cons for yourself, go for it. I was more thinking about a scenario where you're acting as the systems administrator for someone else who's not so technical.

If you were in charge of maintaining George R.R. Martin's WordStar workstation, at the very minimum I doubt you'd feel comfortable having it using a period-correct Quantum Fireball or IBM DeskStar...

> That's good advice in any vehicle :)

I wish it was advice. Unfortunately it's not, it's a warning. You can do everything right and still be the victim of someone else's bad luck or bad life choices. Whether it's an oncoming car or getting T-boned at an intersection, the risk of a serious crash exists no matter how good of a driver you are.

The difference between a car made in 2015 and a car made in 1980 can easily be as dramatic as walking out with superficial injuries—or certain death. The newer car will help you to wash off more speed prior to impact, it will absorb more of the crash energy in its chassis before it gets transferred to your body, and it will deploy precisely timed airbags in concert with a seatbelt pretensioner, all to ensure that the internal organs inside your body decelerate as gently as possible.

I love classic cars in the abstract, but I'd never drive one.

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#126

Post by technofiend »

eddieh wrote: post #23
rhabarba wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WordTsar won’t run on DOS!

That's a shame. Many of the WordStar holdouts actually like their writing machine to be some old reliable computer without modern distractions. It isn't just the software, it is the whole experience. It runs one program at a time, no internet, now notifications, just reliable typing on what's probably a mechanical keyboard that has exactly the right feel.

Unicomp makes leaf spring switch keyboards that are the modern day equivalent of IBM's beloved PC keyboards. They are too loud for a shared work environment but perfect for home use, assuming you don't multitask during a meeting with your mic on, anyway.

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#127

Post by rhabarba »

lproven wrote: post #91
GekkePrutser wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

To be precise, it still is and Corel actively advertises it.

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#128

Post by fouc »

filmgirlcw wrote: post #71

Text editors (whether it is for prose or code or math or whatever) are such a personal thing that it is always interesting to read about how and why people use certain tools. WordStar had already been supplanted by WordPerfect (and to a lesser-extent, Microsoft Word), before I was even born, so I can’t even pretend to romanticize WordStar and its UX (which would drive me crazy, the same way Emacs drives me crazy), bu…

What essay are you referring to? (Since the parent link is to a site rather than a specific essay).. I'm guessing it's this one? https://sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#130

Post by maxnoe »

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…

Vim does it with

set linebreak set wrap

You can enable this by filtetype using the filetype plugin.

E.g. I have those lines in .vim/after/ftplugin/markdown.vim and TeX.vim.

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