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Originally Posted by gmw
I was having a dig at the fact that the navigation keystrokes were designed to support old keyboards without navigation keys - as if living with outdated limitations was a good recommendation. (Of course, that feature could be handy again now with compact portable keyboards, so it's not necessarily a bad thing either - but is putting up with that limitation for decades really worth it?)
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Sorry I missed the point. I do that too much.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
As for minimal screen interface, WordStar was not alone here. Even WordPerfect for DOS had what, a single menu line at the top and a single status line at the bottom and happily supported 50 line mode. Several other plain text editors had minimal interfaces too.
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You're right about WordPerfect's screen. Even cleaner than WordStar's. I just couldn't get used to the Function Keys. But, to be honest, I already liked WordStar, so I probably didn't give WordPerfect much of an effort. I remember WordPerfect always had that Function Key template. But you could also bring up the Menu by pressing some key (can't remember which one now).
Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
Let's face it, it's what you program into your fingers that counts. My fingers rejected WordStar but accepted WordPerfect and a myriad other programs that failed to follow WordStar's lead. (I admit the WP choice made it something of a PITA when WordPerfect was taken over by Novell and then Corel and slowly became unusable. But, I adapted.)
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I understand. Obviously I was in the minority because, until Windows came along, WordPerfect quickly became the king of word processors and WordStar nose-dived into oblivion. Novell was huge for a while — my younger brother started his computing career by getting a Novell certification. But if I remember right, both Novell and WordPerfect were on the way down by then. Novell also ended up with DR DOS, which is what came with my original PC.
I remember buying Corel Office (Windows) at CompUSA because it was cheap. I installed it, but I never used it.
Sorry, I'm rambling.