The ‘Dune’ Screenplay Was Written in Movie Master on MS-DOS | Hacker News Reader

The ‘Dune’ Screenplay Was Written in Movie Master on MS-DOS

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180 pointsonychomys214 comments

I found some archive links about Movie Master, the software mentioned in the post above.

- https://web.archive.org/web/20001021145625/http://www.telepo...

- https://www.ibiblio.org/cdeemer/sic07.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/20001027005742/http://www.telepo... points out that the Hollywood Screenplay "uses the source code of the former Movie Master and adds improvements". It's probably referring to Movie Master Windows version though.

If someone would like to try, a Windows 95 version is available here: https://archive.org/details/goldutils018

There's something to be said for the focused nature of older technology. If you were to set me the task of writing something long-form, and told me the faster and better I did it the more I would be rewarded, I'd be doomed with a modern laptop or a smartphone. My favorite writing tool is, frankly, an IBM TransNote from 2001.

This is why I like my Kindle so much (and other e-readers are the same presumably). It does one thing very well, and not much else. I could read the same book on my phone but it's always popping up alerts and buzzing and so forth, breaking my attention.

To be fair, even if I'm reading on my Kindle, my phone is still doing all that. I can DND my phone, but then it would have the same effect if I'm reading on the phone.

On Android, DND still pops up notifications and stuff. Anyone know if there is any easy way to turn that off? I get so distracted and that certainly doesn't help

Airplane mode? Turn it off?

I think you misunderstood - I mean I just don't want notifications showing up on the screen when I'm using it. If I don't want to be distracted when I'm not using it then I just silence it and put it away from me obviously...

Go to Do not Disturb -> Details -> Hide Notifications -> Hide All.

This will prevent notifications from popping up and also not remove any existing notifiation from the notification bar.

(I'm using Samsung; YMMV).

Awesome, thank you. I had no idea this was an option under DND. I tried turning off all notifications before and it seemed impossible

Linux console gives me the same feeling. It's partly the font, partly the focus (no interruptions), partly the lack of latency. OSX + iTerm2 is so damn laggy vs. Linux even on worse hardware. It just sux when you have to, you know, input Chinese or open a PDF.

Gotta say though, Dune was a disappointment to me, having grown up with Dune 2 on MSDOS. The old Dune had, you know, deeper characters. There's nothing like eating boys and bathing in blood to set off a character. The new Harkonnen are positively placid. We are in a new "PC" age...

> It just sux when you have to, you know, input Chinese or open a PDF.

Don't know about PDFs, but for Chinese IBus works just fine with XTerm.

I don't generally use PDFs for super fancy stuff like forms with JavaScript or whatever, but I generally find that KDE's Okular and GNOME's Evince work perfectly well for my needs. Acrobat Reader is a fucking hog by comparison and I loathe waiting for it to start up when I'm on operating systems where it's the standard.

Console != terminal. Console means no X11/Wayland.

> OSX + iTerm2 is so damn laggy vs. Linux even on worse hardware

This is one of those things you notice in a jarring way as a Linux user coming to other platforms, but people kinda look at you sideways and don't believe you when you tell them.

What I tend to notice, especially as someone who prefers to use a full screen terminal tiled with tmux, is (1) poor availability of Quake-style dropdown terminals on macOS and Windows and (2) extremely slow rendering on most terminal emulators for those platforms. On the other hand, I think I've heard some Mac users say they detect some input lag on Linux terminals.

"(1) poor availability of Quake-style dropdown terminals on macOS and Windows"

This is a feature available in both iTerm [1] as well as Windows Terminal [2].

[1] https://blog.mestwin.net/drop-down-terminal-in-macos-with-it... [2] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-terminal-...

iTerm2's implementation was basically unusable the last time I tried it, for details I can't remember well. One issue was that if you have iTerm swap the command key and option keys for in-terminal keybinds, it modifies them altogether when you're using the app, breaking command-tabbing out of the app, among other keybinds. (Having it swap these was something I did because it was necessary to get some combined modifier keystrokes to go through correctly, perhaps on pain of reconfiguring each of its escape codes to match xterm individually. I can't quite recall.) To get the behavior I wanted I ended up having to bypass iTerm's drop-down behavior in favor of some Hammerspoon automation. I put up with all of this because all other terminal emulators available on macOS were abominably slow, to the point that tailing a log in any tmux window makes the entire pane lag enough to make typing suck. (And the only way to get acceptable performance in iTerm2 was by enabling hardware acceleration.)

I'm glad that Windows Terminal added that feature this year. It's better than most terminal emulators on Windows in most other ways, too. I'll try it the next time I'm on Windows.

Here is the bizarre part.

Open iTerm, login into a Linux VM, run vim. It will be snappier than native on the host.

Go figure.

In terms of sheer productivity for an uninterrupted, expert user it's hard to beat the pre-Windows office suites. Yes it would take you weeks if not months to master WordStar or Lotus 1-2-3 and it was quite expensive and not everyone in the company could have it on their machines. But those who did would leave today's Google Docs users in the dust for any data entry task longer than 15 minutes.

> In terms of sheer productivity for an uninterrupted, expert user it's hard to beat the pre-Windows office suites.

There basically aren't pre-Windows office suites.

There are pre-Windows standalone productivity software products, but agglomeration of this into office suites is mostly a post-Windows phenomenon.

That's an interesting distinction. Do you think that maybe the agglomeration you describe is one of the reasons that post-Windows office tools seem to have worse productivity?

I've never used old office software, but I could imagine that each office application being distinct allowed them to focus user interfaces on the exact use cases of each product, instead of trying to build on least-common-denominator metaphors that can be shared between office products of different kinds.

> Do you think that maybe the agglomeration you describe is one of the reasons that post-Windows office tools seem to have worse productivity?

