WordPerfect for DOS Updated
columbia.edu
columbia.edu
Word Perfect for DOS has a ton of features that folks normally wouldn't know about like redlining and all kinds of fancy image rendering things (sorry it was > 25 years ago and I can't recollect specifics), law firms had an entire version-control system integrated with it.
Word Perfect was also how I ended up being an actual programmer for money in NYC. I started automating my work at some of these firms with macros and later with some C and Perl code and some of the gigs I had I could just walk in and spend all day on IRC while I'd get paid $20 an hour (which was a lot) for my scripts to run through all the docs they thought I was re-formatting by hand.
Does anyone else remember calling into WP tech support during its heyday? They had a hold queue disk jokey that would interact with people on hold. It was a nice touch.
edit: googled it and found an article from 1991 on what looks like a local news site. https://www.deseret.com/1991/7/17/18931236/don-t-hang-up-dee...
I'd even settle for a 12 key keypad on the left as well - that might be more doable. Looks like I might have to build this myself from scratch ...
If running under the Visual Studio debugger, you can also press F12 with the debuggee in focus to break into the process.
As an aside, me and my wife, we translated WordPerfect 6 for DOS into Latin for the Vatican, as freelance translators.
In other words: WordPerfect is like HTML, Word is like CSS.
Notepad and TextEdit are like plastic utensils. They do the job (albeit not very well) and you can't really mess up.
Word, Pages and WordPerfect are like regular forks and knives. Not too much harder to use although they do require a bit more discipline.
TeX (and its derivatives/predecessors - Troff, Eqn, Grap) are like scalpels. Extremely powerful, but if you mess up, it can be hard to recover.
This doesn't even get into the fact that the last category must be compiled into a document, and making sure that everything gets into the funnel can be a real challenge for the uninitiated.
Come on, now. You can't just throw this out on a tech nerd forum and not explain. What exactly do you mean "translate"? As in, you translated all the menus and help text into Latin, or you helped them integrate good tools for writing in Latin? More details, please. :)
Actually, I'm sure the modern docx format is just a bunch of XML markup. I just created a toy docx with the text "This is a test." and ripped it open with a little bit of python that I had lying around from previous experiments along those lines[1]
Looking at the output of the file 'word/document.xml', in relevant part, we see:
<w:body>
<w:p w14:paraId="64E164D6" w14:textId="77777777" w:rsidR="00EB525B" w:rsidRPr="00E02EE2" w:rsidRDefault="00E02EE2">
<w:r>
<w:t xml:space="preserve">This </w:t>
</w:r>
<w:r>
<w:rPr>
<w:i/>
<w:iCs/>
</w:rPr>
<w:t>is</w:t>
</w:r>
<w:r>
<w:t xml:space="preserve"> a test.</w:t>
That seems like enough information to build reveal codes out of...
[1] https://github.com/paultopia/dedocx/blob/master/deconstruct....
That sounds pretty cool. Can you tell us more? How did the DJ interact? Could you choose your music style and get different music like some phone systems offer these days? Was there a live DJ like you’d find in a club for the whole time they were taking calls?
This isn't a great response, I know. It's just a data point for the theory that Word and WordPerfect are comparable in this respect.
(This is going back so long ago now. I was still at school! Maybe the problem was that you still had to interact with the GUI view to fix things? So you could still end up with the usual weird Word stuff, but no way to fix it, because you couldn't get right in there and just manually shuffle the codes around like you could with WP.)
Wordperfect's "Show Codes" tells you every attribute and layout change inline.
For example, if bolded some text, Word would just bold it. Wordperfect would insert a symbol like [bold] and the text would be plain, instead of rendering it. Removing the code symbol would change the attribute from the text. This allowed you do to format documents for printing on a system that couldn't handle displaying them fully formatted interactively.
As I need to write for work I recently got into this topic - this blog post makes some interesting points about how distraction free writing used to be the norm: https://vascsurg.me/2019/11/17/distraction-free-writing-used...
The AlphaSmart Neo devices became tremendously popular among writers recently, apparently many of them can’t stand modern software anymore because it has become too visually distracting for them: https://orcutt.net/weblog/2018/03/17/my-prodigiously-convolu...
Distractions certainly are too blame here, but my pet theory is that the added visual input blocks top down imagery in the visual system.
There appear to be some e-paper solutions but they're expensive.
Honestly I think I'd rather go the George R R Martin route: take an old laptop with decent screen and keyboard then install a barebones environment. It could be as simple as booting straight to a full-screen vim/nano with no distraction installed.
