Here is a bit of computing history. This is what word processing looked like in the 80s. This program was also used to write the 'Game of Thrones' books. Watch for details.
This software generates a lot of nostalgia. My mother is a Notary and she used this software for her work at the beginning. In his computer everything was configured for the margins that are used in the Notary. It was really only in 2012 when we finally stopped using it in the office. Imagine how useful it was.
Wordstar on a CP/M machine was the first word processor I used. I liked it pretty much - if you get used to the concept that you don't have WYSIWYG, it's lean and functional. Very good for productive word (without graphics, that is.)
ABOUT THE STRANGE CHARACTERS YOU SAW: In text-based days, every character was the same width. In order to allow text to appear to be "justified" like you see in books and newspapers, where the text lines up evenly on the right, such systems add extra spaces between words. But those spaces cannot be added permanently, or otherwise the editor/writer will soon have all these extra unwanted spaces in their document. At the same time, the extra spaces that appear should re-appear in the same place across editing sessions. So what WordStar did is they flagged the spot where such spaces were added by setting a high bit on the non-blank character preceding the blank. For instance, "A" is represented by code 65 normally, but in this case would be converted to 65+64 which I believe is "ü". The high bit told Wordstar "OK, you can add as many soft blanks here in order to justify the text". Nowadays, HTML uses "non-breaking space" to achieve the same effect from the opposite approach: assume all blanks are ephemeral except for the non-breaking ones. Also, HTML on most systems uses kerning and variable-width whitespace.
The reason you didn't see strange characters this time is most likely because you opened it as a Non-Document rather than a Document. The difference is that a Document is a proprietary WordStar formatted file, hence you will see extended characters when viewing it in anything other than WordStar (e.g., the DOS prompt). A Non-Document is just an ASCII text file, so it shouldn't have few if any extended characters in it. You will also not have any formatting (e..g, bold, italics, etc.) I used WordStar for quite a while, and apparently you don't forget this stuff. :)
+ Mr. Jeff i think this is best word procesor for Dos and other New Laptop like this awesome handheld machine. www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&id=DCEB1DF696DDEF68E495BAC083267B4FE1FC9869&thid=OIP.WW9rIfD61w1lc-9X5DuvAQHaHG&mediaurl=https%3A%2F%2Fs-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com%2F736x%2Fee%2F7b%2F43%2Fee7b43d9d0361b11980c6806dfaa88e9.jpg&exph=479&expw=500&q=cpm+computer&selectedindex=8&ajaxhist=0&vt=0&eim=1,6 😋 Cheers from Poland. I add some manual in my first post😊
Although I haven't read his books, I learned a while back that Martin writes his books on Wordstar. When I think of famous authors, I have always envisioned them writing their books on cutting-edge computers with the latest software. That's not always the case, and Martin isn't the only one. Danielle Steele writes all of her novels on a typewriter. I do understand Martin's annoyance with the revision help that new word processors provide. I write in Word 2019, and it often tries to correct things that aren't even mistakes.
Wordstar in a IBM XT 8088 machine was my first text editor.... I can remember a lot of shorcuts commands! Right beside Lotus 1-2-3, it was my beginning at IT world.....
Although I'm not a technophobe, I do get the nostalgia for WordStar. There was something pure about raw text on screen with no distractions. WordStar was known as a "writers word processor." I doubt Mr. Martin uses function keys and that he memorized the control keys to the point where he could turn the top and bottom menus off that otherwise take up half the screen. Most WordStar commands were two control keys - e.g., Ctrl+K,B. While that might seem cumbersome, the idea was that typing could be done without ever leaving the QWERTY keyboard. In other words, any WordStar user worth his salt would not even think of using a function key! Thanks for the video and trip down memory lane. Word processors were magic back then. Yes, they can now do desktop publishing and such, but back then the leap was from typewriters, ribbons, white-out, and all that primitive stuff. :)
People stick with Wordstar 4 because they changed the command/navigation keystrokes in later versions. The new keystrokes were more systematic and consistent, but slower. For example, two keystrokes to delete one character versus one keystroke in the original. The fun part about using Wordstar was the keystrokes, much like vi/vim. You didn't need to use a menu. Everything done from the keyboard with Control keys. Smoothly integrates with typing words.
