WordStar DOS 7.0d -- Chromebook

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by darryl

Word Perfect used to be the standard for legal typists. They almost invariably hated shifting to more modern word processors because of the use of the mouse. Old Dos word processors did have a learning curve, but once they mastered it they could work very quickly without taking their fingers off the keyboard. Modern Word Processors actually slowed them down! Certainly this was the complaint of many, though resistance to chqnge probably also played a big part.

If you are using Linux you can try out the feel of Wordstar. Install the "Joe" editor and run it from a shell with the command jstar. Just remember it is not wysiwg. If you learn or already know it is not a bad text editor.

Oh, Pshaw on why WP users liked it. Use of the mouse, etc. Pshaw on that.

we liked it because it was logical. You could control it. You SAW the coding, just like HTML. You weren't guessing. It was NOTHING like Word, which was a sheet of blank paper that second-guessed you.

I've come to the conclusion (this is not directed at you, Darryl, let me be clear) that people just make up all sorts of fooferaw about why the like WS or why they liked this or that. For example, the infamous Notjohn and I go waaaaaaay back. Hell, I'm pretty sure he goes back with my late parents, without giving away too much about his secret identity. But he still sings the Wordstar Tune, too, all with that saga about how he doesn't have to take his hands off the keyboard, it doesn't interrupt his "creative flow" and all that. I've decided, meh, that's his creative process. If he sits in a tub of liquid jello and coats himself with bananas before each writing session, to get his Jazz on, ain't my thang. Myself? I came up without mice. I fought against mice and STILL, that had sweet FA to do with my reluctance to leave WP.

I didn't want ot leave it because I bloody well wanted CONTROL, so that when I had to sit down and figure out 300 pages of a CC&R document, I wasn't wasting time with bloody secretarial work--I could focus on things like "this provision ties to the provision about who owns the common areas,' make a mark and that was IT. I didn't have to bloody GUESS as I was doing, back in the mid-80's, with MS Word.

Now, don't get me wrong. IF (and that's a huge IF which I find is answered in the negative, about 98% of the time) people actually bothered to RTFI on Word--as I finally did, admittedly dragging my feet--you can do what you need with it. To this day, WP still does a better job with mixing alignments on text in the same line of text--but other than that, Word does what's needed. So too does LO, which is clearly the 2nd-best-in-show, in terms of a MSFT Word replacement. No competitor to it that I've seen.

All the others, like this godawful Atticus app--they all focus on making users dumber and dumber and LESS competent, constantly compensating for a human desire, apparently, to NOT understand how stuff works. I guess they'll never go broke Apple-tizing stuff. (sigh).

If folks wanna sit around and use Project Zed WP software, (meh), it's their choice. That's why we have all these bloody choices. It's liek all these "authoring systems" from Novel Factory to Scrivener to Atticus to whatever the bloody hell. I sometimes think that the typical would-be writer spends more $$$ on getting software that makes him/her FEEL like a "real writer" than actually worrying about the bloody productivity of the thing.

I had some author try to BITE MY HEAD off (and lecture me, mind you!!!!) on a forum, recently, ranting about how Word was too bloody unmanageable and she couldn't "deal with" having to scroll, scroll, scroll for hundreds of pages, to find Chapter X. She'd used it for years, never understood styles, headings, the Nav Pane...made her own life miserable. And then she made a fool of herself in front of a forum full of people who'd dropped in with popcorn.

God FORBID anybody, anywhere, anytime RTFI.


Hitch

[GlenBarrington]

Originally Posted by Pierre Lawrence

Anyone recall Vedit? Or Geoworks?

I not only have a copy of GeoWorks, but a suitcase sized portable C64 with a tiny 9 inch screen to run it on. Used to use vedit all the time.

before that, I typed in hex code from a magazine to create a WordStar-like text editor for the C64

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

God FORBID anybody, anywhere, anytime RTFI.

Hitch

You don't get instructions/manual. You just get Word and the deep end to wade through to try to learn to use it.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You don't get instructions/manual. You just get Word and the deep end to wade through to try to learn to use it.

Oh, phooey, Jon.

There have been toots and how-to's online since the dawn and "back in the day" you even got physical, DT books.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Oh, phooey, Jon.

There have been toots and how-to's online since the dawn and "back in the day" you even got physical, DT books.

Hitch

I'm meaning nothing comes with Word other then help. So a lot of people just try to figure it out as they go. You have to know what to look up to look online. A lot don't know what to look up.