I wish I could do something like that for coding, unfortunately when I program I usually need a browser and internet access to browse docs so I can't remove that. Maybe I should see if I can survive with only elinks or some low-featured web browser.
I'm also building something like what you are thinking about with an old intel NUC mounted on an even older LCD monitor and running Xmonad. It's a surprisingly fun project. My notes on the build are here: https://hackaday.io/project/174680-distraction-free-linux-ba...
A neat side effect of this is the machine I use is a fanless N3010 celeron based Lenovo M600 which feels positively lightning quick if you never go near the www on it. Perhaps 90% of the reason a PC feels like a sluggish POS these days is because there's some chunk of browser stack in there somewhere.
Edit: picture of the set up here: https://imgur.com/yjPMYaX
The keyboards aren't what you call great, but they serve well enough. I like a mechanical keyboard as much as the next dork, but I've never really felt the lack when using the Chromebook for writing.
Jailbreaking Chromebooks is a huge hassle, though. Much easier to install Linux on a standard box from the past 10 to 15 years. You can also buy cheap low-end hardware with Chromebooks-like specs that will run Linux out of the box.
#!/bin/sh
clear
setterm -cursor off
echo -en "\e]P0000000"
mplayer -really-quiet -vo fbdev2 -vf scale=1280:-2 -cache 2048 "$@"
setterm -cursor on
echo -en "\e]P01d2229"
clear
- IF. Lots of them.
- Slashem.
- MUDs.
- Mednafen through framebuffer. Even gamepads work.
But when you use gopher (gopher://magical.fish and gopher://floodgap.org as a start) everything is instantaneous.
Oh, and, for music the Soma cli tool from slackware. Amazing.
Source: https://pastebin.com/B7KqsDRg (no dependencies, no license)
Screenshot: https://imgur.com/vNLO2zJ
From a quick Google: https://hackaday.com/2014/02/16/fixing-the-unfixable-pebble-...
> The actual screen used in the Pebble is a Sharp Memory LCD.
It's definitely not e-ink btw, which I know is indeed different. It doesn't look anything like e-ink.
The latency of e-paper doesn't provide a great typing experience.
"These days" isn't really applicable - the Alphasmart devices haven't been made since 2013.
But now that you know my biases, let me say that I think the Alpasmart has a damn good keyboard! The keys are large, have more travel than most modern laptops, and feel quite satisfying to press. If you’re used to a mechanical keyboard and really set on that experience, you may be disappointed, but there’s still a lot to like.
https://oldcomputers.net/cambridge-z88.html
https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=279
https://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/z88/
I have one, and it's a lovely machine. An 8-bit but it can take a meg or so of RAM and a few megs of storage. Unfortunately, on unique, proprietary memory cards.
I would adore a modern version, say running text-only Linux on a RasPi Zero W. No hinge, letterbox mono screen, and a couple of CF or full-size SD slots...
The LCD displays aren't great on the eyes but they are OK, and they have the benefit of excellent battery life using just standard AAs and much lower latency compared to e-paper.
* hundreds of hours of battery life on 3 AAA batteries
* readable in bright sunlight
* instant on and off (you are back to your text with a button press, no waiting for booting up)
* portability and durability (great for traveling and writing..)
I have a 40$ (incl. shipping to Europe) Neo 2 too and do appreciate all these details. The manufacturers got a lot right.
I’ve tried distraction free terminal writing on an old x200 and other old and virtually disconnected devices too before but it wasn’t the same. E.g. in a library or café, searching for a free and calm spot with power supply and no sunlight on my screen is a problem I don’t have with my little AlphaSmart.
I think if I were writing fiction that might be a really nice option.
When I need to write distraction free I open a fullscreen Vim terminal window. I copy the pages into a more shareable format after I draft them in plain text.
That's the distinction with which everyone is being bogged down.
George R. R. Martin is a storyteller. There's a difference. Stephen King is a writer. Michael Crichton was a writer.
Crichton summed up what it is to be a writer in the most simplistic and eloquent-in-its-brevity language I think I've ever heard: "If you're going to be a writer, then you have to write. You have to wake up every day and sit down and write. Can you imagine if a pilot woke up one morning and said, 'I don't feel like flying the plane today.'"
Basically my point is, just because someone is not adding titles to their bibliography every year or so doesn't mean they're not doing the act of writing every day. In fact, there are many references online to the importance Martin places on writing every day. And in fact, he has published things since his last ASOIAF book.
