George RR Martin: 'Why I still use DOS'

[Barty]

Wordstar was a marvel in its own day. Real writers, however, use xywrite.

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by Barty

Wordstar was a marvel in its own day. Real writers, however, use xywrite.

You don't know writing techy-boy.-) How can you feel what you're writing without the friction of pen on paper?

Humph! Calls himself a writer when his DOSsy computer does all the work for him. -grumble-grumble- Wears funny hats, too.

[Glorfindel]

And suspenders!!

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

If he had a guitar that had a bowed-neck which forced him to borrow a winch just to be able to pull the strings into contact with the frets, getting an upgrade very well could improve his playing.

Yeah, personally I find the idea of exclusively using a pure text editor is similarly absurd. The various format options available in rich text (strike-through, bold, etc) are a no-brainer when it comes to editing. I guess pure text is okay for a raw first draught.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Apache

The POS (Point of Sale not the other one ) in my store is a DOS Program. I am running it on Win 7, but it is DOS. I also use a Dot Matrix Printer to print my receipts.
Apache

I had a POS(+) system I wrote that used Paradox DOS which could (and did on a 386 laptop) run standalone or as part of a Netware 4 network.

I could print to:
Any HP PCL compatible laser printer
Epson dot Matrix (COD tags and other multi-layer forms, shipping labels)
Eltron (barcode) Label (Price or Barcode w/price)
Star and Epson receipt printers (thermal or DM)

It could FAX PO's (shell to DOSFAX PRO) automatically
and used a barcode wedge to assist with keyboard input.

All done with MSDOS 6 (and later W9x). XP broke the 'shell to dos' and direct printer control tricks

Billy G sold a lot of FUD to kill DOS as dead as it is.

[JAcheson]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Yeah, personally I find the idea of exclusively using a pure text editor is similarly absurd. The various format options available in rich text (strike-through, bold, etc) are a no-brainer when it comes to editing. I guess pure text is okay for a raw first draught.

More importantly, pure text is probably the format that the publisher wants the manuscript in.

[Glorfindel]

I doubt it

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Well, Wordstar was/is purely controlled by control key combinations, which means touch-typists don't have to move their hands off the keyboard for anything. For old-school typists that is priceless. After 30-plus years his muscle memory on those commands has to be so ingrained he probably gives no conscious thought to anything but the words.

That's one of the things I liked about Wordstar. Although it took a little time to get used to the Control Key commands, they were fairly easy to understand (and they were organized in a somewhat logical manner) and I eventually got to the point that I just knew the commands that I regularly used. Moving my cursor around the screen with just the Control Keys was much faster than using a mouse or a menu system.

Another thing that I liked about Wordstar is that all of the formatting is visible on screen, and many of them (such as the manual page break [.pa]) are typeable by the user rather than having to enter commands. While it wasn't WYSIWYG, you still had an idea of what it would look like on paper.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

Hmmm, maybe the reason why his books take so long is that he prints them out on a dot-matrix printer?

As long as they are printed in an OCR typeface, it should take too long to accurately scan them after printing. Then again, maybe he's using a printwheel printer (when I used a printwheel word processor it took about 5 minutes to print one page, great print quality but it took sooooo long).

BTW, at that rate it would take a roughly 3.5 days to print 1,000 pages (plus the time it takes to insert new pages).

[Timoleon]

Originally Posted by theducks

I had a POS(+) system I wrote that used Paradox DOS which could (and did on a 386 laptop) run standalone or as part of a Netware 4 network.

I could print to:
Any HP PCL compatible laser printer
Epson dot Matrix (COD tags and other multi-layer forms, shipping labels)
Eltron (barcode) Label (Price or Barcode w/price)
Star and Epson receipt printers (thermal or DM)

It could FAX PO's (shell to DOSFAX PRO) automatically
and used a barcode wedge to assist with keyboard input.

All done with MSDOS 6 (and later W9x). XP broke the 'shell to dos' and direct printer control tricks

Billy G sold a lot of FUD to kill DOS as dead as it is.

Paradox 4 for DOS was one of the best pieces of software ever written. It came on two "high density" 3 1/2" floppies, and once you installed it you could do just about anything with it. Nothing has come close since then.

[Matth79]

For compatibility, you can run old DOS software in Windows if not from DOS/command prompt, then from DOSBOX

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Timoleon

Paradox 4 for DOS was one of the best pieces of software ever written. It came on two "high density" 3 1/2" floppies, and once you installed it you could do just about anything with it. Nothing has come close since then.

Follow the link in my sig. The catalog pages were generated using standard Pardox4.5 reports (images uploaded separately). Fast, even on a 386.

[6charlong]

Hump! Typical crowd of George RR Martin fans.

Edit: I went too far.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Barty

Wordstar was a marvel in its own day. Real writers, however, use xywrite.

Nota Bene.

[WillAdams]

XyWrite is notable for being the tool used to create the lovely letter fall frontispiece in the first edition in Bringhurst's Element, of Typographic Style.