I think (and there were some productivity studies I remember seeing when DOS w/o Windows, Win 3.x, and MacOS were all popular that seemed to support this, IIRC) that WYSIWYG is the problem, distracting from substance with presentation continuously.

There were some attempts but yes you're correct that pre-Windows you wouldn't normally get word processors, spreadsheets etc. from the same software vendor. (You could get them bundled by the hardware vendor/distributor sometimes.) I was using the term "suite" loosely, as in - typical combinations of software products (regardless of author) that were used in an office.

AppleWorks would beg to differ. And if GUIs aren't prohibited then GEOS on 8-bit platforms had a suite too.

Lotus had a whole suite of office products for DOS. Lotus Works was amazing.

This is why I do most of my coding in vim...simple and easy. When it comes to debugging I can switch to VS, but when actually coding it is more focused on vim.

Eh, you can get that distraction-free experience with modern technology if you want it. When I want to focus on writing, I have a Vim setup that gives me a screen with a cursor. I run that full screen, turn off notifications and whatnot, and get to it. And when I'm done I can go back to using my modern technology to do everything else I want with the content, whether it's formatting/typesetting, sharing, etc.

There's really no reason to sacrifice all those additional capabilities at the alter of focus or productivity. Just find ways to use modern technology more effectively.

Sounds like he just wants to open a program, not build his life around it.

Digging up and using some old piece of technology instead of using an existing, multi-purpose computing device is the definition of "[building] his life around it", as it requires adapting your workflows to the technology instead of adapting the technology to your workflows.

> There's really no reason to sacrifice all those additional capabilities at the alter of focus or productivity. Just find ways to use modern technology more effectively.

It could be that the screenwriter used to use that MS-DOS program back in the day, and already knew and liked it, had a well-developed workflow around it, etc. Then running it on DOSBox or an old machine you happen to have lying around makes perfect sense imo.

> It could be that the screenwriter used to use that MS-DOS program back in the day, and already knew and liked it, had a well-developed workflow around it, etc. Then running it on DOSBox or an old machine you happen to have lying around makes perfect sense imo.

Absolutely!

But I wasn't responding to the article. I was responding to the original comment, which stated:

> There's something to be said for the focused nature of older technology.

My response and point was that this isn't somehow precluded with newer technology. That is, if what you're getting out of older technology is "focus", you can get that with newer tech without having to sacrifice other capabilities.

If what you're getting out of older technology is "familiarity" or "nostalgia" or "joy" or something similarly aesthetic, then obviously, keep on keeping on. :)

Depends on your "resources of personality". Maybe it's my ADHD or maybe just weakness of character, but I need to place an extra barrier between myself and distraction that I can't simply dismiss with a mouse click.

Ah, well, in that case what you're getting out of older technology is "externally imposed self-control". Douglas Adams' publisher famously locked him in a hotel room because he was such a chronic procrastinator. I can definitely relate!

depends.

I get used to things. I have spent hundreds of hours using modern laptop computers to develop software, read articles, mindlessly consume social media content, watch porn. Because of these hundreds of hours, when I come to interact with my laptop computer, a set of pre-established affordances, feelings, and thought patterns immediately present themselves.

This goes away if I write in my notebook or type on my alphasmart, where a whole other host of feelings and thought patterns immediately appear. Usually, these are feelings and thought patterns that are localized to what I'm writing about, which makes writing (and thinking) much easier.

I co-authored a (technical) book entirely in vim.

The problem for me was that distraction was still one alt+tab away. Ultimately, what worked for me best was writing in very boring and rather inconvenient conditions. Waiting at a car wash, or in a car shop worked best.

Seriously, TransNote? I'm now kinda envious :) Do you use it with windows 2000 or XP, and how does the notepad works with your setup?

> I'd be doomed with a modern laptop

Can you not install Linux, or enable airplane mode or mute notifications on Windows?

> or a smartphone

You wouldn't want to write long-form on a soft-keyboard with a tiny screen anyway - even though, ironically, I know that you can silence notifications for sure (as opposed to a question mark for Windows 10/11).

I don't think that the problem is the technology - at least, not that technology - because it already has the ability to silence distractions. The problem seems to be with us - we're more distractable and less able to focus. Although, you can probably blame the internet and commercial social media for that!

There's a whole cottage industry now of electronic typing devices with no internet connection. They seem to be particularly helpful for creative people.

There's a big overlap between 'making creative connections between seemingly unrelated ideas' and 'easily distracted'. There's a ton of literature out there about how to keep to the craft and not get stuck. Simplified electronic devices seem like a good tool for that toolbox.

The ones I've seen look like a sawed off typewriter with an eInk display above the keys. But there are also tablet tablets that are just a screen with an erase button, not unlike those wax and plastic boards they sold for kids prior to iPads.

> There's something to be said for the focused nature of older technology.

For one, it is unlikely that it'll rise up and try to enslave humans.

I guess the writer took the lessons of the Butlerian Jihad to heart.

There are lots of stories about writers who are very productive using an old method:

--This dune story,

--Game of thrones (asoif) written on wordstar

--And of course dozens of writers who still use pen and paper

This is what these environments have in common: no or minimal internet to distract you

There are some other characteristics as well. With pen and paper, you can only move forward. That is, your only real option is to complete the draft. You can revise or rewrite when you're typing it in. Neil Gaiman writes this way; fountain pen and notebook for first draft. Cutting material is much less painful. You simply don't type it in.

The temptation to go back and tweak what you've written is fairly strong with modern tools. An author can waste hours, an entire writing session, on rereading what they wrote and making adjustments. That's an activity best left to after you have a completed draft in hand.

I completely agree, but the inability to edit doesn't explain the advantage (if any) of the wordstar/ms-dos editor crowd.

Right. You identified the prime characteristic for the CUI crowd: no context switching. Though Wordstar purportedly was superior for text manipulation.

