Comment by JSR_FDED

17 hours ago

I remember my dad using the Z80 Softcard to run WordStar, which was astonishingly powerful considering how long ago it was king of word processors. I’d be surprised if some of the control keys hadn’t influenced our editors, although as a Vim user I can’t immediately think of any.

11 comments

JSR_FDED

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jhbadger  16 hours ago

Turbo Pascal and other Borland products used to use keys based on WordStar. These days JOE (Joe's Own Editor) still uses a similar keyset.

  • mschuster91  10 hours ago

    > These days JOE (Joe's Own Editor) still uses a similar keyset.

    joe is definitely among the easiest CLI/TUI editors there are.

    • EvanAnderson  4 hours ago

      I remember finding joe back in the 90s, having come to Linux from mainly DOS, and bring overjoyed. The little Unix I'd used up to that point (mainly Xenix and a little SCO) had me using ed, which was enough like old DOS EDLIN that I could manage. When I found myself in vi I'd just hang up the modem because I never could figure out how to get out of it. >smile<

ErroneousBosh  16 hours ago

WordStar was basically all we needed, and it still is.

Imagine if you had something that small and powerful today.

  • gapan  14 hours ago

    > WordStar was basically all we needed, and it still is. > > Imagine if you had something that small and powerful today.

    I completely agree with the first part. But why do you think we don't have that today, if we choose to do so?

    • flenserboy  12 hours ago

      1. there is no longer a market for certain sorts of software, whether due to market dominance (Word), or the likely market size being too small to bother with.

      2. FOSS has dropped into Code Reuse Mode*, & getting out of that is going to require motivated individuals to build their own, entirely new versions. LibreOffice is Good Enough for most users, so why go to all the effort of starting from ground level when a fork & reskin will do?

      one would hope that FOSS would lead to having cool, alternate approaches to particular use problems (as in the old days, when there were myriad word processors on the market — XyWrite, WordPerfect, WriteNow, Word, etc., etc.), but Good Enough means that attention can be put on more interesting problems. what we're left with is a mediocre mass of applications.

      *which is why nearly every alternate OS ends up feeling like Linux with missing programs & weird commands, so why not just use Linux? we're going to be stuck in a rut for a long time to come.

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