To try to say "This man is not a writer because he hasn't released the books I want to read" feels kind of silly to me.
Maybe a word processor is just a tool and if it's useful and gets the job done, no matter how "outdated" everyone else things it is, why bother to change?
I would argue that perhaps he wants to focus on writing and not perpetually learning new tech but lately writing seems to be lower on his priorities. Glad I never got sucked up into the books - as good as they are; it's pretty apparent he really doesn't want to finish them which is a shame.
DOS was dominant between 1981-1990. I lived through those days and remember them fondly.
In 1990, Windows 3.0 happened, and the world changed.
Wondering how long it will take for someone to take up the task of configuring a veeery simplistic 'JustWriteOS' that optimized on distraction free writing. Should be possible to build this upon Alpine or NixOS with a tiling window manager preconfigured to only start the text editor full screen in distraction free mode.
Decent sleep mode configuration would be nice tho
I think half the success of markdown is identifying a useful subset of html/document languages and saying "this is your whole featureset, everything else is out of scope for composition".
Which comes back to Markdown, which is the "useful subset".
You asked for a decent editor, not a kitchen sink, so I’ll stop here without touching on Emacs.
Set up your init system to not start a GUI. It will give you a text mode login prompt. Configure it to have the typeface and size that you like. Run your editor of choice -- emacs and vim certainly don't need net access. Remember to mount a USB stick to save backup copies every so often.
That's my hope anyway.
Optionally, markdown also has syntax for references.
Having something with very few bells and whistles lets you focus on your writing. Whether that's a "only works in fullscreen, you don't get to multitask" markdown editor, or a 1992 486 running word perfect on DOS basically makes no difference.
I think his fundamental problem is that he's in a position that few writers end up in -- he became so popular that if he doesn't end the book well he will be hated and reviled by thousands of people on the internet. Most writers never end up in a position where if they let the public down, they will become hated figures.
He's become so disillusioned with modern word processing that he uses a typewriter.
It made him such a fan of typewriters that he has an app called Hanx Writer to simulate various typewriters on iOS devices.
At this point, Microsoft Word is so geared toward writing inter-office memos that I feel bad for anyone who wants to do any serious writing on it.
That’s why Outlook and Excel are almost operating systems and Word meanders around with no real focus. It is not an opinionated app.
Changes in Word are driven by awful end user communities like attorneys. Attorneys are smart people, but the influential ones have doctor egos, get set in their ways, and spend their day interacting with fossilized bureaucracies, as demonstrated by the fact that people are still screwing around with WordPerfect 5 for DOS in 2020.
The excuses given (ie “Federal court filings are finicky”) are 100% bullshit. The reality is the chief poobah of counsel likes WordPerfect because he’s the chief poohbah, and his minions get to suck it up and learn how to use an application released when they were in diapers.
Attorneys are usually people who went to three years of law school and then passed the bar exam. Possibly many years ago. I have found that their most distinguishing characteristic is that they didn't quit law school.
They tend to be smart in the exact same ratio as any other college graduate. That is to say, some attorneys are smart.
The Selectric II is such a joy to type on. Unlike Hanks, I use corrective tape, though. He mashes 'x' through any typos.
I forgot how nice it is to get mail that isn't a bill or an ad.
Now she writes to her friends all over the world. And since it's paper mail that takes between three days and two weeks to arrive, there's no posturing. No boasting. No one-upsmanship. It's people really writing about things that are actually important to them because it takes effort.
Letter writing / penpal'ing is really magical -- specifically for the reasons you noted. Even with friends I speak with (digitally or in person) on a regular basis have plenty to talk about in a letter.
I hadn't purchased a stamp for years. Its remarkable that sending a letter domestically can be done for around a dollar.
I wrote most of a novella in the iOS version of Word last year for NaNoWriMo, mostly because I really liked Word's OneDrive-based sync to make sure I was always up to date no matter which device I used and that I could reasonably trust offline sync in the rare cases where I worked on the document on multiple devices "in parallel" because one was offline. The iOS version defaults to "Focus Mode" and that eventually pushed me to figuring out how to get the right "Focus Mode" settings on my desktop to get a similar writing experience, which turned out to be easy when you knew what you were looking for.
I think it's all another reminder that it isn't necessarily your tools, but how you use them and how familiar you are with them. In a nutshell that is most of the discussions here, use what you like and if a 30+ year old word processing tool meets your needs, wonderful. On the flipside, the modern tools aren't without their merits and there are similar familiarity tricks to using them that maybe just take a bit a seeking them out or learning them.