Robert J. Sawyer wrote an article [1] on why he still uses it. Made me want to learn it, but I realize that if I'm going to put effort into learning a tool, I'd likely want it to be Emacs instead. (I currently use Scrivener.)

[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/words...

Emacs is worth it from a “creating an ideal environment” perspective, but it is a nightmare from a “stay focused” one. Tweaking your editor becomes very easy and very distracting.

I use emacs and org-mode all day long, and never tweak it unless there's a really strong reason. My goal is to keep it as close to vanilla as possible.

I use emacs as well, and regularly get distracted tweaking it. Maybe the temptation to tweak isn't present for you - but is for a lot of other people. I think it's a personality trait.

Can you imagine what internet distraction would do to the release schedule of GRR Martin? Hmmm

Not as a writer, but as a programmer, I can't attest that it's not just a lack of internet - it's a lack of distractions.

When I was a kid without internet or a computer, I continually got distracted from my schoolwork by a book, Legos, or just staring off into space and daydreaming.

Now, as an adult, even when I don't have access to the internet, I can get distracted by tweaking my Emacs config, playing with one of my personal programming projects, organizing my files, or playing a video game I've already downloaded.

It's not just the internet - it's distractions in general, and the thought-patterns (or personality traits) that cause us to be distracted.

However, you might have noticed a theme with my modern set of distractions - they're all on a computer, despite my library of books and my ability to stare off into space whenever I want. This reinforces the idea that technological distraction is much greater in effectiveness than (most) non-technological means.

What I like about this is the 40 page limit. He actually considers it a kind of feature, and this arbitrary limit has contributed to his works.

One would think that if 40 pages comes to full, the writer would just find a way to extend it, but instead he didn't bother and shortened instead.

I distinctly remember an assignment from college where there was a 12-page limit on the report for a machine learning assignment. Some people freaked out over this - "12 pages isn't even enough for me to finish describing the problem!" And the professor's response was essentially "If that's true, then you are writing the wrong report." Brevity is the soul of wit indeed, and having these sorts of constraints can definitely yield a better result under some circumstances.

We had to write “real” research article, and was limited to 14 pages. One article was selected for a conference, meaning that we had to trim it down to 6 or 8 pages, I don’t recall precisely. That was a difficult writing assignment.

I believe that with screenplays there's a fairly direct correspondence between the space taken up on paper and time in the movie. So a page is generally a minute. In the article, he talks about how it "creates acts" - each act is going to be about 40 minutes.

I'm not in the field at all so I'm hoping someone knowledgeable will confirm or refute this.

The gold standard set out by Syd Field in his famous screenwriting book is that for a 2 hour movie this is the breakdown: act 1 - 30 minutes act 2 - 60 minutes act 3 - 30 minutes

But of course rules are made to be broken and they're also adapting a novelistic story structure.

But now kind of curious to watch some of this writer's films and time out these 40 minute act breaks.

I feel like Twitter does this for me. I'll go over the limit on a long tweet, and I'll go back and trim and exchange long words for short ones and remove words that don't contribute anything.

The result will fit, and basically say the same thing. I've never had to fundamentally alter the meaning of a tweet, I just make it shorter, which is a healthy writing exercise.

I often find that to be true, too.

However, there are cases where there isn't enough space to articulate an idea. In those instances, I've tended to not Tweet at all.

Twitter is just a poor tool for communication of nontrivial ideas.

Yeah there's a pretty big difference between limiting yourself to 280 characters, and limiting yourself to 40 pages. Limiting yourself is great. Handicapping yourself is bad. I find the character limit in Twitter also contributes to society's increasingly poor grammar, as well.

On the one hand, as a technologist, this pisses me off because we've advanced so far in the field of word processing. Autocorrect, holding more than 40 pages in memory, cut/paste, etc. Why does this Luddite persist in the old ways?!?!?!

But as a writer who knows the pains of distraction... maybe he's on to something?

One could use the "we've advanced so far" as an argument against oil paints in visual medium. And photography actually did (sadly) create a huge gap in academic art education.

There is place for industrial efficiency, and place for medium for art.

I think the relationship of a writing utensil in work of art is similar to the functioning of artistic medium. It does not matter what it is, as long as it facilitates the inspiration and getting the piece done. "Efficiency" has no value in artistic process , unless it's part of the artwork.

In visual art, you likely want a medium that is lightfast, does not physically detoriate and offers a standard set of pigments. But the paint does not need to be efficient or fast (who needs painting! We have cameras and printers!)

Analogously, a writer likely wants a medium that has high enough contrast to be legible, and is robust. You want to use a typeface that most people can read - and write in a language others understand.

Since creative writing is a toil for most people anyway, it is unlikely faster typing or better wordprocessing will increase the speed of the final result that much.

I mean George R.R. Martin could have used quill and ox blood and the books would be done if he was writing constantly.

Maybe he doesn't want to have to create an account. Maybe he doesn't want to figure out how to disable cloud saves. Maybe he doesn't want to pay a subscription fee. Maybe he doesn't want emojis, mentions, hash tags and recommendations about what his friends are reading. Maybe he doesn't want a analytics report in his mail describing about how he used the software this week. Maybe he doesn't want "undoubtedly absolutely necessary telemetry" being reported. Maybe the old ways were better.

Or maybe they weren’t and you’re just making an appeal to antiquity out of misplaced nostalgia and recollections about some amorphous Golden Age that never quite existed as you remember.

I think, in general, this is a good counterpoint. But the things mentioned really do suck. Honestly, if it wasn't for the fact you can just use Google or Facebook to log into everything more people would complain.

The obsession with modern software has with mining every single bit of data they can is a huge step in the wrong direction. The silly "features"--like the 'what you do' or 'what your friends' do reports--are more annoying than interesting.

I don't mind, or might even enjoy, that kind of thing when I sign up for it, but it really doesn't need to be in every piece of software I use.

