Robert J. Sawyer

Sci-fi author Robert Sawyer (who has won Hugo and Nebula awards) is a big fan of Wordstar -- he uses it to write his books. I highly recommend reading this: https://www.sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm

I was part of a fairly large cult following of Wordstar that continued to use it after supposedly better GUI based word processors came along. The key bindings and traversal were very well thought out, and once you got into the groove, it was more efficient than anything I've used before or since. A write up on the subject that says it better than I can: http://sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm And, yes...I can't see why an Amiga would be a plus in a pure editing scenario. Sharp monochrome would have been the right environment for word processing at the time, which was not the Amiga's forte.

Actually, that's one of Heinlein's characters commenting on writing. Occasionally Heinlein would have to remind people that his characters spoke for themselves, not for him. I can't remember a case where he spoke or wrote about writing in a similar fashion to what C.S. Lewis wrote in his letter, but his 5 rules of writing[1] have been influential for many writers. Once, in an Annapolis address, he explained that the rules were simple (1. You must write. 2. You must finish what you write. ...) but only 1 in 10 would follow each step. This was how you could get from half of the adult US population wanting to be a writer to less than a thousand actually being members of the writing guild he belonged to. [1] http://www.sfwriter.com/ow05.htm

If you're going to bring up Kerouac with his rolls of paper, you're better off talking about WordStar than Word. Word divides the document into discrete pages, while WordStar documents were long uninterrupted ribbons of text, just like Kerouac's rolls. Perhaps Kerouac "got it," but so do George R.R. Martin and Robert Sawyer, writers who continue to use WordStar decades after its demise (Sawyer even talks about the benefits of this undivided waterfall of text on his website [0]. Text editors also similarly long ribbons of text, and are just as conducive to putting words down as any bloated word processor that is optimized to produce two page corporate memos or colorful party posters to be posted in the lunch room. I've used Word professionally since the mid-1990s. I do know how to use it properly, and it still sucks. "Writing" isn't meant to be done in a word processor, which was developed as a business tool, not a creative tool. Writing should be done in whatever tool one wants to write in. Word is, be design, both a desktop publishing app and a secretarial tool. For book-length writing, it works poorly with long files, the file format is subject to corruption. The docx format is also proprietary and subject to Microsoft's whim; any conversion scheme is a hack (though Pandoc and many others do work adequately). Unless you learn the ins and outs of Word's style scheme (and sometimes even if you do) and follow it slavishly, formatting is often inconsistent and there's no…

"My favorite word-processing program is the versatile, customizable, and powerful WordStar for DOS, last updated in December 1992. Running it under Microsoft Windows can be difficult, particularly with 64-bit versions of Windows, and especially with recent versions (Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10). But an MS-DOS emulator released in 2014 called vDos makes it easy to run WordStar for DOS (and many other MS-DOS programs) under Windows, whether 32-bit or 64-bit, with real onscreen italics and boldface and excellent printer and clipboard support. WordStar's graphical Advanced Page Preview and Inset work under vDos, too, although only at standard VGA resolution (640x480 pixels). vDos is free for home and personal use. Note: for an older version of this page, covering vDos versions prior to 2016, see here.) https://sfwriter.com/vdos-old.htm vDos was created by Jos Schaars by modifying DOSBox. DOSBox, beloved by those who like MS-DOS games, has never been good for business applications. Jos changed that by stripping out the gaming flourishes (joystick support and so on), beefing up file locking, and vastly enhancing the screen display (plus allowing you to use any monospaced TrueType font you wished). His system supports XMS, EMS, and it automatically converts PostScript or PCL (LaserJet) output into Adobe Acrobat PDF files that can be printed on any printer."

> I wonder if his views and toolset have changed since then and he might be amenable to sharing more. No. He uses WordStar 7 for DOS and made his own installable bundle of it and shared it. https://www.sfwriter.com/ws7.htm I incorporated it into my bootable DOS USB key: https://github.com/lproven/usb-dos He likes this and thanked me. :-)

not just ANY word processor. But THE word processor: Wordstar! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar https://www.sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm

Ah. You will also like another story that popped up here some time back. A Canadian science-fiction writer, Robert J. Sawyer, made an Archive available complete with extensive resources on how to use it. In addition, fully text-searchable PDFs of the original manuals, totaling over 1,000 pages, were also available. He is a dedicated WordStar user. https://sfwriter.com/ws7.htm

The science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer has written about WordStar extensively and has put together a complete collection of manuals and software for the latest DOS version here: https://sfwriter.com/ws7.htm Along with advice for running under emulation and how to print from it, under the subheading Printing.

