WordStar for the 21st Century

[dmccunney]

Some things simply refuse to die, and one of them is the WordStar design,

A fellow named Gerald Brandt is an old WordStar lover. There have
been plenty of editors that emulated aspects of WordStar, most notably
the command set. (The ones I know of are documented here:
http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WordStarFamily)

Gerald decided to go farther, and write a clone of WordStar that would
look and act as much as possible like the real thing. He calls it
WordTsar. It's cross-platform, and available currently for Windows,
Linux, and OS/X.

What is available now is an early alpha test stage. Not all features
are implemented, and what is there isn't guaranteed to work as
expected. But it does run, and what's there so far looks and acts
like WordStar. He hopes to turn it into a complete replacement,
handling WordStar documents as well as text files.

It's not available for general download. You'll need to sign up as a
tester to get access, and hopefully submit bug reports and
suggestions.

You can find the home page here: http://wordtsar.ca/

Gerald's blog is here: http://geraldbrandt.com/2011/11/06/wordtsar-update/
______
Dennis
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519

[Wes Medlin]

Dennis,

That's awesome. I've had Wordstar since version 3.3, and I wold love
to see it running natively under Linux. A lot of writers still love
it. I've tried and tried to love it myself, but always went back to
VDE (or XyWrite III, another odd duck in the word processing world.)

I for one will check it out.

Wes

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[dmccunney]

On Sat, Jul 13, 2013 at 12:11 AM, Wes Medlin <wesm...@gmail.com> wrote:

> That's awesome. I've had Wordstar since version 3.3, and I wold love
> to see it running natively under Linux. A lot of writers still love
> it. I've tried and tried to love it myself, but always went back to
> VDE (or XyWrite III, another odd duck in the word processing world.)

I was tickled to see it I used WordStar back in the day, and kept
somewhat fluent because many text editors either used WordStar
commands native or could be told to. (I had Emacs customized to use
WordStar commands to avoid retraining my fingers.)

I still have and use VDE on occasion. I also used XYWrite back when.
I described it as a language designed to manipulate text wrapped in a
clever word processor disguise. If you were fluent in XBL, you could
do all manner of things, XYWrite still exists, in an OEM version
called Nota Bene, and there's a Windows version. See http://www.notabene.com/

> I for one will check it out.

If Gerald can get this where he wants it, it will become very interesting.

> Wes
______
Dennis
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519

[Wes Medlin]

Yeah, I've seen Nota Bene. It's been around for a long time. I've also
seen the price. Ouch.

I came to XyWrite through the back door. I was working at the
newspaper at the University of Oklahoma, where we used the old Atex
system that Xywrite was based on.

I'm interested in the WordTsar program, not because I love WordStar,
but because I love VDE, and would love to have a modern app that will
run under 64 bit Windows and use the WordStar command set. I was
actually searching for such a thing again just a couple of days ago.

Wes

[dmccunney]

On Sat, Jul 13, 2013 at 11:18 AM, Wes Medlin <wesm...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Yeah, I've seen Nota Bene. It's been around for a long time. I've also
> seen the price. Ouch.

Given what it is, I understand the price. XYWrite is the front-end to
a bibliographic database. The full package looks quite impressive.
(XYWrite's former lead developer is an investor and contributes code.)
It would be nice to get the editor *without* the other stuff, but I'm
not sure how possible that would be. (I don't know how tightly they
are integrated, and whether you *could* use NB as a stand-alone
product, aside from the fact they don't offer it that way.)

I knew a guy back when who wrote a Lotus 123 style menu bar interface
for XY in XY's Help system. His users were financial analysts who get
real time stock data, fed it into Excel, crunched number, then used XY
to write commentary based on the number crunching. They could do
everything from his menu bar interface, and didn't have to be all that
aware of what was under the hood and which programs were involved. I
was awe-struck.

The problem XY always had was that the default interface left a lot to
be desired, and you had to customize it to be really productive. (It
reminded me of Emacs.) Nota Bene was more usable "out of the box",
which I think is one reason it still exists.

> I came to XyWrite through the back door. I was working at the
> newspaper at the University of Oklahoma, where we used the old Atex
> system that Xywrite was based on.