"Maybe he doesn't want to have to create an account." - oooff, this this home hard. I tried to print something the other day here at home and I couldn't because I had to log into my printer's software. I couldn't remember my password, or even the email address I used to set it up. What should have been a very simply file -> print turned into a long process of registering a new account, password doesn't meet complexity rules, verify your account, sign back in, etc... to print a one page thing while I was in a hurry.

Edit: If anybody from printers (specifically HP) is reading this. Stop. Just stop.

This seems like a false dichotomy - Libreoffice/Openoffice and Abiword don't have any of these anti-features (except for telemetry, which is useful (when sent to a trusted party)).

It's hard to argue that feature advances have not come with any severe downsides, especially in UX, complexity, reliability, safety, and privacy.

I don't view autocorrect as an advancement to be honest. It causes more issues than it solves IMO. On a phone it's ok to have it because typos are so frequent but on a PC I'd never use it.

That sounds like a good YouTube skit.

"Mad Libs, you must ride the desert sandwich. If you do not, the Firemen will not respect you."

"Fedora Thad, someday you will inherit the Hackneyed empire. Don't let the emperor's Streaker forces intimidate you."

"The Slice™ must flow."

I use a combination of autocorrect and dictation on my Mac. My fingers aren't as accurate as they could be and I can't remember spelling to save my life. It's made writing easier because I don't need to worry about that.

The real solution is to just give people the choice. Everyone's workflow is different enough that there can't really be a "one-size-fits-all" program. I'd be ecstatic if we moved away from being forced to use certain software because so-and-so needs a proprietary file format that only this piece of software supports.

Agreed. The fact that Kindles still don't read epubs is aggravating.

There's a trick for that. Rename the epub to <something>.png and email it to your kindle address. It'll convert it!

It's weird that Amazon doesn't support epub conversion officially but this trick has worked for years.

Of course calibre is also an option but I usually use this method because it's so simple.

I know what you mean. But, remember that most of the best writing in history was produced by candlelight. Improvements to word processing probably lowered the barrier so that more people could write, but if you're already a writer it may not make much of a difference to you. And since the most difficult part of writing is sitting down and doing it for a long time, the key technology involved may not be the word processor, it may be the rituals that make that happen for you over and over.

Msdos edit had cut/copy/paste. The 64k limit which I presume is the base for the 40 pages was sometimes bad, but you can just open another file.

And then there is autocorrect. I am not at all a writer, but even for me the thing causes as much trouble as it solves. Tolerable on a cell phone, but a real keyboard is a much better option than mr oh-I-don't-know-that-word-here-is-red-squigly-for-you. If a real writer is forced to use it, I understand it very well if he attacks the precocious abacus with an axe.

After searching for a good note-taking system I have settled on Notepad (on my employer’s Windows system) and TextEdit (on my Macs at home.) This with files and folders gets me all the organization I need. Even a fancier text editor doesn’t give much benefit.

Similarly a ton of my professional work involves emails. Though they’re in Outlook the editor might as well be Pico: very seldom do I even use the bold font or any other accoutrement.

He’s definitely on to something. Word processors are really a kind of Wysiwyg typesetter. They just don’t add much for the actual writing process that a simple text editor doesn’t already give you. Typesetting is a different process.

Regarding autocorrect: Maybe not outsourcing your literacy to a machine might have something to do with retaining the capacity to write.

Because you've never made a mistake when typing? Associating auto-correct to literacy is as stupid as it comes. Maybe come up with a better argument next time?

Idle speculation is not an argument. Maybe don't be so aggressive next time?

> Autocorrect

That's probably the first thing a lifelong professional screenwriter would turn off.

Wish the article would note that he won the Oscar for the Forrest Gump screenplay, not Dune.

I kept rereading the article and wondering how he got an Oscar for a movie that was just released.

I often wonder this about old tech. What attracts some people to keep using it? Is it the comfort or familiarity or is it minimalism?

I sometimes want to feel the experience of my Pentium 1 PC with that rubberdome keyboard and ball mouse. But I know it was a frustrating experience. The mouse didn't work exactly, we had to alt+ctrl+delete every 20-30 minutes. They keyboard felt like jello. The CRT monitor gave us headaches.

Moreover I have a 2010 era functioning hybrid laptop that is collecting dust. I like the idea of familiarity it is certainly not a comfortable or faster experience. Is it veiled minimalism underneath you have frustration that you can't do anything that would be distraction because your computer is ancient.

Just for fun, I have installed "Joe's Own Editor" by running "yum install joe" from Oracle's EPEL mirror.

Then I ran "joe /etc/passwd" (after exiting root) then pressed ^K-h, and Wordstar's help menu appeared.

Wordstar and the vi editor share evolution on serial terminals of the 70s (vi specifically on the Lear-Siegler ADM-3A). They were designed for a minimal number of keys, and thus keeping the hands on the home row, away from the function keys.

Some people grow very much accustomed to this.

    $ rpm -qi joe
    ...
    URL         : http://sourceforge.net/projects/joe-editor/
    Summary     : An easy to use, modeless text editor
    Description :
    Joe is a powerful, easy to use, modeless text editor.
    It uses the same WordStar keybindings used in Borland's development
    environment.

I use JOE as my daily driver. I grew up on Borland Turbo C, so it was an easy transition for me when I picked up Linux circa 2000.

JOE ships with several keybinding variants as well. E.g. `jstar` launches JOE with more WordStar-like bindings.

I'm in a similar boat. I used a lot of Turbo Pascal and EDIT.COM/QBASIC.EXE (which has some similar keybindings). Joe was the natural editor to use when I started with Slackware back in the early 90s. It's really a pleasure to keep using 30 year old muscle memory.

I still use the muscle memory gained using Turbo Pascal 3 at 15 in 1986 in VSCode at 50 in 2021 as it maps _similar_ shortcuts using ^K-...

>I often wonder this about old tech. What attracts some people to keep using it? Is it the comfort or familiarity or is it minimalism?