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
<your words here>
\end {document}
Once you get into twiddling formatting, then you're back in the realm of non-distraction-free writing, but that's not the tool's fault.
Like you, I spent the first couple of days cursing BasicTex in all sorts of ways until it just clicked. The Tex Stack Exchange was a big help in solving some of the more complicated formatting conversions I needed to do.
That said, I think that community in particular can be slightly hostile to new users because they will vehemently insist on a working example that people can run themselves in order to debug it. To your point that not as many people use it as probably could, this may have something to do with it.
E.g, "My project doesn't typeset, is effectively "broken", and until you really think about it, the error messages seem inscrutable."
I understand why this is the case, but if my problem is a syntax error - because I don't get how something works - this approach is...not helpful.
At this point, with the exception of actual plaintext notes, just about every project I work on (words or code) goes through some kind of "compile" step, whether that's Rake/Make, npm scripts, shell functions, Markdown.pl, etc.
It's just burned into my brain at this point and comes naturally when the work is done.
(OH SO MANY FEELS RIGHT NOW)
Wrote so many assignments in Middle School on one of those little guys, then used an ADB cable to dump the text into ClarisWorks on Mac OS 8.
Kids, ask your parents about ClarisWorks.
Buying it on eBay may be one of the only legal ways to get your hands on that manual. Though I suppose you could also look for a 3rd-party book, it may not cover every feature of the application.
MS Office’s documentation is a travesty. Most appalling is how MS has given up on having help files. It used to come with good “online help” - back when that meant that it was on your system, not on the Internet. They’ve since just removed all help so that when you ask for help, the first thing you get is “searching Office Online.”
I had a pretty decent idea how Word worked 20 years ago. Now I just thrash about in there and click stuff and Google for random webpages for help.
Writeroom (for Mac or its derivatives for other operating systems) --Pyroom for Linux --Darkroom for Windows --Also Q10 for Windows (which has typewriter sounds); GhostWriter, NisusWriter Pro; Ulysses. These are distraction-free writing programs. The purpose is to eliminate computer interruptions or temptations so that you can write.
Scrivener: for editing and organization. Scrivener is a writing and organization program. It was originally developed by a novelist who was frustrated by how difficult it is to move back and forth in long Word documents. Word's Document Map doesn't work all that well. Originally Scrivener was supposed to be just a first draft production document but it has grown and can currently be used to create documents in just about any format a writer will need (it's a little weak on appellate briefs). It also has a full-screen distraction free mode. If you need to complete a long work quickly you need Scrivener.
Also consider: Alphasmart, by Dana. This is a full-size keyboard attached to a Palm(pilot) operating system. It comes with a Word-compatible Word processor. You use SD cards to get your files off the computer. There is also an educational model which is cheaper and has less functionality. Battery life for these is very good: think weeks instead of hours.
Another useful tip: Word's Focus Mode, like some of the ones mentioned, goes to a Full Screen window. In Windows 10 you can set "Focus Assist" settings that will turn off all notifications that Windows is aware of and things like that whenever you are using a full screen application. (I believe that particular Focus Assist option is actually the default now, but it's easy to double check.)
It’s distraction free, works well with a modern monitor and I always liked the Amiga keyboard. It’s a huge context switch to swivel my chair from my modern Mac to the other desk and start writing on the Amiga.
[1] https://www.amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?t=41 [2] https://www.amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=101
I've done this to multiple large programs written in DOS assembler. It isn't that hard. You don't even have to know how the program works to translate it.
https://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3074/...
The programmers that prefer VIM (or Emacs) to more modern fully features graphical IDEs are basically the same as the writer who prefers an old DOS program.
It means that old software was more usable and reliable to the point that a lot of people is more productive with it than modern programs. It is a big fail of the modern way of realizing applications.
Text-based interfaces have always been way faster at what they do (anything non-graphical). You simply cannot beat the efficiency of a power user who knows all of the keyboard shortcuts for their favourite text editor. I don't think that's an indictment of the GUI, however. The GUI ushered in ubiquitous computing akin to the personal automobile. Text-based interfaces remain a powerful, highly specialized tool for those who have the time and the need to learn them.
