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Bruce Bastian, WordPerfect co-creator, has died

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Re: Bruce Bastian, WordPerfect co-creator, has died

#81

Post by raudette »

TheAmazingRace wrote: post #24
Jare wrote: post #23

Back in the late 80's I was feeling the kind of the world editing documents WYSIWYG with some Desktop Publishing package on my Atari ST, while my friends toiled away in the stone age of PC text mode with WordPerfect and that incredibly weird and primitive thing (to me): reveal codes. By the time I moved to PCs I could use Windows 3.x and MS Word, so I lived through college in the late 80s and early 90s without ever u…

Funny you should mention the Atari ST. I heard WordPerfect did make it to the platform, but only for a short time. I wonder if it was any good?

I used WordPerfect for the Amiga. I was in high school, so I didn't use any features beyond what you'd need for an essay or report - it seemed equivalent to the equivalent DOS version (4.x) from this perspective.

One of the challenges I had was printing french accented characters on a LaserJet+ clone - an issue I never resolved, and didn't encounter in the DOS version on my parent's PC.

Re: Bruce Bastian, WordPerfect co-creator, has died

#82

Post by jetsnoc »

Bruce came into the world and made it a better place. Bruce was smart, kind, thoughtful, and generous. I have never met him personally, but early in my life, his story had a significant positive impact on my life. Like him, I too grew up in Twin Falls, Idaho. It’s a conservative state in an LDS Religious stronghold. My high school technology teacher (Mike) was married to his sister at the time and spoke fondly of him but more importantly, spoke specifically about who Bruce was. In hindsight, he knew I needed to hear it.

I wasn’t out as gay yet, maybe only 15 years old. Of course, it would have been a death sentence for a teenager in Southern Idaho to come out as gay. One day though, Mike told me “You know, you can grow up here and you can be /different/ in many different kinds of ways, you can be a band nerd, a guy who writes software, you can be gay, you can be /yourself/ and no matter what some adults might tell you right now, you will be okay. Not only okay, but you can live a fulfilled and successful life while being authentic and true to yourself. You are never the person that these adults claim you are. They don’t know anything.“ He then went on to tell me Bruce’s story and how in his opinion, of course, Bruce wasn’t “evil” or “wrong” for being gay.

In 2005, I wrote my technology teacher a personal thank you letter. I wrote one to Bruce as well and I asked if it could be shared with him.

Bruce took the time to respond:

  Dear Brian,
  Thank you for taking the time to write your letter.  I was very moved by your story.  There were parts that really reminded me of some of my own experiences in life.
  The beautiful thing about life, at least as I have seen it, is that if you keep trying and never doubt yourself, you really can make amazing things happen both in yourself and in the world around you.  I am sure you too have already touched many people around you and have been a positive influence for them. That's so very important.  You may never realize the good you are doing, but it is happening.
  Being gay is becoming more and more accepted as "normal" and one day maybe it just won't matter.  As for being a geek, I don't consider that a bad term.  The world needs geeks.  But then they need gays too!
  Thanks again,
  Bruce Bastian

Re: Bruce Bastian, WordPerfect co-creator, has died

#83

Post by TheAmazingRace »

raudette wrote: post #81
TheAmazingRace wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you should mention the Atari ST. I heard WordPerfect did make it to the platform, but only for a short time. I wonder if it was any good?

I used WordPerfect for the Amiga. I was in high school, so I didn't use any features beyond what you'd need for an essay or report - it seemed equivalent to the equivalent DOS version (4.x) from this perspective. One of the challenges I had was printing french accented characters on a LaserJet+ clone - an issue I never resolved, and didn't encounter in the DOS version on my parent's PC.

It's truly a darn shame that the piracy situation was so rampant on both the ST and Amiga platforms. It's pretty much the main reason why WordPerfect (and a variety of other software) was pulled from the market, in favor of the PC and Mac markets.

Re: Bruce Bastian, WordPerfect co-creator, has died

#84

Post by igneo676 »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #30
tombert wrote: post #25

This makes me sadder than I thought it would. My first computer [1] didn't have Microsoft Word on it, but it had WordPerfect installed with the OEM Windows. I've always had really horrid handwriting so I preferred to type out all my homework since I was twelve or so, so I had to use whatever I could to do so, and WordPerfect was there. I grew to actually really like it, and I used it for about two years until my hard…

I somehow memorized most of the function key combos for wordperfect when in high school. And it wasn't like I was doing loads of reports for school. I guess it was a combination of there not being much else to do with the PC I had than playing the few (copied) games I had and fiddling with my copy of Wordperfect 5.1 (my neighbor who taught using it, supplied it). In any case, bored as I was, I explored a lot of the f…

My highschool teacher in 2008 taught us how to use the "mail merge" feature in Word. Out of the whole class it was the most "advanced" feature we learned and I wondered if I would ever use it in reality. Nope. Good to know it was outdated in the 90s

Re: Bruce Bastian, WordPerfect co-creator, has died

#85

Post by themadturk »

TheAmazingRace wrote: post #24
Jare wrote: post #23

Back in the late 80's I was feeling the kind of the world editing documents WYSIWYG with some Desktop Publishing package on my Atari ST, while my friends toiled away in the stone age of PC text mode with WordPerfect and that incredibly weird and primitive thing (to me): reveal codes. By the time I moved to PCs I could use Windows 3.x and MS Word, so I lived through college in the late 80s and early 90s without ever u…

Funny you should mention the Atari ST. I heard WordPerfect did make it to the platform, but only for a short time. I wonder if it was any good?

WordPerfect was even available on the Apple II!

Re: Bruce Bastian, WordPerfect co-creator, has died

#86

Post by pc2g4d »

I lived in Provo for 17 years and the legacy of WordPerfect was still in the air - not to mention the development and gardens at Thanksgiving Point which was an Ashton project, IIUC.

Anyway, I wasn't aware of Bruce Bastian specifically but the Mormon/LGBT angle stands out. It must have taken a lot of character to be out so publicly in that community.

(The LDS church's response to legalization of gay marriage was to excommunicate anyone who got married to someone of the same sex, and to bar their children from baptism and advancement unless they disavowed their parents' relationship. The policy was rescinded in 2019. In earlier times one could get excommunicated simply for _being_ gay.)

It looks like Bruce and his husband made some appearances on Mormon Stories podcast if you want some inside baseball: https://www.mormonstories.org/?s=bruce+bastian

Re: Bruce Bastian, WordPerfect co-creator, has died

#87

Post by banish-m4 »

lallysingh wrote: post #71
banish-m4 wrote: post #16

How else would I have shrunk 12 pages of high-school physics notes to fit on the allowed 3x5" (76x127mm) index card with 0.1 pt font printed in raster mode at 600 dpi on an HP LaserJet 4? WP 5.2 for DOS. IIRC, Word for Windows at the time was inflexible in granularity of TrueType font sizes.

.1 pt? Did they allow a magnifying glass for the test?

No, but I had really good vision then and could see it by squinting and using the pinhole camera trick. In the end, the exhaustive preparation made the difference. It might as well have been open book because it was a damn hard test that relied on first principles and problem-solving rather than anything that was memorizable. It was relatively harder than the SAT-I but wasn't outdone by either an abstract mathematics or modern physics for physicists & engineers finals in college. I now wonder about the utility of academic hazing rituals, if it wasn't just a formulaic cash-grab and elitism demand rather than a meaningful attempt at knowledge or process indoctrination.
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