Register Guidelines E-Books Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Go Back   MobileRead Forums > E-Book General > News

Notices

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 08-06-2024, 09:39 AM   #1
PeterT
Grand Sorcerer
PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
PeterT's Avatar
 
Posts: 12,643
Karma: 74500000
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Toronto
Device: Libra H2O, Libra Colour
One of our members and WordStar

Quote:
https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/...the_last_ever/

WordStar 7, the last ever DOS version, is re-released for free
The preferred tool of Arthur C Clarke, Anne Rice and George R R Martin

Before WordPerfect, the most popular work processor was WordStar. Now, the last ever DOS version has been bundled and set free by one of its biggest fans.

WordStar 7.0d was the last-ever DOS release of the classic word processor, and it still has admirers today. A notable enthusiast is Canadian SF writer Robert J Sawyer, who wrote the book that became the TV series Flashforward.

Thanks to his efforts you can now try out this pinnacle of pre-Windows PC programs for professional prose-smiths. Sawyer has taken the final release, packaged it up along with some useful tools — including DOS emulators for modern Windows – and shared the result. Now you, too, can revel in the sheer unbridled power of this powerful app.
Robert is a long time MobileRead member, along with a keen user of the Kobo readers.

More details at https://sfwriter.com/blog/?p=5806

Last edited by PeterT; 08-06-2024 at 09:44 AM.
PeterT is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-06-2024, 10:43 AM   #2
leebase
Karma Kameleon
leebase ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.leebase ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.leebase ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.leebase ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.leebase ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.leebase ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.leebase ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.leebase ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.leebase ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.leebase ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.leebase ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
leebase's Avatar
 
Posts: 2,949
Karma: 26738313
Join Date: Aug 2009
Device: iPad Mini, iPhone X, Kindle Fire Tab HD 8, Walmart Onn
Very cool
leebase is offline   Reply With Quote
Advert
Old 08-06-2024, 10:43 AM   #3
PeterT
Grand Sorcerer
PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
PeterT's Avatar
 
Posts: 12,643
Karma: 74500000
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Toronto
Device: Libra H2O, Libra Colour
I have memories of first being introduced to WordStar on my Osborne luggable computer. Then I discovered Borland and Turbo Pascal where the editor interface used the WordStar style keys. From there it was onto my Eagle luggable PC where I added SideKick to the mix (again the same editor interface).

Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk
PeterT is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-06-2024, 11:46 AM   #4
Quoth
the rook, bossing Never.
Quoth ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Quoth ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Quoth ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Quoth ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Quoth ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Quoth ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Quoth ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Quoth ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Quoth ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Quoth ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Quoth ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Quoth's Avatar
 
Posts: 12,268
Karma: 89531599
Join Date: Jun 2017
Location: Ireland
Device: All 4 Kinds: epub eink, Kindle, android eink, NxtPaper11
I used Wordstar on CP/M before there was an IBM PC in the UK or Ireland. An Apple II with a Z80 card, 80 column card and replacement keyboard with added 2 x 1M byte 8" floppy drives. The Apple II text and keyboard was primitive and floppy 100K and slow.

Later I used and sold NewWord, a Wordstar clone, on CP/M (Amstrad PCW) and MS-DOS.

Then in early 1990s I wrote a text editor for DOS in Modula-2 that used Wordstar keys and Menu/Mouse and worked OK on NT and Win 3.x. It also had hyperlinking so a document could be an outline and each chapter in a separate file. It wasn't constrained by RAM as the part in RAM was only a window of the file, It also had a foot pedals (buttons on joystick port) and used the sound card to play audio dictation which could be copied in to HDD at twice speed, if the dictation cassette/microcassette was recorded at half speed. It had no formatting at all. You optionally used markup recognised by DTP or Word or Sun Office. Like a better version of Notepad, but limited only by disk space. Non-NT Notepad (Win2, 3.x. Win9x etc) could only edit 64 K or less files.

Ten years+ later I was using notepad++ for capturing writing and MS Word 2002/XP to edit.

My last "Wordstar" foray two years ago was a Joyce Emulator on Linux (available on Windows) and reading 3" and 3.5" CP/M floppies (simple adaptor for 3" drive) on my last PC with a real floppy port. I copied the Amstrad PCW CP/M files (Newword, but like older wordstar) and then wrote a Perl script to convert to ASCII as the original WS use the 8th bit to mark word and line breaks etc.

I did write a novel on Wordstar and a History of Computers & Communications.

It was good in its day for business correspondence, mail merge and a draft of a novel.

Last edited by Quoth; 08-06-2024 at 11:52 AM.
Quoth is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-06-2024, 12:02 PM   #5
rcentros
eReader Wrangler
rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
rcentros's Avatar
 
Posts: 7,738
Karma: 50255637
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: Boise, ID
Device: PB HD3, GL3, Tolino Vision 4, Voyage, Clara HD
Quote:
Originally Posted by PeterT View Post
Robert is a long time MobileRead member, along with a keen user of the Kobo readers.

