WordStar 7, the last ever DOS version, is re-released | Hacker News Reader

WordStar 7, the last ever DOS version, is re-released

theregister.com

148 pointsdefrost48 comments

Apparently WordStar has not been released for free by the owners (as Word 5.5 for DOS was), it's just been unilaterally packaged by a fan hoping not to get in trouble.

Yes, the article lists some two potential owners of WordStar:

> It's not clear to us who owns the intellectual property. We doubt it's one of the surviving offshoots, today's Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, but it could be another offshoot, Software MacKiev.

Whereas this release is made by writer Robert J. Sawyer, who does not appear to be affiliated with any of the potential owners.

Edit: Even though The Register calls this a free re-release, Sawyer himself just calls it an archive: https://sfwriter.com/blog/?p=5806

The pro gamer move is to release it and then whoever copystrikes you is the owner

True, but the real elite move is to copyright strike things that have no owner and collect the money

It's Cunningham's Law but for figuring out who owns the copyright (if anyone) to no-longer-updated software.

Ok, we've belatedly taken 'for free' out of the title. Thanks!

No argument from me, makes sense. I posted this with the title "as it was" from The Register.

Maybe we should just train an LLM on it, then ask it to build a entirely copyright-free clone of WordStar? (sarcasm).

There's... absolutely nothing wrong with cloning the featureset of software? Even WordStar itself started out as a clone of a different editor, if I've understood the Wikipedia history ("...When IBM announced it was bringing DisplayWrite to the PC, MicroPro focused on creating a clone of it which they marketed, in 1984, as WordStar 2000..."). And in turn, WordStar itself has been cloned multiple times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar#WordStar_2000

If ML would make it much easier to clone software UX, make that kind of task accessible to non-programmer users—then, all power to the users. I'm in solidarity with users. I'm in solidarity with their wish to configure their text-editing software to look and feel exactly as they want it. This shouldn't be the sole province of Emacs priests; if people of the future can do all that magic, not with dozens of hours of Lisp hacking, but with a flick of an LLM wand—the world is that much a better, richer, place for the human species.

> There's... absolutely nothing wrong with cloning the featureset of software?

There is if you literally use the code for that software to build your clone, either directly or through an LLM trained on it, which is my remark implied. Even cloning the entire featureset of a software is problematic...

> If ML would make it much easier to clone software UX, make that kind of task accessible to non-programmer users—then, all power to the users

This is a contortion. Certainly the core of what you say is true -- but for that what you need is free software, either by political encouragement or by law. Not by making up a loophole where only a certain subset of rube goldberg machines are free to violate copyright but normal users are not. You end up in a world where the Lisp hacker cannot modify his word processor, but the guy with the LLM "can". The ridiculousness of such scenario is precisely what I wanted to point with my sarcasm.

But WordStar 2000 is not WordStar. In fact I recalled correctly this move is one of many reasons it died.

Copy-washing.

When the training of LLMs ignores copyright and licenses left and right, I don't see why we can't use the result for copyright laundering.

This is probably a laughably silly question but what features does WordStar have that I wouldn't get from a good text editor like Vim, a markup language (markdown, RST, AsciiDoc, etc) and a copy of Pandoc?

Would someone who's keen on WordStar mind giving it a modern sales pitch for those of us that love terminal based software?

The page with the download¹ has a long essay about the benefits of WordStar. An example:

> WordPerfect requires that I decide whether I want to cut or copy a block, then immediately mark the beginning of the block, then immediately mark the end of the block, then immediately position the cursor at where I want the block to go, then immediately move the block, and then find my way back to the place where I was originally working. From the moment I decide I might, perhaps, want to do something with a block of text to the moment I actually finish that operation, WordPerfect is in control, dictating what I must do.

> WordStar, with its long-hand-page metaphor, says, hey, do whatever you want whenever you want to. This is a good spot to mark the beginning of a block? Fine. What would you like to do next? Deal with the block? Continue writing? Use the thesaurus?

> After another half hour of writing, I can say, ah hah!, this is where I want to end that block. And two hours later I can say, and this is where that block should go.

¹: https://sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm

Hopefully, this composition mechanic could be implemented in existing tools.

With VIM:

  ma
  Now do what ever you'd like.
  v`a

The shortcut "ma" sets mark 'a', and "v`a" selects from whereever you are to mark 'a'.

Similar to nano vs vi, I'd say.

I have wonderful memories of WordStar but today I cannot stand using nano (it's in fact one of the first things I uninstall and define vi as the default editor).

If you used it from the start, as I did, you would have the muscle memory to compose and edit world class literature, at light speed, and preview with a vague semblance to the printed version on your terminal.

As far as editing C under System V Unix, it would never compare to the power of vi, cribbed from a BSD machine and recompiled by a bootstrapped C compiler and a home made termcap file.

Familiarity? Ability to control a daisy wheel or dot matrix printer? A workable keyboard-only interface for selecting and moving text?

It's very much a program of its time. Interesting as an historical artifact, and maybe there's someone somewhere who has their academic work on floppies would be glad of this.

