WordStar DOS 7.0d -- Chromebook

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The thing is, back then, WordPerfect was better then Word. Even when we had Windows version of both. It's just that somehow Word got to be the program to use even though it was not nearly as good.

WordPerfect is still better than Word, in my opinion. Basically, for me, EVERYTHING is better than Word. Never was a fan. I hated the way it tried (tries?) to think for you. I haven't used it in years so I don't different now than it used to be, or not.

For a short while, near the end of my Windows' days, I used Lotus WordPro. This was my favorite Windows word processor.

Now, when I use a non-specialized, GUI word processor (not often) I like TextMaker — it's available for Windows, Macs and Linux.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Pierre Lawrence

Anyone recall Vedit? Or Geoworks?

I don't remember Vedit at all. I do remember Geos/Geoworks but never used it. For multi-tasking back then I was a fan of QEMM and DESQview, and when DESQview/X turned up I had high hopes it had a future ... but sadly not. Of course DESQview didn't have much built in, which I actually thought was a good thing, but apparently most people prefer their operating environments to be full of crap.

[j.p.s]

I no longer remember why, but I really liked 4dos.

[Pierre Lawrence]

Comments on posts by rcentros, gmw, and j.p.s.:

I used a version of Vedit (Vedit Jr.) during the DOS era. It was loadable from a 5 ¼” floppy having a capacity of at most a few hundred kilobytes, was easy to use, and displayed the file you were either creating or editing free of the toolbar clutter that plagues Word, for example.

The company apparently is still around, and their current product is an industrial strength editor that purportedly can edit any file on the planet (the 64-bit version a mind-boggling file size of 100GB). Other prodigious feats which it is claimed to be capable of include simultaneously performing search and replace on all files in a given directory and its subdirectories (as many as a thousand files, according to the user's manual) and a similar number of undo, redo operations that can be restored to their original locations or positioned anywhere in the file.


In response to j.p.s.' post, 4DOS was an enhancement of Microsoft's command line interface (“the C: prompt”), which continues to be bundled with Windows, and for many Windows updates allowed you to run DOS programs (not sure if this is true of the more recent updates). The command prompt continues to be useful for other tasks, however. I recently used it to remove Microsoft Edge from my laptop – which Uninstall will not allow you to do.

Thanks to rcentros for the link on Geoworks – a great read!

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Pierre Lawrence

…
(“the C: prompt”), which continues to be bundled with Windows, and for many Windows updates allowed you to run DOS programs (not sure if this is true of the more recent updates). The command prompt continues to be useful for other tasks, however. I recently used it to remove Microsoft Edge from my laptop – which Uninstall will not allow you to do.

Thanks to rcentros for the link on Geoworks – a great read!

No, The C:\ prompt isn't bundled and isn't DOS except on Windows 1, 2, 286, 386, 3.x, Win95, Win98 and ME.
NT for many years since it came out in 1993 had a Console. That did not allow DOS programs and did not run Command.com. Instead NT had a VM, the NTVDM, to run DOS programs. So this NTVDM also ran DOS programs on MIPS, PowerPC and Alpha. The console or terminal prompt could run NT or OS/2 Console programs. That included NT 3.1, NT 3.51, NT 4.0, Windows 2000, XP and Vista.
At some stage they discontinued OS/2 support and eventually removed the NTVDM (And 32 to 16 bit WOW which used NTVDM for the 16 bit windows code). NT was 32 bit from the start and in NT 4.0 era there was 64 bit for Alpha. Later a 64 bit version for Itanium using XP before the x86-64 bit Windows versions.

Windows 1, 2, 286, 386, 3.x, Win95, Win98 and ME all had real DOS prompts. Up to 3.0 was 16 bit only. Win 3.1x added optional 32 bit drivers, 32 bit TCP/IP and Win32s. Win9x/MW was a mix of 16 bit and 32 bit. No NTVDM or NT console. So win9x ran slow on the Pentium Pro because win9x has no NTVDM, all 16 bit code had to switch the CPU state, which was NEVER intended on the Pentium Pro. NT never executed 16 bit code on the CPU and the DOS prompt used the NTVDM, separate to the Console with a C:\ prompt.

Win9x killed the Pentium Pro (the expensive RAMBus RAM was a factor). The Pentium II was faster for Win9x but slower for "real" Windows, NT 4.0 at the time.