I suspect that asking the same question about musical instruments would lend a lot of immediate understanding about what might be going on.

In this case if doesn't seem to be anything to do with the tech itself. It's just that this guy is used to using this particular software, there's no more recent software better at this task for him, and it happens to run on MS-DOS.

> is it the comfort or familiarity or is it minimalism?

Depends on the person I'd assume.

For older people, it's almost certainly familiarity.

For younger people, likely a combo of minimalism and hipsterism. It comes up when someone talks about listening to something on vinyl or using typewriters instead of laptops.

I used to wonder about that too, but then realize that I grew up with Windows XP and already hate with a passion Windows 10 and 11. I've lived through ~15 years of technological change, and still have at least 40 in front of me. That's inspiring me to just switch to vim and a minimalist WM and never look back.

"on an ancient beige mechanical keyboard"

That is an IBM Model M, probably the best computer keyboard ever made; I wouldn't be surprised if besides the software it also played a role in helping to write the screenplay. That keyboard is simply an amazing piece of hardware; I have two, one is dated early 90s and carries a Lotus 1-2-3 v2.2 sticker on it, just to say...

The model M is my favorite keyboard and I own a stash of them large enough to last me for my whole life. That is to say, I own one model M keyboard.

Model Fs deserve a shout too

I think there’s too much hype around the model M. I own one and find it too bulky and loud. It’s a gimmick. Also it has a PS/2 connector, so it’s a pain.

The hype is well deserved, it's a rock solid piece of hardware that lasts decades, something that is so rare today. I got my first one in the mid nineties and never had to do any maintenance aside normal cleaning, while the spare one I have lays unused since day one. Yes, it's loud, I agree that could be annoying in quiet office environments.

About the PS/2 connector, that is not a problem since USB adapters are very cheap, but there are also many projects around to replace the internal controller board with one that speaks directly USB, also some have been extended to implement some more buttons and program them to do stuff. A search for "model m controller" will return some interesting results.

Also, Unicomp inherited the Model M from IBM and still make modern variants directly with USB support: https://www.pckeyboard.com/

Are we going to see old refurbished devices be sold as distraction-free machines?

Does a new market for somewhat-luddite computers exist? I'd like to buy something like the freewrite [1] but cheaper, any suggestions?

[1] https://getfreewrite.com/

I've had similar experiences with green screen enterprise manufacturing software. It had a remarkable amount of features that were accessed via nested command sequences that didn't take too long to learn, and could easily handle 800 users simultaneously with no lag or interruption.

I watched some order takers at a food service company a few years back. They worked in a green screen program -- not sure if it was DOS, or some terminal.

The speed at which they worked was unreal. Their hands never left the keyboard. They knew where everything was, and they could literally retrieve any information in less than one second, both due to the speed their fingers worked on the keyboard, and the responsiveness of the app.

I remember thinking that I need to pay more attention to keyboard-only usage of the next app I write.

Agreed, it's as though all features were organized carefully into a B tree that became polished over the years.

I met a guy some years back who specialized in rewriting accounting software user interfaces. He was a former accountant, so he knew all the things that accountants needed to do with software and the order things tended to need to happen. He focused a lot on input order flow. He claimed that the reduced cost of data entry easily paid for his services for his clients, and made the people using the software happier too.

You really don’t want someone good with reverse 10-key data entry to constantly be moving back to a mouse and try to click on some random button or input box.

kobowriter[0], which repurposes a Kobo e-reader along with a USB-keyboard was earlier on HN[1]. The thread has a few more suggestions.

[0]: https://github.com/olup/kobowriter

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28426741

Alphasmart

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaSmart

I had a Neo2 for a while. Transferring is weird but it is just a USB keyboard that types whatever is in memory making it future-proof.

I think the Dana has an SD card if that's more your thing. Those things are also pretty indestructible and relatively cheap on ebay.

You mean as a new type of mass marketed device rather than someone's hobby business that could fail and they wouldn't be economically impacted?

Based on the fact that this is not new in the slightest, and the last 20 years is full of people mocking DOS because it's from an era long gone by but then discovering very specific niche industries or suddenly-well-known individuals still using DOS applications... No. No we are not. There is no market here, there are only individuals who made a choice and stuck with it.

For DOS specifically, there is a market. So much of one that I can buy PCs with FreeDOS preinstalled. DOS, specifically, is used in many embedded applications that do not require multitasking (digital display boards, point of sale systems, etc.). That's not exactly addressing the question, but one of the things that makes a successful business is finding a niche and exploiting it and though there may not be a mass market consumer market, there are definitely companies making money with "old tech".

Who sells new hardware with FreeDOS support? That's cool.

Until fairly recently, Dell. However, I can't find that option anymore when specing a new PC, so perhaps I'm wrong about that. I think HP does as well.

For many years after OS/2 faded from consumer view, I think there were ATMs that ran on it.

I'm not in the industry, and don't know if there are any more.

If you're running Linux you can change some settings and boot to console instead of the GUI. The GUI is still there but you have to leave the console environment to get to it.

I'm not quite hardcore enough to actually do this though. I tend to do my personal browsing in Firefox, work browsing in Chromium, and media viewing in Chrome. By "work browsing" I mean only technical stuff directly related to my job - HN counts as personal. When I want to concentrate I just `pkill firefox` and all the distractions go away. Works pretty well most of the time.

Obviously I'm distracted right now.

I know that owning dedicated hardware is appealing, but - why not solve the problem on a software level? Install Linux and then disable/remove the TCP/IP stack (and associated tools) as much as is practical, and use a USB drive to get your creations onto your main computer.

George R.R. Martin also wrote his books on a DOS machine running WordStar 4.0

As it says in the article.

Oh, you're right. I overlooked that last paragraph.

Maybe that's why he can't finish the series...