Ages ago I set up a XyVision compositor w/ a set of installation disks for XyWrite when that was made freely available since the keyboard shortcuts were completely habitual.

I use very old software (mainly Win95) to practise usability. Those companies spend millions on usability studies and accessibility.

If you've never used vim, markup language and pandoc then it's a big upfront investment. Also keep in mind that the people listed that use WordStar have worked with it for literally decades. If you've worked with Vim for decades, what would it take for you to move to an alternative?

Good thought. Familiarity and muscle memory are a big asset. As a long time emacs user, I feel the same about my tool of choice. It's not always about being the absolute best tool there is, but about being one that you know inside and out - you no longer need to spend a lot of time figuring out how to do something, you can just do it.

This is, indeed, a silly question.

But why use that whole stack when you should be using LaTeX?

But why use LaTeX when you should be using Typst?

And why use Typst when you should be using Org-mode?

Jokes aside, those formats all have their pros and cons. For me at least, Typst is not yet a usable alternative for neither academic publishing nor serious typesetting in general.

But I love the MarkDown-like syntax with TeX-like equation support and fast compile times, and am considering it for a mathy personal knowledge base. Similarly to how I’ve been using tools like Org-mode and Obsidian over the past few years.

In a few years it might be usable for professional use given how fast it’s evolving, but academia is conservative and I’d expect more journals to support LaTeX3 if it’s ever released.

> but academia is conservative

There is a whole set of interlocking organizations supporting the TeX ecosystem, such that no one can claim ownership of it. It truly is owned by its community. Typst, with its pay-for-play online offerings, keeps a tight grip around the open-source project of Typst. I don't see how academia ever switches from its own albeit complex ecosystem, to a corporate-owned project.

Basically just less set up time. But if you’re able to ask that question then this answer wouldn’t apply to you.

Do you really think everyone would like to spend the effort setting up such a stack?

AFAIK there are markdown/asciidoc editors that allow you to edit text with these markup language and producing pdf/html documents without "setting up a stack".

Honestly I don’t know what other people want.

I’m genuinely interested in old software like WordStar as it was well known when I was growing up.

If it’s not something that appeals to you then you’re well catered for with well known GUI applications.

I personally already use Vim and pandoc hence the comparison.

None.

Also, try Helix if you like Vim.

Copyright issues aside - which can be quite thorny for software this old - I imagine the people who created WordStar must take great pride in the fact that more than thirty years later, people still make good use of their creation.

Fourth years, it was first released in 1984. I had a CPM card for my Franklin clone that came with WordStar. I just used the standard Apple Writer, or whatever Franklin renamed it. At university starting in 1986 I just took my Apple ][ floppy and a 3.5 one formatted for Apple ][c & Mac and do a juggle the files over and typeset the papers using the Mac. So I never used WordStar.

Maybe George R.R. Martin will like this new version:

https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/14/5716232/george-r-r-martin...

I never used Wordstar, back then, for WP I used Wang WP on a 286 Machine. But it is nice to see this version of Wordstar set free.

I recall using a dedicated Word Processing Machine that my Great Uncle had purchased. I can't, for the life of me, recall what its name was, but it was exactly that: a computer that could only do word processing.

It was quickly replaced with a PC clone running Word 1.0 under DOS.

Edit: Heh... I think it was one of these: https://www.ebay.com/itm/126483680190?itmmeta=01J4M9RV37R76T... (Brother word processor WP-55)

For writing what? I doubt he even typed a page for TWOW in this year.

My (baseless) theory is that he has finished every novel in the series already but will not release them until he passes away to avoid massive backlash from his fanbase.

The best conspiracy theory I encountered in my life. It is so true at the same time so not true. After the backlash of the GoT, ...

Let us see who will survive longer than him and saw these unfolded. (The good part is I probably never knew as might be dead then.)

For me, the true classic is the last version for CP/M.

I use Wordstar v3.3, now and again. I know that Wordstar v4 runs under CP/M, but I've not made it a habit to use the upgraded/updated version.

The only version I ever remember using was WordStar 1512, wonder why the weird version numbering though ?

edit: It even had a keyboard overlay if I remember right, with the shortcuts printed on them (maybe just on the Function keys..?)

In 1988 when I got a job working in MSDOS, WordStar was in use by the programmers to edit source code. Though one guy used QuickEdit, and I used MicroEmacs. We all standardized on Brief a couple of years later.

Maybe MS will release a version of Word around 2000? The latest versions are way too “smart” and constantly do confusing things.

I doubt it. With WordStar/WordPerfect, the original developers and vendors are no longer in the game.

If Microsoft did that, they would be admitting, basically, the last 20 years were mostly wasted on useless gadgets. Some users, of course, would argue that, yes, they were. But Microsoft's management and stockholders would not be happy about that.

Brings back memories.

I think its keyboard shortcuts like Home-Home-Up (the original "scroll to top") are still available in Word.

Any Wordstar user (for novels) would love Groff+Mom macros plus Jstar and something like ispell/aspell among WordNet.

Simple markdown (smu) would be enough to create a text wiki for worldbuilding.

finally! now george rr martin can finish his book.

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