[HN Gopher] Science Fiction Writer Robert J. Sawyer: WordStar: A...
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Science Fiction Writer Robert J. Sawyer: WordStar: A Writer's Word
Processor
Author : amadeuspagel
Score : 36 points
Date : 2021-05-31 16:53 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sfwriter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sfwriter.com)
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| 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 (The last one is slightly outdated and is probably "real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.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| G.R.R. Martin uses Wordstar on a DOS machine:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/14/5716232/george-r-r-martin...
| [deleted]
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| Since it's WordStar day, I use joe a fair amount.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe%27s_Own_Editor
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| 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.
| eddieh wrote:
| 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. :)
| dctoedt wrote:
| 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.)
| Torwald wrote:
| 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.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| 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.
| kazinator wrote:
| I used WordStar on CP/M for a good many homework assignments in
| elementary and high school.
|
| JOE (Joe's Own Editor) has WordStar-inspired key bindings. I used
| that just a very little bit thirty years ago.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| I can appreciate this. I've written thousands of articles in
| Sublime Text. Sublime is not my favorite editor for coding, I
| prefer IntelliJ there, but sublime is beautifully simple for
| writing and basic editing. Being able to refactor the story, by
| moving sentences and paragraphs the way we refactor code, is
| wonderful.
|
| After I'm happy with the first draft, I'll drop the text into
| google docs for a second set of eyes on spelling and grammar (I
| find the google docs grammar check superior to any other word
| processor).
| newdude116 wrote:
| Interesting. I use commercial softmaker on Linux. They offer a
| scaled down free version: https://www.freeoffice.com/en/
|
| If you look for an odd program try this:
| https://www.papyrusauthor.com/
|
| Made for professional writes. Last time I tried it, I must say,
| it was fast as f.. (Installed with WIne under Linux)
| drusepth wrote:
| It's really interesting to compare the niche word processors of
| the 90s to those today, especially those targeted specifically
| for writers [1]. The former are all wildly different each other
| and from the latter, which are basically all "Microsoft Word but
| with chapters/folders" now -- with a few extra features tacked
| onto the good ones.
|
| I'd love to see some word processors pop up that are
| _fundamentally_ different again.
|
| [1] https://www.fiction.tools/#writing-word-processors
| nottorp wrote:
| > 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.
| chx wrote:
| Also Reveal Codes. To this day I often feel lost when I need to
| use word processors without Reveal Codes.
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