I recall Atex, and was aware of the connection.

> I'm interested in the WordTsar program, not because I love WordStar,
> but because I love VDE, and would love to have a modern app that will
> run under 64 bit Windows and use the WordStar command set. I was
> actually searching for such a thing again just a couple of days ago.

It depends on what you want. Martin Veiregg's Write and Set seems to
be the closest: http://www.writeandset.com/english/indxf.html

It's two programs - an editor with WS keystrokes, and a formatter.
The editor is freeware. The formatter is shareware. He also offers
ME, which is a freeware plain text editor with WS keystrokes.

WSEdit also has beta versions for Linux and OS/X;
http://www.hypermake.com/english/home.html

> Wes
______
Dennis

--
______
Dennis
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519

[Eric Meyer]

Oddly enough, I'm not still looking for a WordStar equivalent myself. In
fact, when I finally started using a Windows WP seriously I went with Word
Perfect instead (partly because it was somewhat standard in academia at the
time) and, frankly, rather liked and still use it. For a while I kept writing
first drafts in VDE and then switching over, as I still sometimes do. But
having got used to Word Perfect, I actually find it comfortable enough on its
own. Of course for plain text I'd still use VDE.

-- Eric Meyer.

[dmccunney]

I used WordPerfect back in the day. WP pretty much ate WS for lunch,
because MicroPro took their eye off the ball and let their core
product languish while they embarked on ill-advised diversification.

Word in turn ate WP for lunch, because WordPerfect waited too long to
develop a Windows version, and by the time they did, Word ruled.

I *was* amused back when by WP fans who touted the superiority of the
WP function key usage over the WS Control-key combos. I saw little
difference between memorizing a bunch of control-key combos and a
bunch of Normal.Shifted/Control/Alt Fkey assignments.

And I was amused when IBM changed the PC keyboard from ten Fkeys in
two rows of five on the left to twelve across the top. WP users who
were touch typists had grown used to hitting fkeys with their left
pinkie, and could no longer do so. WS users were unaffected.

WS and the Unix vi editor shared an important characteristic: they
were keyboard independent. If you had a QWERTY keyboard and a Ctrl
key, you could use them. Some of the early terminals used on Unix
systems didn't *have* arrow keys and Fkeys, and I recall almost as
much variance in the early CP/M machines on which WS originated.

But there are still a lot of WS fans who are joined at the hip to the
WS Ctrl-key interface. There is even an emulator that provides a
subset of the WS interface within Word.

I learned WS back when it was the second editor you learned, because
the one you wanted might not be available on the PC you had to use,
but WS probably was. I retained basic fluency because lots of other
things either used the WS command set native or could be told to.

Most of what I do is plain text these days, and I seldom need to
create an actual formatted document in any word processor. On the
rare occasions I do, MS Word, Open/Libre Office Writer, and Google
Docs' product get the nod. I'm unlikely to actually print the
document, but the recipients may expect to get an electronic file in a
particular format (usually MS Word.)

> -- Eric Meyer.
______
Dennis
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519

[Robert Bull]

Sunday, July 14, 2013, 6:28:30 PM, dmccunney wrote:

> Most of what I do is plain text these days, and I seldom need to
> create an actual formatted document in any word processor. On the
> rare occasions I do, MS Word, Open/Libre Office Writer, and Google
> Docs' product get the nod. I'm unlikely to actually print the
> document, but the recipients may expect to get an electronic file in a
> particular format (usually MS Word.)

To those, you might want to add Softmaker Office,
http://www.softmaker.com/english/ofw_en.htm which seems to be one of
the best Microsoft-compatible but non-Microsoft products. Softmaker
used to offer older versions for free, e.g. 2006 and 2008. Those will
probably be around the Web somewhere though they won't do the latest
docx format, for which you need payware 2012 (or 2010 if memory
serves).

I hope the WordTsar project works out. I've never been truly
comfortable with Windows editors, good though they may be on their own
terms.