One thing that I think every Word user should watch is the video on styles that @Tex2002ans posted on MR.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'm meaning nothing comes with Word other then help. So a lot of people just try to figure it out as they go. You have to know what to look up to look online. A lot don't know what to look up.

One thing that I think every Word user should watch is the video on styles that @Tex2002ans posted on MR.

Oh, yes. No argument. You are basically saying that they don't know what they don't know? Hard to differ with that.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Oh, yes. No argument. You are basically saying that they don't know what they don't know? Hard to differ with that.

Hitch

The problem is getting them to know what they don't know. So given that they don't know stuff, they then don't know what to look up in help or online.

I'm of the age where Word did come with a book. These days, people buy a computer and it has complex software such as Windows or MacOS They install MS Office and then are fairly well lost because there's no manual of any kind with the the OS and Office.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Hitch

...I've come to the conclusion (this is not directed at you, Darryl, let me be clear) that people just make up all sorts of fooferaw about why the like WS or why they liked this or that. ...

In my case (at least) your "conclusion" is way off base.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Oh, Pshaw on why WP users liked it. Use of the mouse, etc. Pshaw on that.

we liked it because it was logical. You could control it. You SAW the coding, just like HTML. You weren't guessing. It was NOTHING like Word, which was a sheet of blank paper that second-guessed you.
[...]

Yep, that certainly reflects why I stayed a WP fan for so long. I've since learned how to make Word and LO second-guess me correctly most of the time, but they still get frustrating at times.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by rcentros

In my case (at least) your "conclusion" is way off base.

Of course I am. :-)

Hitch

[Hitch]

Presumably, you DO realize I was including MYSELF in that group, as well? Wordperfect, etc.?

I wasn't singling out WS writers, but hey. I didn't leave you out, either. Ribbing for all.

Hitch

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Presumably, you DO realize I was including MYSELF in that group, as well? Wordperfect, etc.?

I wasn't singling out WS writers, but hey. I didn't leave you out, either. Ribbing for all.

I scan over too much lately, sorry. I don't do much that requires final (PDF) output anymore. When I do, I use TextMaker or (if it's a short screenplay) one of my screenplay applications (usually Fountain-Mode in Emacs and the 'Afterwriting CLI combination, which is not really an application). Even when I used Windows (up to about 2007) I mostly used WordStar for DOS and (sometimes) Lotus WordPro for finished work. Only time I used Word was when they made me use it at work, and I never really liked either OpenOffice or LibreOffice much. Too "noisy" but less so than Word.

Next time I'll try to read your post more closely. Sorry again.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Oh, Pshaw on why WP users liked it. Use of the mouse, etc. Pshaw on that.

we liked it because it was logical. You could control it. You SAW the coding, just like HTML. You weren't guessing. It was NOTHING like Word, which was a sheet of blank paper that second-guessed you.

I've come to the conclusion (this is not directed at you, Darryl, let me be clear) that people just make up all sorts of fooferaw about why the like WS or why they liked this or that. For example, the infamous Notjohn and I go waaaaaaay back. Hell, I'm pretty sure he goes back with my late parents, without giving away too much about his secret identity. But he still sings the Wordstar Tune, too, all with that saga about how he doesn't have to take his hands off the keyboard, it doesn't interrupt his "creative flow" and all that. I've decided, meh, that's his creative process. If he sits in a tub of liquid jello and coats himself with bananas before each writing session, to get his Jazz on, ain't my thang. Myself? I came up without mice. I fought against mice and STILL, that had sweet FA to do with my reluctance to leave WP.

I didn't want ot leave it because I bloody well wanted CONTROL, so that when I had to sit down and figure out 300 pages of a CC&R document, I wasn't wasting time with bloody secretarial work--I could focus on things like "this provision ties to the provision about who owns the common areas,' make a mark and that was IT. I didn't have to bloody GUESS as I was doing, back in the mid-80's, with MS Word.

Now, don't get me wrong. IF (and that's a huge IF which I find is answered in the negative, about 98% of the time) people actually bothered to RTFI on Word--as I finally did, admittedly dragging my feet--you can do what you need with it. To this day, WP still does a better job with mixing alignments on text in the same line of text--but other than that, Word does what's needed. So too does LO, which is clearly the 2nd-best-in-show, in terms of a MSFT Word replacement. No competitor to it that I've seen.

