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Wordstar - a writer's editor

Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2016 7:02 pm
by JamesR
I thought this was kind of neat/inspirational. Could be a good excuse if you have an old computer sitting around collecting dust?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12114185

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense ... 1980s.html
[George R. R. Martin] uses the newer machine for browsing the Web and checking emails, but he turns to the older one when it’s time to write. And his late-’80s software of choice is the classic word processor WordStar 4.0.
http://sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm
Robert J. Sawyer wrote:Many Science Fiction writers β€” including myself, Roger MacBride Allen, Gerald Brandt, Jeffrey A. Carver, Arthur C. Clarke, David Gerrold, Terence M. Green, James Gunn, Matthew Hughes, Donald Kingsbury, Eric Kotani, Paul Levinson, George R. R. Martin, Vonda McIntyre, Kit Reed, Jennifer Roberson, and Edo van Belkom β€” continue to use WordStar for DOS as our writing tool of choice.

Re: Worldstar - a writer's editor

Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2016 7:10 pm
by jennypenny
I'm sure their editors are thrilled. :P

Re: Worldstar - a writer's editor

Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2016 7:27 pm
by BRUTE
text editors haven't made progress since the early 70s or so. having a dedicated machine just for writing, aka a typewriter, is a pretty good focus tool. there's something to be said about sitting at a machine that can't do anything on but write.

Re: Worldstar - a writer's editor

Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2016 11:34 pm
by George the original one
WordStar was efficient, far more efficient than other choices before WYSIWYG publishing... WordPerfect came along and, well, there was a reason they were a good training company rather than a good software company, but in-person training is what the masses preferred rather than efficiency and an excellent tutorial. MS-Word juggernaut took a long time to topple WordPerfect, but ultimately WordPerfect did themselves in.

Re: Worldstar - a writer's editor

Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2016 1:01 am
by tonyedgecombe
I always though WordPerfect 5.1 was the peak of word processing, I haven't seen any productivity improvements since then. Windows is the same, other than the lack of security updates and wifi support I would be happy with Windows 2000.