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WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

wordtsar.ca

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Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#71

Post by filmgirlcw »

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), but it’s neat or read about how other people use their tools and why they love what they love.

What I’ve found over the years is that people become very particular about their tools and their setups but that my exact preference is not going to match that of someone else, which is part of what make the endless text editor debates so fun/enduring.

The only thing I take some issue with (and this essay is from 1990, so it gets a complete pass from me, but I mean this about most of the essays of this type), is that in order to advocate for why a person prefers a specific setup, people have a tendency to denigrate other tools. “Real writers use WordStar.” “Real lawyers use WordPerfect.” “Real hackers use [vi, emacs, IDE or text editor du jour here].” “Real screenwriters use Final Draft.” (The last one is slightly outdated and is probably “real Screenwriters use Fountain.”) Ans that just contributes to the gatekeeping/in-group dynamics that can make joining some of these established niche communities difficult/toxic.

I get the impulse; I’ve certainly been guilty of those statements in the past myself (“real writers use Markdown”), but the older I get (or maybe just the more people I’m exposed to), the more I realize is that tools are personal and that my preferred paradigm might align with some others, but there is no one true way.

That doesn’t mean I don’t still cringe when people I know and love use Google Docs for everything, but I’ve at least resisted the urge to enumerate all the reasons Google Docs is so inferior for me/my needs.

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#72

Post by dmd »

user-the-name wrote: post #69
tssva wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SourceForge was sold to a new owner a few years ago. All of that type of thing ended with the new ownership.

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.

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#73

Post by chx »

nottorp wrote: post #62
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 :)

> Most North American users will have their system codepage set to 437, which displays the original IBM PC "PC-8" character set. If you use a different codepage, you might see accented alphabetic characters on screen where you'd expect to see some or all of the line- and box-drawing characters. I remember WordPerfect won because it could actually use accented characters in Eastern Europe.

Also Reveal Codes. To this day I often feel lost when I need to use word processors without Reveal Codes.

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#74

Post by filmgirlcw »

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, it’s really interesting to look at how people created interfaces and features before the mouse and GUI became mainstream (and to be clear, I’m not trying to get into an argument about whether a keyboard driven UX is better than a mouse-keyboard UX, generally I agree that for most people spending a ton of time with text, a keyboard-driven UX is going to be more efficient — but the GUI is a very different/separate thing).

Some of the ideas were good, some not so much. But it’s really interesting to see how people compensated for stuff like the lack of context menus and selections and comments and whatnot.

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#76

Post by GekkePrutser »

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 have to export to .txt every time. Something like wordstar that would just save in text format woudl be amazing.

It's just very strange that something that is 100% natural on the web (text word-wrapping works perfectly in every textbox on the web!!) is so difficult to achieve on the console.

I heard maybe vim or emacs can do it but I'm not a fan of those tbh. I'd love something like nano...

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#77

Post by GekkePrutser »

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.

True but it is a point, and one that has lead to the emergence of decentralised open source initiatives that can never be taken over by a hostile entity.

Maybe it's time for a code 'matrix' too. Especially now that github was taken over by Microsoft, prompting many projects to move away.

I don't think Microsoft is a bad caretaker but something with zero commercial interest at heart is always better IMO.

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#78

Post by dctoedt »

eddieh wrote: post #70
slowmovintarget wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you are not already invested in WordStar and have an old DOS machine on hand, then I'd strongly suggest Emacs & Org Mode. The Emacs learning curve is pretty terrible, but once you are comfortable with Org you can do all your writing there. There's a huge benefit to having the same configuration for text editing (Sublime) and document preparation (Srivener, Word). Can't help with the fountain pen though. :)

Emacs and org-mode are great as a way to gradually learn LaTeX incrementally. (Of course, it helps to have been using both Emacs and org-mode for awhile.)

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#79

Post by GekkePrutser »

rhabarba wrote: post #4
neom wrote: post #3

"WordStar is a word processor application for microcomputers. It dominated the market in the early and mid-1980s, succeeding the market leader Electric Pencil. It was published by MicroPro International, originally written for the CP/M-80 operating system, and later written also for MS-DOS and other 16-bit PC OSes. Seymour I. Rubinstein was the principal owner of the company, and Rob Barnaby was the sole author of th…

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.

Re: WordTsar, a WordStar Clone

#80

Post by dotancohen »

geraldbrandt wrote: post #25
dotancohen wrote: post #22

The site mentions UTF-8 support. Can anyone take a screenshot of this so I could see if it's worth compiling: שלום, עולם! I'd be interested in ODT support as well, but there seems to be no mention on the site so I'm assuming that LibreOffice compatibility is right out.

It's still in Alpha and coded by one guy (me). Give it time...

Then I'll just take the opportunity to say thank you. I'm personally very happy with VIM and Markdown, but I know a lot of people loved Wordstar and I fear for the day when VIM will be where Wordstar is now.
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