Now if you want to run DOS on Win10, you install DOSBox, an emulator, which is available for almost all OS and CPUs. Even on XP, DOSBox worked better than MS's NTVDM for DOS.

[Pierre Lawrence]

Quoth,

I am running Windows 10 on an Acer Aspire 1 laptop, and Microsoft's Command Prompt is bundled with the OS – it's in the Windows System folder, and as I mentioned in my post, I used it to remove Microsoft Edge from the laptop, which Uninstall will not allow you to do. It apparently will not run DOS, as you indicated, as when I typed in the “run” command after the C-prompt, a message came up saying that that command was not recognized (the DOS command “dir” was however recognized and worked fine).


Not sure as to the version of Windows I had when I last ran a DOS program under it, but it was probably post-pentium, judging by the incredible speed improvement in the execution of the program, a linear programming application written in Fortran for a mainframe, probably the IBM 360, and after porting to run on a PC under DOS, was tested on a then state-of-the art Compaq. The program was so computationally intensive it took hours to finish, even on the mainframe. Years later I ran it for fun on a Windows machine and it executed in three or four seconds.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

I no longer remember why, but I really liked 4dos.

Auto completion was my fav reason. Start typing...hit tab to complete. If it beeped you needed more characters to break the tie.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Pierre Lawrence

Quoth,
I am running Windows 10 on an Acer Aspire 1 laptop, and Microsoft's Command Prompt is bundled with the OS.

It is NOT the DOS command prompt (or MS Command Prompt). It's a console window. It ONLY runs NT commands. Some have the same name as DOS ones. It's not "bundled", it's an inherent part of the operating system, also called Terminal Mode in some operating systems.

On Windows 1, 2, 286, 386, 3.x, Win95, Win98 and ME that really was a 16 bit Microsoft or DOS prompt.

The DOS prompt was NEVER the default on Windows NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, 4.0, 2000, XP, Vista, Win7, Win8.x or Windows 10. They opened a 32 bit NT Console (later versions a 64 bit console).

On earlier NT Windows you could run real DOS commands or programs using an icon that opened a DOS command prompt by running command.com, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_DOS_machine#NTVDM

The NTVDM is not supported on x86-64 editions of Windows,[31] including DOS programs,[32] because NTVDM uses VM86 CPU mode instead of the Local Descriptor Table in order to enable 16‑bits segment required for addressing

So XP before Itanium version was the last Windows that ALWAYS had a DOS (MS Command) prompt.

Only 32 bit Vista, Win7, win 8.1 and Win 10 had it. The 64 bit versions don't have it. The 64 bit x86-64 Windows can't natively run 16 bit x86 code.

You have not run any DOS commands, you have used CLI (command line Interface) for 32bit or 64bit NT commands or programs. ALL DOS commands are 16 bit.
On 64 bit windows you have to install DOSbox, which is an emulator, not a virtual machine. Not supplied or by MS. Then you run DOSbox and get a window (or full screen) that can run real MS-DOS commands.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Quoth

It is NOT the DOS command prompt (or MS Command Prompt). It's a console window. It ONLY runs NT commands. Some have the same name as DOS ones. It's not "bundled", it's an inherent part of the operating system, also called Terminal Mode in some operating systems. [...]

Seems to me you're making a mountain out of a vernacular molehill. Lots of people use "dos prompt" and "command prompt" and "console" somewhat interchangeably, just as many non-techies refer to the system unit (computer chassis or case) as the "cpu". Technically wrong but nothing to get too het up over.

Certainly it is true that anyone running Windows 95/NT onward is not actually running over top of a real Disk Operating System as they used to (if they are old enough). Instead they have been running either a virtual DOS machine or running a console program that did pretty much the same things (as far as most users are concerned), plus a few more. When comes to explaining why some things work in this display-that-looks-exactly-like-the-old-DOS-display but not that display-that-looks-exactly-like-the-old-DOS-display, the distinctions matter, otherwise .

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by gmw

Seems to me you're making a mountain out of a vernacular molehill. Lots of people use "dos prompt" and "command prompt" and "console" somewhat interchangeably…

It mostly doesn't matter, except it won't run actual DOS programs (NTVDM or the better DOSBox will) and the commands with the same name don't always exactly behave the same.

Windows NT family is very very different to non-NT Windows (which ended with Win9x/WinME).