All the others, like this godawful Atticus app--they all focus on making users dumber and dumber and LESS competent, constantly compensating for a human desire, apparently, to NOT understand how stuff works. I guess they'll never go broke Apple-tizing stuff. (sigh).

If folks wanna sit around and use Project Zed WP software, (meh), it's their choice. That's why we have all these bloody choices. It's liek all these "authoring systems" from Novel Factory to Scrivener to Atticus to whatever the bloody hell. I sometimes think that the typical would-be writer spends more $$$ on getting software that makes him/her FEEL like a "real writer" than actually worrying about the bloody productivity of the thing.

I had some author try to BITE MY HEAD off (and lecture me, mind you!!!!) on a forum, recently, ranting about how Word was too bloody unmanageable and she couldn't "deal with" having to scroll, scroll, scroll for hundreds of pages, to find Chapter X. She'd used it for years, never understood styles, headings, the Nav Pane...made her own life miserable. And then she made a fool of herself in front of a forum full of people who'd dropped in with popcorn.

God FORBID anybody, anywhere, anytime RTFI.


Hitch

Hi Hitch,

I always enjoy your contributions. I rarely take things personally.

Believe it or not I was never a user or fan of Word Perfect. But it was the mainstay of the legal profession for a long time. I personally used Wordstar IV Pro for quite a while and then Word 5. It was a sad day when Word 5 was one of the few apps to actually fall to the Y2K bug. Many ezxperienced legal secretaries at the time were forever complaining that moving to a so-called WIMP enviroment was a backward step for many reasons, including having to use the mouse to perform various tasks. As I said in my post, it was probably at leastp artly due to a dislike of change. And of course of moving from a product they knew intimately to one where they largely had to start again. I think most word processors, old and new, have a certain logic once you learn them thoroughly, to the point where it can be hard to be objective. Personally I thouhgt Word 5 was probably the best (and also one of the last) of the old DOS Word Processing programs. But I understand that Word Pefect worked very efficiently once you learned it thoroughly.

[Quoth]

Also re: move from DOS to WIMP.
My experience training & installing in offices was too many people needed reading glasses and refused to use them. Too many bosses would not buy a big enough screen at least 1024 x 768.
WIMP is ghastly on a small screen (12" to 14" CRT) and at 640 x 480.

Also most WiMP wordprocessors and text editors can be used entirely without mouse.
I remember useless training courses for WP for DOS and Word for Windows (and other products) that seemed to have been written by Marketing (Crayon Dept) too much concentrating on all the menus/features and not how to do the job and best way to use the package.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by darryl

Hi Hitch,

I always enjoy your contributions. I rarely take things personally.

Believe it or not I was never a user or fan of Word Perfect. But it was the mainstay of the legal profession for a long time. I personally used Wordstar IV Pro for quite a while and then Word 5. It was a sad day when Word 5 was one of the few apps to actually fall to the Y2K bug. Many ezxperienced legal secretaries at the time were forever complaining that moving to a so-called WIMP enviroment was a backward step for many reasons, including having to use the mouse to perform various tasks. As I said in my post, it was probably at leastp artly due to a dislike of change. And of course of moving from a product they knew intimately to one where they largely had to start again. I think most word processors, old and new, have a certain logic once you learn them thoroughly, to the point where it can be hard to be objective. Personally I thouhgt Word 5 was probably the best (and also one of the last) of the old DOS Word Processing programs. But I understand that Word Pefect worked very efficiently once you learned it thoroughly.

Y'know, it's funny. I kinda/maybe remember the whole "mouse" thing. I DO recall feeling contemptuous, at one point in time, for "mousers." (I seem to recall being pretty sexist about it, too. which is...unworthy of me. Bad Hitch.)

I also to this day mouse off-handed. When I first started "mousing," I was still using a crap-ton of spreadsheets. Seemed daft to use ONE hand for both, so I learnt to mouse left-handed (I'm right-dom). I still do, so that I could write notes with my right (on real live paper, gosh...) and mouse with the left to nav. We started out using a...gosh, Digi-Tab III digitizing tablet, angled slightly (up) and I still have that set up. (For the mousing side, obviously.)

Of course...it's given me the worst bloody frozen shoulder in history, in my left. There are days I have to stop using the kb altogether and Dragon my way through the afternoon b/c I can no longer lift my left to mouse.

Dumbass that I am.

Hitch