The Expanse has finished an entire nine-book series in the time since the last A Song of Ice and Fire was published.

This is probably because of the benefits of collaborative writing.

No procrastination possible when you have that level of engagement.

GRRM is alone and bored.

Here's a video of Stanley Kubrick talking about DOS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlsZoZLlwC8

Here he is talking about UNIX https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54hrLTpsO5g

Also using an IBM Model M keyboard, it would seem.

To be fair, I think a lot of today's software is also written on a Model M, even if it's plugged into the latest and greatest. I really enjoy mine, I know a couple other co-workers who have one too

I wrote a lot of code on a model M at my first job. I should probably get another, that thing was phenomenal.

The Unicomp Model M continuations are still good, as well.

im typing on one right now. i have to figure out how to clean the keys, some have some coffee stains :)

The plastic is pretty durable (PBT) - you can scrub with them with dish soap. Isopropyl Alcohol should be fine too if you want something stronger.

Typing on a Model M makes me want to type more and more.

Can't blame him, the tactile and auditory feedback is awesome. Mine is 1 year older than me and still works great.

Would have been nice to hear about the actual process. How is the screenplay disseminated afterwards? Printed out and retyped by an intern on a modern machine or what? What is Movie Master, who made it, what are the features? Right now the article is nothing more that 'lol man used old software'.

> he pulled up a DOS window in Windows XP

On the video embedded in the page, he mentioned that he will print the pages for delivery, then the studio scans them in to digitize them back, and he works from there. The article was dry but the video was pretty neat to hear his point of view on story creation - admittedly, the tactical creation was a minimal part.

> I have to give them a hard copy. They have to scan it and then put it in their computers and then I have to work through their computer because you can’t even email mine or anything.

Surely someone can write this fellow a program to convert to ASCII and a USB floppy drive to move the files, or better yet, an SD card IDE drive for his old PC.

He could probably have used a modern PC with internet connectivity too. I'm guessing convenience wasn't the point. (If it's a machine from the 90s, it might not even have USB.)

Nah the USB drive is on the other end. To read his floppies.

Oh right, never contemplated such a thing to exist.. but there it is in Google. I wonder if worries about electronic media becoming unreadable over time are overstated

Don't worry about your worries being wrong-worries, because your worries are real-worries. Those USB floppy drives have about a 1 in 3 chance of actually working. There's last I looked only one manufacturer left and no real quality control on them. I bought a $30ish at one point and it simply just doesn't read floppies. Not sure it even showed up in the USB device tree.

And that's 3.5". I can't imagine how to solve this for 5 1/4" and 8" floppies. Or tape media from the 70s mainframe days, etc.

Yikes, my worries were understated. I suppose there's a bunch of special components that they don't even manufacture anymore. Tbf, $30 is a bit too low. If I was serious about archiving or accessing old documents and wanted a reliable floppy drive, it's something I'd pay ~$300 for.. depending on the value of what was being recovered, someone might even pay $3000 for a specialist to recover it.

>How is the screenplay disseminated afterwards?

He says, "I have to give them a hard copy. They have to scan it and then put it in their computers...".

>What is Movie Master, who made it, what are the features?

This isn't a tech article (Edit: It isn't a tech publication - it is a "tech" section of a popular publication) - they may research such details, but I definitely wouldn't expect them to. Even then, they did give us one interesting piece of implementation: It has a 40-page in-memory limit.

>'lol man used old software'

I didn't get this mocking tone from the article in the slightest.

Should have just dictated it to a mentat.

I'm amazed that the screenplay for a 150 minute movie, based on a ~400 page novel, fits on 40 pages.

As mentioned in the article, he aims to make each act fit in 40 pages, not the entire screenplay.

> Roth also said the 40 page limit helps him structure his screenplays.“I like it because it makes acts,” he said. “I realize if I hadn’t said it in 40 pages I’m starting to get in trouble.”

Darn, that's what I get for skimming the article quickly. And makes WAY more sense.

I think it's 40 pages to an act.

I used Wordstar to type up my school reports and newsletters (well into mid 90s) in an actual IBM PC with 640k RAM and no hard drive. I wasn't aware of the 40-page limit. Although it is entirely possible that I never had to encountere it.

He doesn't use Wordstar.

WordStar had no such limit, think he's referring to Movie Master

There are several Emacs modes for screenwriting.

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Screenplay

I see this as one user, solving a personal issue at the burden of everyone else around them. Seems more like arrogance than zen.

I definitely agree with this one. It's probably possible but it's arrogance in display.

I have to disagree. Script security is often a huge problem. He's solved that by using a program that is unlikely to leak. That was one of the benefits.

You saying the writer was just arrogant feels to me to be the equivalent of saying any artist that chooses to paint with oils instead of acrylics is selfish because acrylic paints are easier to clean.

There is often an association between the medium and the state of flow for someone making a creative work. Seems presumptuous to judge how someone else produces, successfully, when no one else complained about it. He won the Oscar for writing Forest Gump and was nominated for five more. People keep hiring him, so he must be doing something right.

That's next level hipster shit :) Just like newgen coders wanting e-ink displays. Less is more!

The screenplay was the worst part of the new Dune movie

I was considering to watch it this weekend. So you advise against it?

Do you enjoy explosions, spaceships, and verbal exposition?

There was far less verbal exposition than could have been. For example the mentats and their importance due to the Butlerian Jihad is never explicitly mentioned but only hinted at in subtle ways (which is nice).

The same team are working on a Sisterhood prequel TV series, to the background info is coming.

Because if you do, I invite you to experience it in 4DX where you can get rained on, punched and perfumed. It will take your mind off alarmingly frequent cuts to Paul's love interest cum Chanel commercial. It may even--a far bigger feat--inure you to the dialogue written (one thinks) by a crack team of out-of-work teamsters moonlighting as screenwriters from your local meetup.

Go see it! It is a beautiful half movie: it only covers half the book, but is a great interpretation.