If you really think it's a DOS or MS Command Prompt eventually that will bite you.

I remember teaching trainee secretaries in 1991-1993 the difference between the PC box, a screen, an actual hard disk, and a floppy. Some thought the system box was the HDD. Some thought the 3.5" floppy was the HDD.
The easiest to teach were ones from poorer schools with NO PCs. I advised UK Education authorities in early 1980s that it was madness putting the mix of Apples, RM 380Z, Acorns, BBC and later IBM PCs into classrooms without training the teacher and giving the teacher a PC first.

Children in schools in many cases taught nonsense in UK & Ireland.
Concentration on marketing designed courses teaching features of applications (menus) rather than how to use a PC, how to do tasks. So today we still have most malware disasters are caused by user irrespective of patches, updates and AV.

People using wordprocessors like glass typewriters (ignoring styles and headings). People misusing spreadsheets, powerpoint etc. Managers insisting a program only ever used locally with local data should be a web app.

The console on all real operating systems is sometimes needed. People need to know what it is and not think of it as a "bundled" or legacy C:\ prompt or DOS or MS Command.
There is no "net" command on DOS. The CLI or Console net command lets you still do stuff removed from GUI of cheaper versions of windows, like create user accounts without a Microsoft online account and internet.

[Sarmat89]

Was that that idiotic editor that set 8th bit randomly for the ASCII letters and escaped each non-ASCII character separately?

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Quoth

It mostly doesn't matter, except [...]

And now we're getting into continental drift!

Originally Posted by Quoth

The console on all real operating systems is sometimes needed. People need to know what it is and not think of it as a "bundled" or legacy C:\ prompt or DOS or MS Command. [...]

In all seriousness, just how many people - who are ignorant of the difference - do you expect to come across a genuine DOS interface these days? I will admit there are still a few 32bit Windows systems that might accidentally run into a VDM, but these are getting rarer too - they're more likely to be getting confused by hitting a PS console.

In my experience most of the people who need to know the difference do, and most others are so scared of a CLI it's never going to matter either way.

[pazos]

For nostalgic folks: there's WordTsar: http://wordtsar.ca/

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

Was that that idiotic editor that set 8th bit randomly for the ASCII letters and escaped each non-ASCII character separately?

Earlier versions before Wordstar 2000 didn't do non-Ascii at all. Wordstar was only 7 bit ASCII (enough for a golf ball or daisywheel) thus used the eighth bit of the last letter or non-printing 7 bit code as an internal code. I wrote a Pearl script to convert the old files pre-W2000 files to 7 bit ASCII.
I think a golfball or daisywheel could do at most 96 characters, and like a typewriter Wordstar had non-destructive backspace so you could badly overprint diacritics from standard punctuation or currency symbols other than $ by over print of - or =

The Selectric III featured a 96-character element vs. the previous 88-character element. IBM's series of "Electronic Typewriters" used this same 96-character element. The 96-character elements can be identified by yellow printing on the top plastic surface and the legend "96", which always appears along with the font name and pitch. The 96- and 88-character elements are mechanically incompatible with each other (they won't fit on each other's machines) and 96-character elements were not available in as many fonts as the older 88-character types [launched in 1961].

—Wikipedia
Early computer printers that did letter quality were based on Selectric typewriter.

Daisy wheel printing is an impact printing technology invented in 1970 by Andrew Gabor[1] at Diablo Data Systems. It uses interchangeable pre-formed type elements, each with typically 96 glyphs, to generate high-quality output comparable to premium typewriters such as the IBM Selectric, but two to three times faster. Daisy wheel printing was used in electronic typewriters, word processors and computers from 1972. The daisy wheel is so named because of its resemblance to the daisy flower.

also

In 1889 Arthur Irving Jacobs patented a daisy wheel design (U.S. Patent 409,289) that was used on the Victor index typewriter.

A. H. Reiber of Teletype Corporation received U.S. Patent 2,146,380 in 1939 for a daisy wheel printer.

Teletypes and later line printers (long metal band with embossed print) and latest of all, DotMatrix (even before IBM PC launched) were not suitable for correspondence (Letters).

Thimble printers are closely related to daisy wheel printers, but instead of a flat wheel the petals were bent to form a cup-shaped "thimble" print element. Introduced by NEC in 1977 as their "Spinwriter" series, the replaceable thimbles each held 128 characters.