I would argue that this doesn’t apply specifically to text editors. 95% of all text documents are paragraphs with headings and inline formatting. With styles and display codes, WordPerfect lived up to its name. You could get the document looking perfect, exactly the way you wanted it. WYSIWYG editors look nice and could get you started quickly, but anything more than a letter turned into a mishmash of styles and fonts and spacing. The now-infamous ribbon in Word lets you discover and apply all sorts of formatting, but what you really want are consistent paragraph styles. Word perfect guided you into using those styles because the UI was restricted in just the right way.
I've been using ST for 8-ish years and never use the mouse/trackpad/touchscreen/joystick/stylus/trackball/wheel.
If I had ever suspected such a thing like Ebay could have ever existed I would have carted the whole dumpster home. Oh well...
“Who are you that changed my word processor and typewriter! Who are you?! What is that rubbish computer you are giving to us.” Given that they are serving all the top bosses in the organisation ... (drama at the last minute ... paper nit typing because the IT dept gave this ... I can imagine the sad face sitting outside one’s office abd who is this computer thing ... we are not accountant we use pen and type it out ...) I have to give up. Wang pc with wang software is the maximum I can do. Can’t remember I get that far.
At least I have not sell them windows 1.0 the tile design in retrospect. Typist scared me in my whole career. :-(
Menus are just slightly less-good at teaching shortcuts, because once you find the item, you click on it; you don't leave the menu and hit the shortcut
Avid (video editing) had a similar thing, but took it even further: IIRC they sold their own keyboards, with color-coded keys and stuff.
So people photocopied them... but they were colour-coded, and you had to faff around cutting it out, sellotaping it together, sticking it to cardboard, trimming it to fit...
So many programs came with function-key templates that some 3rd parties sold little spiral-bound books that sat on the template platform, and you could flip through to the one you needed.
They used an Apple IIe. Pictures available on this article in French: https://www.macg.co/materiel/2020/05/un-apple-iie-pour-contr...
On the one hand, this is awesome for people who might actually still use this archaic piece of software.
On the other hand, it seems like a waste of resources that could be better spent on improving modern software.
You could design a word processor with all the features people loved in WP 5.1, that runs on modern software and hardware.
Look at existing cloning efforts, like WordTsar. Years of work and they're not even really close yet.
Secondly, its virtues are its blinding speed, small size and simplicity. All modern software is the reverse of that, especially the abominations of Electron apps.
Thirdly, your clone couldn't be very close, as WordPerfect is alive and well and owned by Corel. Make it too close and they'll sue.
Worst offender is certainly Gnome, which is nothing short than antagonistic. They went as far as disabling mnemonics by default. They removed the fast search in the file manager, in favour of the fancy (and broken) one; keyboard user must use the awkward, inline, one. The file manager also lost the "New folder" shortcut.
Another notable entry is Sublime Text (which is not antagonistic, but somewhat oblivious). Very surprisingly, the file panel doesn't respond to keyboard events. For example, if the user wants to rename a file via keyboard, they're forced to copy the filename, then perform the operation via terminal.
But TBH, the text mode just works, and you can readily tweak DOS on a modern SVGA screen to display 132*50 text or something like that.
I know I'm a heretic for saying it, but I still like MS Word for DOS. It even shows me bold, underline and italics right there on the text screen, rather than making me guess colours like WordPerfect always did.
This tweet shows what I mean elegantly: https://twitter.com/taviso/status/1303841149421891584
I have it running on bare metal on PC DOS 7.1 (not 7.01, 7.1, the last ever version of DOS, with FAT32 and LBA support).
On a Core 2 Duo it is very fast in graphics mode, and quite usable.
I was a big OS/2 fan from about 1991-1995, but I'm afraid I defected over to the betas of Windows "Chicago" after the OS/2 2.1 update stopped working with most of my hardware that had been fine on 2.0.
I can still remember when Mozilla came out for OS/2 so we didn't had to use IBM WebExplorer anymore :)
OS/2 2.0 was released in the same month as Windows 3.1. In that era, it was so much better, it was embarrassing.
(Linux 1.0 would not be released for another 2 years yet, and v1.0 of native BSD on x86 -- BSD/OS from BSDi, i.e. still commercial -- for another whole year. Yes, it was possible to run pre-1.0 versions of both -- BSD/OS 0.3 came out in April 1992 as well -- but pre-1.0 Linux was very sketchy and very hard work.)
If IBM had let Microsoft make OS/2 1 a 386 OS (x86-32) instead of a 286 OS, the IT world would have turned out very differently. An OS/2 1.x in 1987 that could multitask DOS apps would have been a big hit.