It's fantastic. Go see it in Imax if you can.

Going to the theaters will help to get part 2 made.

they really did a number with this. they are getting regular old joes to ask other people to go to the theaters on HBOs behalf. i really gotta figure out how they did that, its pretty remarkable.

they made a good movie worthy of imax.

I'll rather do it on Denis Villeneuve's behalf, who I regard as one of the best filmmakers of the current era. I couldn't care less about Warner/HBO.

It is called "word of mouth" and is essential for the success of a blockbuster.

I was so disappointed after spending like 12 hours watching this film to it ending without telling the complete story. Never mind the Part 1 title card at the beginning. I just assumed they were going to expand upon the story not cut it into pieces. Then to find out that they didn't already green light the rest of the story being made. WTF? Who does this in today's movie universe? We get the full story approved to make or we take it to another studio. Right Mr. Jackson?

Disney. marvel. it's not new.

at the rate of Marvel movies, I think someone farts an idea and it gets greenlit. not telling me much here /s

I fully expect it's greenlit, but not publicly so.

They'll openly greenlight it when theater attendance drops off, after a couple of weeks, and ride the extra publicity.

Great, so a minimum of 2 years before we get the rest of the story. At least it's not GRRMartin time spans.

Faster than I expected. https://twitter.com/Legendary/status/1453058884516466691

This comment was remarkably prescient.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/26/22739098/dune-part-two-d...

There's a period of several years between where the first film left the story, and the final conclusion. They may be quite happy for Tim and Zendy to put on a couple of years between making instalments.

I'm sorry that you feel that way. I was already aware of the fact that it was both half a film, and that the second part wasn't green-lit yet. Despite of this, the film completely lived up to to my expectations.

That's part of the problem. It wasn't a disaster, so I'm actually interested. Admittedly, it's a personal problem.

Strongly concur on it being a theater watch, ideally Imax.

The effects are next-level good. You won't see all the detail at home unless you've got one hell of a set-up. There are good sets and costumes, and the CG isn't muddy, cheap Marvel "just good enough not to ruin it" stuff, but is truly good.

It's also very unlikely you have an audio system at home that can keep up. This is both because there's a lot of really good stuff going on in the audio mix that'll fall flat on anything but a stellar home audio setup, and a lot of bad stuff (mostly Nolanesque "wtf did that actor just say?") that'll be even worse.

Acting's good. Big screen doesn't hurt that any, certainly.

The story's Dune. If you like Dune, this is a Dune. That's its strength, and its weakness.

If you liked Blade Runner 2049, 100% for sure catch this in theaters. If you haven't seen Blade Runner 2049, friggin' watch it. It's an idea that seems bad (a sequel to Blade Runner? Oh no...) but turned out perfect.

Best thing about IMAX for me was the sound. Big screen is great, and helps with the sense of scale of the ships which are stunning, but the stand-out element for me was the ornithopters – their sound design was so good, worth watching in IMAX just for that.

I know of at least one theater complex nearby that has an Imax screen or two, but those are not the best sound in the house. They're very good, but the gold standard (at least around here) are the couple of normal (but quite good) screens + projectors that they've paired with some fancy Dolby thing. It's noticeably better, in movies that are mixed for it (and I think this one is).

However, I'd probably take Imax with very good sound over a normal theater with the best possible sound, for this one. Then again, I've not tried it in the best-sound theaters, so maybe I'm wrong about which is preferable.

I know that, trying to (re-)watch it at home, my normally-plenty-good pieced-together 5.1 system was not up to the task, which is the first time I've felt like that about this set-up of mine—and I watched both Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 on it, so it's been Villeneuve-tested before.

Re: audio, to add to the above comment, if you are going to watch the new Dune at home without a really good setup (or good headphones) I highly recommend turning on subtitles.

I sat in what should have been around the audio sweet-spot, if there was one, in the pretty good theater I went to, was paying very close attention, and still missed a few lines due to the mix. Most of those lines I missed again trying to watch it at home (where I have no hope, really, because it turns out this movie's too much for my usually-fine surround sound setup). I blame Nolan, and his... niche, at best, audio preferences. Plus Villeneuve for imitating it. I don't remember his previous films requiring this much active effort to tell WTF people are saying.

Don't listen to a random person. Predominantly people enjoy it but make your own judgement.

It's a visually beautiful movie and it works better in telling the story than the original movie because it's being broken up into two decently long films.

The dialogue isn't fantastic, but it doesn't detract from the experience, IMO. I'd recommend watching it.

I watched it last weekend and my expectations were pretty low. Plus it was 2-1/2 hours which (for me) isn't a good sign.

I loved the movie and can't wait for the next part. I watched it on HBO but kind of wished I had seen it in a theater for the big sound and huge screen. I thought the movie was beautifully shot.

I think if you've read the book, it's a good watch. But the movie does very little character building, or maybe it tries to do too much of it too fast. Without the preset idea of what the characters are about, I could see how the movie might be a bit flat.

Too fast? The movie is longer than the original and only part of the story is included. How much slower can they make the story playout?

> The movie is longer than the original and only part of the story is included

The original is a dense 200,000 word novel, not the 1984 movie you seem to be referencing, which itself a cut a lot.

Sure, at this point I'm just hoping it doesn't get Hobbit-ed by making shit up to pad the time and introduce characters not in the original material.

> I'm just hoping it doesn't get Hobbit-ed by making shit up to pad the time and introduce characters not in the original material.

Well, its being made into two movies instead of The Hobbit’s three, and the source material is about twice as long as The Hobbit, so I think the risk of that is a lot lower.

3-4 hours film per 100K words is probably reasonable [0], the cureent Dune is still very squeezed where The Hobbit trilogy was...very much not.

[0] E.g., the first season of Game of Thrones, roughly covering the plot of the book A Game of Thrones, and which hewed pretty close to the source but still cut a fair amount, was 9.5 hours for ~300K words of source material.

