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#1 | |
Grand Sorcerer
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Karma: 74358018
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Toronto
Device: Libra H2O, Libra Colour
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One of our members and WordStar
Quote:
More details at https://sfwriter.com/blog/?p=5806 Last edited by PeterT; 08-06-2024 at 09:44 AM. |
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#2 |
Karma Kameleon
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Karma: 26738313
Join Date: Aug 2009
Device: iPad Mini, iPhone X, Kindle Fire Tab HD 8, Walmart Onn
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Very cool
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#3 |
Grand Sorcerer
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Karma: 74358018
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Toronto
Device: Libra H2O, Libra Colour
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I have memories of first being introduced to WordStar on my Osborne luggable computer. Then I discovered Borland and Turbo Pascal where the editor interface used the WordStar style keys. From there it was onto my Eagle luggable PC where I added SideKick to the mix (again the same editor interface).
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#4 |
the rook, bossing Never.
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Karma: 89531599
Join Date: Jun 2017
Location: Ireland
Device: All 4 Kinds: epub eink, Kindle, android eink, NxtPaper11
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I used Wordstar on CP/M before there was an IBM PC in the UK or Ireland. An Apple II with a Z80 card, 80 column card and replacement keyboard with added 2 x 1M byte 8" floppy drives. The Apple II text and keyboard was primitive and floppy 100K and slow.
Later I used and sold NewWord, a Wordstar clone, on CP/M (Amstrad PCW) and MS-DOS. Then in early 1990s I wrote a text editor for DOS in Modula-2 that used Wordstar keys and Menu/Mouse and worked OK on NT and Win 3.x. It also had hyperlinking so a document could be an outline and each chapter in a separate file. It wasn't constrained by RAM as the part in RAM was only a window of the file, It also had a foot pedals (buttons on joystick port) and used the sound card to play audio dictation which could be copied in to HDD at twice speed, if the dictation cassette/microcassette was recorded at half speed. It had no formatting at all. You optionally used markup recognised by DTP or Word or Sun Office. Like a better version of Notepad, but limited only by disk space. Non-NT Notepad (Win2, 3.x. Win9x etc) could only edit 64 K or less files. Ten years+ later I was using notepad++ for capturing writing and MS Word 2002/XP to edit. My last "Wordstar" foray two years ago was a Joyce Emulator on Linux (available on Windows) and reading 3" and 3.5" CP/M floppies (simple adaptor for 3" drive) on my last PC with a real floppy port. I copied the Amstrad PCW CP/M files (Newword, but like older wordstar) and then wrote a Perl script to convert to ASCII as the original WS use the 8th bit to mark word and line breaks etc. I did write a novel on Wordstar and a History of Computers & Communications. It was good in its day for business correspondence, mail merge and a draft of a novel. Last edited by Quoth; 08-06-2024 at 11:52 AM. |
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#5 | |
eReader Wrangler
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Karma: 50076341
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: Boise, ID
Device: PB HD3, GL3, Tolino Vision 4, Voyage, Clara HD
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Quote:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...9&postcount=64 |
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#6 |
Grand Sorcerer
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Karma: 74358018
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Toronto
Device: Libra H2O, Libra Colour
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Yes. I saw his post on Writing only after posting this: (
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#7 |
eReader Wrangler
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Karma: 50076341
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: Boise, ID
Device: PB HD3, GL3, Tolino Vision 4, Voyage, Clara HD
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#8 |
Evangelist
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Karma: 2267928
Join Date: Nov 2015
Device: none
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Poor people who had to deal with that braindead software... especially those who had decode the garbage WS produced.
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#9 |
Recovering reader
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Karma: 8008008
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: México
Device: iPad
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I typed my M.Sc. thesis with WordStar.
Yeah, I'm that old ![]() Last edited by guanaco; 08-07-2024 at 12:04 AM. Reason: Fixed typo |
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#10 |
Addict
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Karma: 2257942
Join Date: Aug 2007
Device: Kindle Oasis 2 and 3, Scribe
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#11 | |
eReader Wrangler
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Karma: 50076341
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: Boise, ID
Device: PB HD3, GL3, Tolino Vision 4, Voyage, Clara HD
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Quote:
It wasn't hard to convert to formatted text with its ASCII utility. |
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#12 |
Evangelist
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Karma: 2267928
Join Date: Nov 2015
Device: none
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Wordstar cannot open DOS text files even in its programmer's mode, and it surrounds every non-ASCII symbol in the text individually with a SI/SO pair. Earlier versions couldn't do even that, being CP/M leftovers.
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#13 |
Grand Sorcerer
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Karma: 198099188
Join Date: Jan 2010
Device: Nexus 7, Kindle Fire HD
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A fan thread celebrating the free release of software people enjoyed (or just remembered fondly) isn't exactly hard to refrain from raining on. Just saying.
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#14 | |
eReader Wrangler
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Location: Boise, ID
Device: PB HD3, GL3, Tolino Vision 4, Voyage, Clara HD
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Quote:
WordStar was not designed to be a text editor. It was designed to be a word processor but, even in Linux in 2024, I can still write in WordStar for DOS and convert my documents for use elsewhere. The Convert utility actually allowed you to convert WordStar documents to many formats. There's probably a better choice than the text format, but I'm used to working with text documents so that's what I (personally) use. |
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#15 |
Groupie
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Join Date: Nov 2015
Device: none
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Long ago I read an introduction to a novel, it was either scifi or fantasy, where author thanked IT guy that helped him recover draft from a dying pc/laptop that was in an obscure format. I think that it dealt with this software.
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