I suspect Windows 3, FreeBSD etc. and Linux would never have happened. Perhaps the GNU Project would have adopted the BSD-Lite kernel, as it did evaluate but foolishly discarded.
But saying that, OS/2 2 was still a 1980s-style OS, a nightmare of vast config files, special drivers that cost money and came on floppy via international post, building custom modified boot floppies so your hard disk or CD drive controller would be recognised and real major pain.
The desktop was very powerful but very weird and kinda clunky. It's no coincidence that nobody has ever re-implemented the OS/2 Workplace Shell on Linux. Lots of other 1980s OSes -- Acorn's RISC OS; Classic MacOS; AmigaOS; NeXTstep; CDE; yep, all of those exist or existed. WPS? Yeah, no thanks.
PCs would not be able to boot from CDs in a standardised cross-OS way for years to come at this time. Indeed PCs didn't even have a standardised connector for attaching CD-ROMs yet. ATAPI would not be standardised for 6 more years. IDE was for hard disks and nothing else, and even EIDE had not yet appeared. CD-ROMs attached via SCSI (expensive, non-standardised) or on one of 3 or 4 different, nonstandard sound card interfaces (Sony, Mitsumi, Panasonic etc., all different and incompatible).
When NT 3.1 finally appeared, MS had a superb idea: copy the files from floppy or CD onto a DOS FAT partition -- FAT16 only, of course, FAT32 hadn't been invented yet -- and then run a DOS setup program. (This also worked fine for all versions of Win9x, incidentally.) DOS compatibility was relatively easy, thanks to the PC BIOS, which 32-bit OSes couldn't use. Anything would boot DOS off a floppy, and getting CD-ROM extensions or a simple network stack running was easy, especially if you didn't care how much RAM was left over. With a default configuration, you might not have enough memory left over to run any apps, but that didn't matter if all you needed was to copy some files.
So, boot DOS, partition the disk with a small C drive for DOS and the NT installation files. Copy the files on there, boot off the hard disk with no config files at all and run SETUP. It then created the big partition for NT, and in it, built a skeletal copy of the OS to install the rest. Then it installed a bootloader and rebooted the PC. You got a dual-boot menu, picked NT and continued.
This eliminated all the fooling around with making boot media with all the drivers you needed. It was much, much easier and quicker. I provisioned a whole network of client PCs this way once: no CD drives, just DOS and the Novell Netware client. They fetched the NT install files from the fileserver, and NT bootstrapped itself from there.
OS/2 never used this, which was very short-sighted of IBM -- I mean, OS/2 is more closely-related to MS-DOS than NT is. It's perfectly possible to compile DOS apps that can run natively on both MS-DOS, OS/2 1.x (16-bit) and OS/2 2.x (32-bit). They're called "family apps". The Setup program could have been a family app, but nooooooo.
You could install from HD to HD, but you had to boot into OS/2 to start the installation -- meaning that you had to edit the CONFIG.SYS file to tell it where to find the HD copy of the installation files. Could it automatically find them itself? Naw. Could you browse to it? Naw. What would you want to do that for?
I bought OS/2 2.1 as well, and most of my 2.0 drivers stopped working. I lost SVGA mode and I lost my sound card. At that point, I tried the beta of Windows "Chicago" (Windows 4.0, later renamed Windows 95) and it was amazing. It auto-detected my hardware, like magic. I got SVGA mode back, I got sound back, I got long filenames on FAT, and I even got a peer-to-peer network with my flatmate's machine over a Laplink parallel cable. (Networking was an extra-cost addition for OS/2, and later a more expensive special edition, "Warp Connect".)
OS/2 2's multitasking was great, but the OS wasn't all that stable. It was easy to have it running fine but you were locked out, because the input subsystem had crashed. (No networking, so no way to `ssh` in.) Large parts of OS/2 2 were still 16-bit code, too.
Win95's multitasking was as good, and while stability wasn't great, it was at least as good. It had vastly better compatibility with DOS and Windows 3.x drivers and apps.
I defected to the Microsoft camp and never returned. The bloated Win XP was the final straw and made me defect to Linux and Mac OS X on an old, cast-off, free PowerMac, thanks to XPostFacto.
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/10/21/escape-microsoft-wo...
https://www.reddit.com/r/winehq/comments/hgr6a9/which_versio...
The only things I can't do are middle-click to paste, and use my Compose key. If you don't do them, you won't even notice it's not a native app.