The rough cut of Lynch's version clocked in at over 4 hours, and the intended cut (which never saw the light of day) was supposed to be almost 3 hours long.

That was my one major complaint. Many of the secondary characters don't get the screen time they deserved. But, I assume doing so would push play time from 2.5 hours to 3+, or cause a split into 3-4 parts instead of 2. Worthwhile sacrifices, I suppose. After all, for anybody who wants more, there's always the book.

> or cause a split into 3-4 parts

The first novel is already split into 3 well-defined acts.

I think it would've made sense to make 3 films. It would have given them some breathing room to build up the world and the establish the characters in the first film, and it would have ended with a tremendous climax.

There are lots of little bits of subtle characterization and character-arc work in it to pick up on, though some of them require some connecting-the-dots and lateral thinking. Which, in a way, lets you, the viewer, play the role of a Dune character, picking out little hints and signs and extracting meaning.

This isn't to defend the movie if people find that this doesn't work for them (it may, indeed, be a failed effort—I don't know, I can't view it as a version of me who hasn't read the book and seen the two previous screen adaptations) but it does have a lot of character-building, much of it's just blink-and-you'll-miss-it or requires the viewer to take an extra step or two in their head to put it together.

I noticed the subtle bits but, personally, I doubt I would have been able to notice them in the first place, let alone extract much meaning from them, without being primed by the book.

I've read the novel several times over the years, and watched both he 1984 Lynch production and the mini-series several times each. IMO, the new movie is better than both previous screen adaptations. It follows the book pretty closely, only omitting some details, and not adding any McGuffins or other needless new plot points (coughweirding modulecough).

I certainly have my nits to pick. But, they are truly nits. Friends have reported non-Dune fans (never read the book or watched other adaptions) can get a bit lost, particularly children. But, my wife and I loved it and hope part 2 gets procured in a timely manner.

Similarly, over the years I've read the novel in my mother tongue (multiple times), watched Lynch's movie, read the original and finally listened to the audiobook. I have seen Dune today in IMAX 3D and I simply loved it.

As for the missing details, I think what especially hit me was SPOILERS AHEAD the whole Jessica<>Hawat tension is simply not there.

It’s 80% as good as it could have been. Of course you have to do less in a film than a long book, in some cases details and characters were diluted too much. It also leans a bit heavily on visual style at times. But it is still quite good.

Almost as good of an adaptation as lord of the rings was.

I've never read the book, and had no idea about the plot. I didn't really enjoy the movie. I'd still recommend watching it though. It was clearly done well - I just didn't personally like it. It was hard to become invested in the characters - they all seemed like they were sort of zoned out or high, if that makes any sense.

The problem with the David Lynch version was it was so edited and short that key scenes were missing, making it confusing as heck to understand what was happening and why if you hadn't read the book. But he kept the internal monologues.

The problem with this newer version is it cuts the internal monologues, so much of the context, history, and character building is gone. But it keeps pretty much every scene. Unfortunately, that also results in a really long movie so you only get the first half of the story, but all the action is in the second half. This is all setup and no resolution.

And I'm not sure how well it would work without having read the book, because I feel you do miss a lot when you don't have the worldbuilding, which is accomplished almost entirely by internal monologues in the book.

It's quite beautiful, though. I expect part II will be a lot better, as Paul's journey with the Fremen is by far the most interesting part of the story, and they barely meet at the end of part I.

> The problem with the David Lynch version was it was so edited and short that key scenes were missing

Yet, oddly, the reviews I’m reading are saying central scenes of the portion of the book the new film covers that were included in the Lynch film have been omitted from this one.

Nah Zimmers atrocious score was at least a tad worse.

I wouldn't even call it a score, more of a collection of Zimmerisms

I haven't seen the movie yet but I assume it has that dramatic orchestral reverbed bass that often covers dialogue?

Yes. I thought the overall "feeling" of the movie was a bit like Arrival (another Villeneuve movie).

I normally like his stuff, but I did find relief in the one scene during the final fight where the background "music" stopped for a few seconds. That's when I realized how annoying 2 hours of continuous background pad can be.

I am normally not a fan of Zimmer but I thought his score for Dune had some great parts.

I've watched it twice now, and while the first time I thought the score was a bit jarring (possibly the theatre had the sound level too high as well), the second time I barely even consciously noticed it.

I loved the Lynch version. I wonder if this one will be even better?

It is different. Less bizarre but better production value.

One thing I liked about Lynch's version was that the settings/sets made the universe feel old and decadent. Good feeling for an aristocratic setting of Emperors and Houses.

The cinematography is amazing. I didn't know gray, brown and bland had so many shades

It' you're a huge fan of light brown, this is the movie for you.

It's almost like it's set in a desert.

It's set in many places. Water planets, interiors, dreams. And all of that is Brown/gray/bland.

To be clear, I'm a convert. Light brown forever!

Windows backward compatibility is legendary.

DOS is the perfect place for “Dune”. The 30yo game, that is.

If anyone hasn't played the game Dune, it is definitely worth checking out - if only to watch a Let's Play on YouTube.

It's not really an RTS a la the more famous Dune 2, but a sort of adventure/strategy mix. The appeal, though, is just in how luscious it is. It's a bit dizzying, beautiful (remarkably so, for the era), and full of soul in a way that few games of the era were. The Adlib Gold soundtrack in particular remains an amazing work of art too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUfGyfbzl9k

That was a great game. “Atomics!”

Yes, there's nothing like 2 straight hours of "Building". "Deploying" "Sandworm Attack!"

To get you into the Dune mood :)

There are 2 different "first" games of Dune, that one is Dune 2, there's also Dune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3NcFEvc4yk

It even has clips from David Lynch's movie.

Sigh, I remember getting the CD-ROM version with my first multimedia PC and playing this game...

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