Okay... Let's try a different approach here. "DISPFONT.EXE" and "DISPFONT.OVR" are key files you'll find in WordStar's archive [0]. I don't have a CP/M emulator on hand to fire up the original to show you an example, as WordStar pre-existed DOS. But this is a quote from v3, the first DOS version, from the manual: --- Screen Fonts for Preview At the Add or Remove a Feature screen, you can install three different types of screen fonts for Preview. The screen font options are Code page 437, Code page 850, and PostScript fonts. If you want to install PostScript fonts, install both PostScript and code page 850 fonts. (Be sure to set the code page to 850 in DOS. See your DOS manual for instructions.) [0] https://sfwriter.com/ws7.htm

https://github.com/robhagemans/pcbasic PC BASIC emulates GW-BASIC on modern operating systems. It is FOSS. FreeDOS is still 16-bit but it is a stable version of DOS. You can download Wordstar 7 here: https://www.sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm and GRR Martin your way into writing.

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

What essay are you referring to? (Since the parent link is to a site rather than a specific essay).. I'm guessing it's this one? https://sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm

Robert j. Sawyer is also a prominent wordstar diehard who ought to be interested in this project :) he wrote an interesting rationale for his use of wordstar. https://www.sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm I wonder if learning proper use of vim motions would cover most of these use cases today :)

Maybe "much better" when it comes to distraction-less writing, although I don't think a DOS computer offers more than that, and the portability only enables going to places where there's more going on… But a predilection towards WordStar isn't just about not having fancy icons and weird ribbons, as author Robert Sawyer[1] pointed out. The "long page" metaphor and a short-cut friendly environment should be somewhat understandable for us programmer people. [1]: https://www.sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm

There was a bit of a fuss over it a few years back. You can find mention of it in the Wikipedia article on Wordstar.[0] Robert J. Sawyer maintains a page on using Wordstar on modern computers.[1] Authors have been seeking ways to avoid distractions for decades, and it goes well beyond pervasive connectivity. Sometimes the very features that aid them in their work can also hinder them. For example: computers vastly simplify the editing process, yet one of the earliest pieces of advice I saw was to turn off the computer monitor while writing in order to avoid editing prematurely. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar#Notable_users [1] https://www.sfwriter.com/ws-vdos.htm

The WordStar mailing list at YahooGroups is still (occasionally) active, but shrinking, as many members are getting rather elderly... A recurrent topic is how to keep the software working on the latest versions of Windows. Science fiction author Robert Sawyer recently posted definitive instructions: http://sfwriter.com/ws-vdos.htm

Sounds a lot like Heinlein's rules for writing. http://www.sfwriter.com/ow05.htm

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

WordStar is popular with science fiction writers for more fundamental reasons. (Not because it doesn't have spell check or isn't connected to the internet.) Wordstar treats the text like a long-hand manuscript. You can add notes to yourself like "fix this!" and deal with the edits later. Or, you can block copy large sections of text and have the computer keep a reference to it without having to "copy and paste" it immediately. I've seen George RR Martin write that he likes how easy it is to move large sections of text around in WordStar. Here's how the SF writer Robert J. Sawyer describes it: "... as a creative writer, I am convinced that the long-hand page is the better metaphor. Consider: On a long-hand page, you can jump back and forth in your document with ease. You can put in bookmarks, either actual paper ones, or just fingers slipped into the middle of the manuscript stack. You can annotate the manuscript for yourself with comments like "Fix this!" or "Don't forget to check these facts" without there being any possibility of you missing them when you next work on the document. And you can mark a block, either by circling it with your pen, or by physically cutting it out, without necessarily having to do anything with it right away. The entire document is your workspace... WordStar's ^Q (Quick cursor movement) and ^K (block) commands give me more of what I used to have when I wrote in longhand than any other product does. WordStar's powerful suite of cursor…