Microsoft apps run much better in a VM in my experience, because of how tightly coupled their development was with WinAPI.
I already need a VM for IE, which definitely does not work right in Wine for me, so why not Office too.
OK. I used to do that for IE but I haven't needed it in about a decade.
> Microsoft apps run much better in a VM in my experience, because of how tightly > coupled their development was with WinAPI.
Some do. Not all. WINE is also impressively good now.
> I already need a VM for IE, which definitely does not work right in Wine for me
That, I certainly believe.
> so why not Office too.
A whole bunch of reasons.
[1] No need for a Windows licence;
[2] Speed of startup;
[3] Much lower resource usage;
[4] Better integration with the host OS;
[5] No need to maintain a copy of Windows inside a VM with updates;
[6] No vulnerabilities in the host OS because there isn't one;
[7] Windows that freely mix with native windows, not in a single seamless plane for all of them.
I'm sure I could come up with more given more than a minute's thought. :-)
I'm pretty sure I have several Windows 95 and Me licenses around somewhere.
[2] Speed of startup;
I think my Windows 95 VM starts up faster than Wine.
[3] Much lower resource usage;
About even here, I'd say.
[4] Better integration with the host OS;
I like my separate "writing nook", thanks.
[5] No need to maintain a copy of Windows inside a VM with updates;
Hardly ever any more updates for 95 coming out nowadays.
[6] No vulnerabilities in the host OS because there isn't one;
There are vunlerabilities in every piece of software I use, to my knowledge.
[7] Windows that freely mix with native windows, not in a single seamless plane for all of them.
As I said above, writing nook :)
A decade or so back, I finally got a machine powerful enough to usefully run a VM or 2 without killing foreground performance.
I figured I wanted the lightest-weight version of Windows that would do what I needed, so I tried a bunch: Win95B, Win98SE, NT 3.51, NT 4, Win2K, XP.
9x was eliminated straight away: it could only do 640*480 and didn't have good enough networking to get anything in or out.
NT 3/4 were about as limited but could do better networking.
W2K worked well but couldn't run the VirtualBox guest additions.
So I ended up with TinyXP, which ran in 40MB off the ISO image (although more like 220MB once fully-updated).
There's no point for me having my word-processor in a sealed box. I need to get files in and out. I want to be able to put stuff in Dropbox. I want to be able to get it in and out of LibreOffice and Gmail. I want to start in a Linux text editor, add some info in LibreOffice, save as .DOC and open it in Word to work on the structure. I want to be able to copy the name of the speaker, the talk, the time and subject and paste them direct from my browser into my notes.
It's host integration that means this isn't a toy for the sake of the thing. If I wanted that, I could run Wordsworth under UAE, or Word 5.1 under System 7 in Basilisk.
This is a tool to get work done. For that, I want the host environment to be as invisible as possible.
If you don't, well, fine. But your choices would be useless for me.
The reasons for this
WordPerfect for DOS, in the opinion of many knowledgeable users, is still the greatest program ever written. Some of its features have not been matched even by the latest Windows software, and its interface remains unequaled for efficiency and elegance.
tl;dr; We're vi and we know it.
This is how I feel about vim, at any rate.
They had a box below main editor that everyone used to go in and edit codes for outlines, indentation, page breaks, etc. Super simple.
https://images.pcworld.com/reviews/graphics/125257-2406p075-...
It's so simple, yet so effective.
Personally, I never liked WordPerfect, nor did I use it much. I used a lot of different word processors but mostly ended up standardizing on Microsoft Word (well pre-Windows) for personal use.
WP laid it all bare. Every code and nuance was presented. Nothing was filtered or interpreted. I recovered many a screwed up document that you would just have to redo in Word if it ever got into such a state.
I still miss a real reveal codes in Word.
There was a public outcry for it back in the day and a snotty response from a Microsoft PM - wish I could remember enough details to see if I could find it but I'm convinced MS never really delivered a true reveal codes purely out of spite.
And yes, I've used WordPerfect from 4.0 to 7.something on Dos, Windows, various unices and Linux.
So do you think the inspector in modern browsers, or "view source" are a crutch then?
I wholeheartedly disagree with this assertion, and there is absolutely no "nostalgic haze" clouding my vision. While I do agree that sometimes pulling up "reveal codes" could have revealed formatting problems caused by a bug in Wordperfect, the difference between WP and MS Word, was that you could actually DO something quick to fix the problem, rather than in Word, where the answer was often "something is royally screwed up -- you get to start over now".