More details at https://sfwriter.com/blog/?p=5806
Mr. Sawyer posted information about this in the Writing forum, but I'm happy that The Register wrote an article about it and this has become more front and center. I still regularly use the text editor JOE (its Jstar variant) because of its support for WordStar keystrokes.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...9&postcount=64
rcentros is offline   Reply With Quote
Advert
Old 08-06-2024, 12:19 PM   #6
PeterT
Grand Sorcerer
PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.PeterT ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
PeterT's Avatar
 
Posts: 12,643
Karma: 74500000
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Toronto
Device: Libra H2O, Libra Colour
Yes. I saw his post on Writing only after posting this: (

Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk
PeterT is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-06-2024, 03:08 PM   #7
rcentros
eReader Wrangler
rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
rcentros's Avatar
 
Posts: 7,738
Karma: 50255637
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: Boise, ID
Device: PB HD3, GL3, Tolino Vision 4, Voyage, Clara HD
Quote:
Originally Posted by PeterT View Post
Yes. I saw his post on Writing only after posting this: (
I'm happy that you did post here because I thought the news deserved its own thread.
rcentros is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-06-2024, 06:44 PM   #8
Sarmat89
Evangelist
Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 496
Karma: 2267928
Join Date: Nov 2015
Device: none
Poor people who had to deal with that braindead software... especially those who had decode the garbage WS produced.
Sarmat89 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-06-2024, 11:31 PM   #9
guanaco
Recovering reader
guanaco ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.guanaco ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.guanaco ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.guanaco ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.guanaco ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.guanaco ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.guanaco ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.guanaco ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.guanaco ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.guanaco ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.guanaco ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
guanaco's Avatar
 
Posts: 226
Karma: 8008008
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: México
Device: iPad
I typed my M.Sc. thesis with WordStar.

Yeah, I'm that old

Last edited by guanaco; 08-07-2024 at 12:04 AM. Reason: Fixed typo
guanaco is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-06-2024, 11:38 PM   #10
JoeC
Addict
JoeC ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JoeC ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JoeC ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JoeC ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JoeC ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JoeC ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JoeC ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JoeC ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JoeC ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JoeC ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JoeC ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 337
Karma: 2257942
Join Date: Aug 2007
Device: Kindle Oasis 2 and 3, Scribe
Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase View Post
Very cool
Ditto. This is awesome. It takes me back many years.
JoeC is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-07-2024, 11:29 AM   #11
rcentros
eReader Wrangler
rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
rcentros's Avatar
 
Posts: 7,738
Karma: 50255637
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: Boise, ID
Device: PB HD3, GL3, Tolino Vision 4, Voyage, Clara HD
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sarmat89 View Post
Poor people who had to deal with that braindead software... especially those who had decode the garbage WS produced.
I used WordStar for years. Loved the fact that my hands stayed on the keyboard's home keys and that you didn't have to worry about formatting — you could just write and write and write.

It wasn't hard to convert to formatted text with its ASCII utility.
rcentros is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-07-2024, 12:20 PM   #12
Sarmat89
Evangelist
Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sarmat89 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 496
Karma: 2267928
Join Date: Nov 2015
Device: none
Wordstar cannot open DOS text files even in its programmer's mode, and it surrounds every non-ASCII symbol in the text individually with a SI/SO pair. Earlier versions couldn't do even that, being CP/M leftovers.
Sarmat89 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-07-2024, 03:20 PM   #13
DiapDealer
Grand Sorcerer
DiapDealer ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DiapDealer ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DiapDealer ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DiapDealer ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DiapDealer ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DiapDealer ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DiapDealer ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DiapDealer ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DiapDealer ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DiapDealer ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DiapDealer ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
DiapDealer's Avatar
 
Posts: 27,962
Karma: 198500000
Join Date: Jan 2010
Device: Nexus 7, Kindle Fire HD
A fan thread celebrating the free release of software people enjoyed (or just remembered fondly) isn't exactly hard to refrain from raining on. Just saying.
DiapDealer is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-07-2024, 05:44 PM   #14
rcentros
eReader Wrangler
rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.rcentros ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
rcentros's Avatar
 
Posts: 7,738
Karma: 50255637
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: Boise, ID
Device: PB HD3, GL3, Tolino Vision 4, Voyage, Clara HD
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sarmat89 View Post
Wordstar cannot open DOS text files even in its programmer's mode, and it surrounds every non-ASCII symbol in the text individually with a SI/SO pair. Earlier versions couldn't do even that, being CP/M leftovers.
Actually WordStar can open text files. They're called "nondocuments" and there is a specific "Open Nondocument" option in the Menu. But that wasn't what I claimed. I said that, using the Convert utility, you can change WordStar documents into text files for use in text editors or other word processors.

WordStar was not designed to be a text editor. It was designed to be a word processor but, even in Linux in 2024, I can still write in WordStar for DOS and convert my documents for use elsewhere.

The Convert utility actually allowed you to convert WordStar documents to many formats. There's probably a better choice than the text format, but I'm used to working with text documents so that's what I (personally) use.
rcentros is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-07-2024, 06:25 PM   #15
jackm8
Addict
jackm8 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jackm8 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jackm8 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jackm8 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jackm8 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jackm8 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jackm8 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jackm8 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jackm8 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jackm8 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jackm8 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
jackm8's Avatar
 
Posts: 201
Karma: 1271468
Join Date: Nov 2015
Device: none
Long ago I read an introduction to a novel, it was either scifi or fantasy, where author thanked IT guy that helped him recover draft from a dying pc/laptop that was in an obscure format. I think that it dealt with this software.
jackm8 is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
WordStar DOS 7.0d -- Chromebook rcentros Writers' Corner 64 08-01-2024 06:12 PM
Hello, to all members. cipi65 Introduce Yourself 1 07-23-2021 04:14 PM
Book Club Members: Where Do You Live? (This is for ALL members of both clubs!) sun surfer Book Clubs 15 03-11-2012 08:04 AM
[Suggestion] Disable the ability for new members to PM members. =X= Feedback 4 08-31-2011 05:21 AM
How about Wordstar? captcrouton Lounge 19 05-15-2010 06:47 AM


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 10:07 PM.


MobileRead.com is a privately owned, operated and funded community.