Wordstar was released in 1978, but the NEC thimble based printer was rare, so it only did 7 bit ASCII text output. Also some serial and parallel ports were only 7 bits. Email (which did exist then) was only 7 bits. It used 8 bit per byte files as all CP/M systems supported that!

The IBM PC wasn't in the UK till 1981 and they chose DOS and 8088 because it wasn't a real 16 bit CPU, the big catalogue of CP/M 80 software (8080 code) could be be translated (the binary!) by an Intel tool to 8088/8086 as it was 64K segments and a superset of instructions. MS bought in DOS from a company that reverse engineered it from CP/M 86 (All three OSes used the same system calls). Earlier versions of DOS (MS or IBM PC-DOs) had no subdirectories. When they were added (Ver 2.1x?) the path separator was the opposite slash to UNIX (public in 1973) and the UNIX (also Internet later) / was for "switch" options on commands.
If you set switchchar=- then paths used / instead of \ and options used - instead of /, just like UNIX.
That was removed in a later MS-DOS.

There are loads of better text editors/wordprocessors for DOS, or modern OS consoles.
Also the most important thing in a Wordprocessor is paragraph styles that are separate from the text. Wordstar was fine for writing letters on golfball or daisywheel printers. Madness for multilingual or any more complicated document. Wordperfect was a bit better. MS Word for DOS was a different philosophy. Wordperfect for Windows was poor. Windows MS Word and Excel were a completely different philosphy from all the leading DOS "wordprocessors" and was first on the Mac! The MS Word 2.0 was the first MS Windows version and Windows only just usable at 3.0 (3.1 and 3.11 quite good), all the earlier Windows were junk.
Not sure why MS did MS Works, as it was really poor compared to MS Office.

Also CP/M and DOS at first had only entry of characters visible on the keyboard.
No ` ¬ | ~ £ on many, but would have had ' ~ # $ ^ % & * @ and ¦
Some had no { or }, but < > [ ] ( )./ No ß ç £ etc except on certain national specific keyboards. The characters might be some other character on screen (code pages were later on DOS). You could only print what was on the print head. Initally dotmatrix was only low quality for spreadsheets. Visicalc was the main reason for Commerical Apple II sales and Supercalc for CP/M sales. Lotus 123 and Wordprefect were a late comers. IBM only did the PC because the market already existed and was a poor spec so as to not hurt their minicomputer sales.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by rcentros

WordPerfect is still better than Word, in my opinion. Basically, for me, EVERYTHING is better than Word. Never was a fan. I hated the way it tried (tries?) to think for you. I haven't used it in years so I don't different now than it used to be, or not.

Y'know, written for vastly different user bases--but the functionality was, and is, largely the same.

I was a hardcore WP user, having "come up" from the Selectric IIs to IBM OS/6, to the early Wordstar, yadda. I thought that WP and the earlier word processors were everything and that Word was "word processing for idiots." I also thought that they tried to "think for you." And in short--I was wrong. I simply completely misunderstood how they went about it. Unlike WP, they allowed for wildly varying user intelligence and capabilities. They designed it for secretaries of one ilk, who would never understand HTML tagging, and for those who would. You know, we can all sit here and pooh-pooh MSFT, critique them and all that--but the truth is, by and large, people WANT software that "thinks for them." No, this crew, here on MR, we don't--but by and large, people DO.

I mean, think about this--by and large, I've built a company out of the inability of most authors to understand their primary software tool. Don't use Styles, don't use Headings; don't understand the hierarchies (of the headings), don't know how to use the NavPane, don't know how to use the the Outline View, x-refs...most of them seem to struggle with footnoting, for the love of God. Hell, I see a shocking percentage that only use Word's built-in spelling and grammar-checking. (Don't get me started on that!).

For a short while, near the end of my Windows' days, I used Lotus WordPro. This was my favorite Windows word processor.

I think I vaguely remember this. Not clearly, though.

Now, when I use a non-specialized, GUI word processor (not often) I like TextMaker — it's available for Windows, Macs and Linux.

Meh, to me, typing plain text, no matter what it's in, is still pretty much the same. Word, WordPerfect, NoteTabPro, Markdown, Textile...it's all much of a piece. Most of what I read/see, 'round the Net, about preferences--is just that. Preferences. What people came to love "best" or oftentimes, what people learnt the most, at the height of their abilities.

Hitch