* reveal codes (a second mode, where you can see typographic and layout commands interspersed with the text itself, a bit like HTML tags)
* templates for judicial submissions (many US courts enforce strict layout and typographic rules, and WP is said to cater to that)
MS Word used to do this. Does it not now? (I don't use Word...)
> ... many US courts enforce strict layout and typographic rules, and WP is said to cater to that
Now this is a good reason. No one wants to redo that work for another word processor every time a new version changes formatting rules.
I don't know WordPerfect so I can't make a comparison.
Are you sure about that? At least since Word 95, it used what you could call a two-dimensional markup system - paragraphs and character formatting was separated, and character formatting could span over paragraph starts and ends.
for example, the formatting codes could say "from character position 5 in paragraph one to character position 2 in paragraph two, set bold to opposite setting of whatever was in the stylesheet of the paragraph". that would be very hard to present in a WP-like 'reveal codes' view (or in HTML, for that matter)
That meant, for example, that, after backspacing over a return, you could end up with a paragraph of text with, somewhere in the middle, a “set left margin to 3 cm” instruction, or with multiple conflicting instructions (I think neither was supposed to happen, but all software is buggy). I didn’t use WP, so I wouldn’t know what that meant for the paragraph being laid out. It might have been applied starting at entire paragraph that contained the instruction, at the next paragraph, or immediately.
The ‘raw view’ didn’t only allow you to see the (potential) mess of formatting instructions, but also to edit it.
So, if you knew your way around there, you could fix any problem with documents.
IMO, if WP were less buggy, it probably wouldn’t have needed that mode. I also think its existence put less pressure on WP to fix bugs.
As for WP, it's been a long time, but I don't remember having had such paragraph formatting issues needing the raw view. The raw view was mostly useful as WP wasn't really WYSIWYG (but there was some sort of print preview in DOS in 5.1) and there's only so much formatting you can show in text mode.
And as you said, its model is completely different. It doesn’t do formatting instructions inline (WordPerfect:Word is a bit similar to html without any css and html with only css)
IMO this is not a good reason to deny users an escape hatch to make fixing problems at least possible. To be fair it depends on what kind of users you care about - if you're building a tool for professionals, I think this should be considered table stakes.
The entire point of this exercise is that it is tiny and blindingly fast.
Running it inside a bloated whole-system emulator, in a bloated failure-prone semi-interpreted language, inside a bloated failure-prone app like any modern web browser, is like proposing replacing a bicycle with a shipping container containing an exercise bike, with a VR headset, mounted on the back of a flatbed articulated truck.
Which has a broken gearbox and no tyres and can only scrape screaming and skidding along the road, enveloped in flames and smoke.
It's not really true: it's generalising a simple point until it no longer holds.
Yes, all software is complex and fallible. But not all software is equal.
If you strip away half a dozen layers of indirection and translation, and replace gigs of code with hundreds of kilobytes of it, then there are dramatic differences. In performance, in reliability, in robustness, in maintainability, in safety.
WordPerfect for DOS, like all DOS apps, had to run in under 640 KB of usable memory -- 2/3 of a meg -- and it shared that with the OS. However, that OS went through 20 years of development and polishing and it was very solid at the end.
WordPerfect ran on about a dozen different OSes and CPUs, and as such it was very clean, exceptionally thoroughly tested and debugged software.
When you have a honed, polished single-function app -- a word processor and nothing else -- that runs in 200-300KB of memory, that can perform well on an 8MHz CPU, running on a 30-40KB OS that runs well on kit half that speed, and you run it on 21st century hardware, the result achieves a level of performance that is literally impossible with any 21st century OS with all its multitasking and multithreading and millions of lines of poorly-integrated code.
The important difference (for me) is that a word processor understands proportional font geometries and physical page dimensions, so I can layout the page interactively. For example, I have some text that I want to fit on a single page of A4 in Helvetica 12pt, and I'm willing to edit it until it fits.
I think that's a really hard problem to solve in a text editor, but it's trivial in a word processor.
I also use WordPerfect for DOS, because it's a full-featured word processor that you can use in a terminal (I think the author of this site uses it in graphical mode, but I prefer to use it in an xterm).
Here's a screenshot, notice how WordPerfect knows where the text will wrap.
RED FLAG.
These are also very common in size constrained demoscene productions. This especially funny to coders who work really hard to squeeze every single byte out of their production to suggest that they can fit a malware in there.