WordStar: A Writer's Word Processor (1996)

sfwriter.com

14 pointsTomte5 comments

The WordStar keyboard shortcuts influenced other programs. Turbo Pascal and other Borland apps used the WordStar layout, for example. The joe [1] editor still uses it, and that's probably why it's my go-to text editor when I'm in the shell.

In particular, Borland's IDEs supported both a clipboard and the WordStar "block" commands, which gave you selection superpowers. A block was a selection that persisted even if you moved the cursor around, and even if you copied or pasted stuff in/out of the clipboard. So you could copy something to clipboard (ctrl+ins), move/copy a block around (^KB to begin block, ^KK to end it, ^KC to copy current block to cursor, ^KV to move it), and then paste from the clipboard (shift+ins). It was very much like having two clipboards. I had colleagues watching over my shoulder trying to decipher how I was able to edit code the way I did.

[1] http://joe-editor.sourceforge.net

There's a more modern version with some interesting features: https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm

Thanks for the link, I'm trying jupp now, and indeed it feels a bit newer. One thing that causes screen refresh problems for me with joe/jstar, is editing files with long lines, say 160 characters or more. I'll see if jupp fares better.

Thanks, didn't know about that one.

Not just for a writer, for programmers too. Without my WordStar plugins for Xcode and QtCreator I work much slower.

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