I still use WordStar 7c, the last update available in Brazil. I admit, not for text editing now, but its column mode (Ctrl+K, N) is great for quick reformatting of column varying numeric data sets. And WS 7c can deal with really huge datasets.
I am also using WordStar, 5.5, inside DosBox, on the Mac. I haven't figured out how to print on the Mac in DosBox, so I created a Mac file conversion utility to convert wordstar files to RTF files I can open with Word (or other program). I also figured out that WordPerfect can also read and output WordStar files to RTF, but it is rather tedious. WordStar, my first word processor, on my CP/M Kaypro II back in the day, still holds a strange fascination for me. In some ways, it is still a better writing tool than MS Word or other modern programs.
I still use Wordstar 7.0 everyday - I run it inside Dos Box on a Windows 7 machine. - I use the program prinfil to make it work with my printers and smartkey to program my function keys to output Wordstar commands. I have many years of files in the format, and there is no program that converts them perfectly to programs like Microsoft Word which is one of the reasons I keep using it.
Cool vid man. I had no clue George RR Martin wrote on an older system, its kind of cool. Its like this Fantasy writer from the late 19 century who wrote exclusively with ink and feather even tough typewriters were available. What I mean he prefers a very old outdated system to write. I remember fooling around with a text software in the DOS days. I honestly rather played games (it was on my uncles IBM PC, I got one later it had a boulder dash clone on it with a 1 MB harddrive, kinds wish I still had it. Got my first 16 Ram Windows 95 machine, rest is history). Still I find looking at older non game software fascinating. Im going to make an effort to do more oldschool game videos, and I think I may try to get some of the old C64 and Amiga paint programms runniing again. I used to love those alot. Fun vid keep them coming!
The funny characters are formatting information such as Caps. The 8-bit is used to indicate such information resulting in the funny characters. There is a setting you can chose to save pure text.
Dear god i remember loathing WS4 written exams. We all needed to memorize the menu key shortcuts, and some command prompt skills were also added in the mix. Those days were too manual as hell lmao
Yeah, a keyboard-driven interface must be stressful to learn under pressure, especially if it isn't something you use regularly enough to get used to. I'm guessing the people who look back fondly on it (or even still use it) had the benefit of being able to learn it at their own pace.
Or use neovim in a Unix terminal and use markdown for styles. It's a similar interface, but editing without the need for a mouse is useful and it's free and still being maintained and updated.
There were weird characters in your first document because you were in document mode rather than non-document like this video. The real beauty of WordStar is typist home row navigation and commands, which later evolved into what Borland and Microsoft adopted as the programmers interface. Microsoft abandoned this approach after QuickBASIC.
Now I used to use WORDSTAR on my MSDOS PC (after previously using LAZYWRITER on my TSR80 Clone) , and later on my SPECTREVIDEO running CP/M. That's how old this bit of software is! Everything was CONTROL-SOMETHING, SOMETHING . And ^K^XX exited it, I think (nope, it was ^KX). Oh, and Open File is ALT+F,O
The old man wrote all his resumes on that, 30 years ago. Want a different font? Bold face. Want to print it out? 240 dpi on the old Epson JX-80. Word processing was pretty much the only productive thing personal computers did, in the day, but a good resume could get you $50,000/year, wohoo!
the reason people are going crazy about wordstar 4.0, is because George RR Martin revealed on a talk show that this is the program he uses to this day to write. that right folks, while you are frying you bring in multitasking and internet distractions, Martin is being productive with an Ms-Dos computer.
Thanks for the video, but there must be some sort of "malfunction" in your machine ,since the characters are nor pixelized! Just kidding, I used this thing (a later version of it, but, anyways...) back in 1995, getting back to it NOW... thanks...
Ashok Kumar, online is tough, because you will often discover that programs are not at all complete unless you get close-out stock on unopened packages. Nevertheless, WordStar is worth looking for.
Have you taken a look at WordTsar by any chance? It's supposed to be a recreation of WordStar for modern operations systems and I'd love to hear the opinion of a die-hard WordStar user.
I rly wont know ez way to export *.ws dokument to modern fornat like odt or other... I rly love use dos for writing that screen color and font make me picefull when i writing...
Wordstar was not even the best of MicroPro's products. WordStar nondocument started out as an editor for CSV data files in InfoStar, MicroPro's relational database management system. Perhaps their crowning achievement was SuperSort, a command line sort, select and index engine for managing InfoStar data.
