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solrize ,

700MB archive and no mention of source code, I mean couldn’t someone implement the command set as an emacs mode?

cmnybo ,

It’s a closed source program. There’s not going to be any source code unless somebody goes through the massive effort of reverse engineering it. That effort would be much better spent improving a clone such as WordTsar.

solrize ,

Yes that’s what I mean, it didn’t sound like he had the source code. Are people supposed to run it under emulation, or what? This is an MSDOS version that he packaged? 700MB archive?! That is an awful lot of floppy discs.

I confess to never having seen wordstar actually in use. Does it do anything particularly interesting, or is it mostly a set of key bindings that its users like?

I’m reminded of Neal Stephenson’s description of Emacs:

In the GNU/Linux world there are two major text editing programs: the minimalist vi (known in some implementations as elvis) and the maximalist emacs. I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor. It was created by Richard Stallman; enough said. It is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is beautiful. It is colossal, and yet it only edits straight ASCII text files, which is to say, no fonts, no boldface, no underlining. In other words, the engineer-hours that, in the case of Microsoft Word, were devoted to features like mail merge, and the ability to embed feature-length motion pictures in corporate memoranda, were, in the case of emacs, focused with maniacal intensity on the deceptively simple-seeming problem of editing text. If you are a professional writer–i.e., if someone else is getting paid to worry about how your words are formatted and printed–emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars. It is not just bigger and brighter; it simply makes everything else vanish.

web.stanford.edu/class/cs81n/command.txt

einkorn ,
@einkorn@feddit.org avatar

A new WordStar release? Maybe GRRM can finally finish the two missing ASOIAF books in a timely fashion with it!

dustyData ,

My pet conspiracy theory is that he already wrote the books. But the failure of the last season of the series was so horrendous he decided to never publish them and we will probably only hear of them when they’re published posthumously.

Brkdncr ,

It sounds like there are a number of people with limitless wallets that would pay for a modern version of Wordstar…

seaQueue ,
@seaQueue@lemmy.world avatar

It shouldn’t be too hard to build one of the Linux clones as a static binary for the major platforms

JoMiran ,
@JoMiran@lemmy.ml avatar

I wonder if there’s a FOSS Linux compatible clone.

EDIT: There sure is. wordtsar.ca

palordrolap ,

Apparently, The joe editor has a jstar mode, so says this old Stackexchange thread. I can't verify because I've never used Wordstar, but joe's available in my distro's repository.

No idea if it can read old WordStar files, but maybe you don't need that.

For the GUI version - and some old file capability, the same page and other searches turn up WordTsar which is in progress. The dev says they'll be picking up development again next month.

JaymesRS ,

Joe is amazing. It’s my primary editor.

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

There’s also WordGrinder, which is meant to do the job of no bullshit, no distractions word processing. It’s a slight step above a text editor in that it can do bold and such but it’s meant to get the words out of your head and onto the screen and that’s about it.

I_Miss_Daniel ,

Used to run it on my z80 back in the day, before moving on to WordPerfect 5.1.

dactylotheca ,
@dactylotheca@suppo.fi avatar

The program’s path from a CP/M app by MicroPro onward is winding, being shoved into a half-baked office suite, acquired by SoftKey, which became the Learning Company, acquired by Mattel, spun off to Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep, and is now the archival property of—well, nobody’s quite sure.

Looking forward to the eventual frivolous takedown notice and/or lawsuit – suits seem to have absolutely zero brains when it comes to this stuff. Or, well, when it comes to anything except making themselves and their buddies on the board richer, really

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