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Notjohn · 12-07-2019, 07:35 AM

Hitch, your defense of Word and WordPerfect betray your life as an editor. They aren't good tools for an author, however, because writing isn't linear. See Rob Sawyer's explication at https://sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm for why he and I and other writers never understood why people opted for WordPerfect over WordStar in the 1980s/1990s.

Word can be kludged, of course, with a WordStar command set written by Mike Petrie, who also maintains a WS website. That's how I use Word, though I have little interest in styles. It's so easy to clean up Word's awful html! Why waste time adapting yesterday's styles to today's book?

Just FWIW. I realize this doesn't apply to your line of work, and perhaps not that of anyone else here. In college I learned to compose on a typewriter, but I always had a yellow lined pad at hand when things got tough. The day I discovered "computer" composition (an Olympia electronic typewriter with a computer extension with a 5.25 inch disk drive) was a joyous one, March 1985. I sold that piece for $250 and never looked back. At last I could massage a story or essay until it just FELT GOOD, and only then print it out -- and mail it, of course! It was several years before editors would accept a computer disk (or many disks, in the case of a book).

12-07-2019, 07:35 AM	#37
Notjohn mostly an observer Posts: 1,519 Karma: 987654 Join Date: Dec 2012 Device: Kindle	Hitch, your defense of Word and WordPerfect betray your life as an editor. They aren't good tools for an author, however, because writing isn't linear. See Rob Sawyer's explication at https://sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm for why he and I and other writers never understood why people opted for WordPerfect over WordStar in the 1980s/1990s. Word can be kludged, of course, with a WordStar command set written by Mike Petrie, who also maintains a WS website. That's how I use Word, though I have little interest in styles. It's so easy to clean up Word's awful html! Why waste time adapting yesterday's styles to today's book? Just FWIW. I realize this doesn't apply to your line of work, and perhaps not that of anyone else here. In college I learned to compose on a typewriter, but I always had a yellow lined pad at hand when things got tough. The day I discovered "computer" composition (an Olympia electronic typewriter with a computer extension with a 5.25 inch disk drive) was a joyous one, March 1985. I sold that piece for $250 and never looked back. At last I could massage a story or essay until it just FELT GOOD, and only then print it out -- and mail it, of course! It was several years before editors would accept a computer disk (or many disks, in the case of a book).