--
Best regards,
Robert mailto:robert...@googlemail.com

[dmccunney]

On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 5:21 PM, Robert Bull
<robert...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Sunday, July 14, 2013, 6:28:30 PM, dmccunney wrote:
>
>> Most of what I do is plain text these days, and I seldom need to
>> create an actual formatted document in any word processor. On the
>> rare occasions I do, MS Word, Open/Libre Office Writer, and Google
>> Docs' product get the nod. I'm unlikely to actually print the
>> document, but the recipients may expect to get an electronic file in a
>> particular format (usually MS Word.)
>
> To those, you might want to add Softmaker Office,
> http://www.softmaker.com/english/ofw_en.htm which seems to be one of
> the best Microsoft-compatible but non-Microsoft products. Softmaker
> used to offer older versions for free, e.g. 2006 and 2008. Those will
> probably be around the Web somewhere though they won't do the latest
> docx format, for which you need payware 2012 (or 2010 if memory
> serves).

I've looked at Softmaker Office in the past. It is popular among some
Linux users, because it requires less resources than Open/Libre
Office.

(I have an ancient Fujistsu Lifebook I use as a testbed, that has an
867mhz Transmeta CPU, a 40GB IDE4 HD, and a whopping 256MB of RAM. It
came with Windows XP SP2, and was frozen snail slow. I redid it with
Win2K Pro SP4, two flavors of Linux, and FreeDOS in a multi-boot
configuration. Linix itself and small apps weren't problems, but
other things were. I don't even try to run a current Firefox release,
for example, and while Libre Office runs, it takes a long time to come
up and operate. The issue seems to be less insufficient RAM than slow
HD, but IDE4 is a BIOS limitation, so a drive swap wouldn't help.
Softmaker Office might be a good choice, save that I have no need for
what it does.)

Keeping up with MS is always a problem. Current Open/Libre Office
versions reads and write docx files, but I've heard compatibility
problem reports. As usual, Microsoft has its own idea of standards,
and even though docx is XML based, it differs from XML standards in
annoying ways.

> I hope the WordTsar project works out. I've never been truly
> comfortable with Windows editors, good though they may be on their own
> terms.

WordTsar is coming along. There's an annoying delay in startup on the
Windows versions, which seems to be an MS problem. When it starts up,
it tries to enumerate all the fonts on your system, and if you have a
lot (I have 587) that takes a while. The enumeration is done by a
Windows library, and the same problem bit Mozilla Firefox and Google
Chrome. Mozilla opened a bug with MS about it, as the MS library
behavior was arguably incorrect.

I'm supposed to be getting a WordTsae Alpha to test that skips the
enumeration. I should see whether it's available.

> Best regards,
> Robert mailto:robert...@googlemail.com

______
Dennis
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519

[Gary Welles]

I've been struggling with my failing/failed computers and now urgently
need to transfer/backup the files on my old SCSI machine to the new Win7
machine. I didn't get the memo that new machines wouldn't be available
with SCSI connections.

I'm able to open an FTP connection to DESQview/X with JPSoftware's Take
Command, but transferring files looks to be one per command at best.
Perhaps a Win7 FTP server that I could transfer to with the DV/X File
Manager? Perhaps a cloud storage service I could park the files on? I also
have a Win98 with KernelEX XP kernel extensions disk I can use to access
the FAT16 disk holding the important files.

My 2GB SCSI disk is also cloned and backed up on an Dell SCSI disk
subsystem. It has it own power supplies and is not failing. Could this be
accessed via the eSATA port on the Win7 machine?

I suppose the cleanest solution would be to cart the SCSI drive to someone
who can copy it to removable media. At this point a 2-3 hour drive to
Boston or New York seems simple.

This isn't of general interest so please consider private replys.

Tks,
Gary

Gary Welles
ga...@wellesway.com

--
Using Opera's mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

[Gary Welles]

Panic has subsided with news the local Mac shop tech says they can copy
the contents of my SCSI disks to removable media I can use in the new
machine. A Plan B as the old machine is hanging by a thread.

Later _and_ On Topic: I'll need to find a way to run DOS applications
like VDE that don't have Win7 versions. I've only glanced at it, but I'm
expecting VMware good do the trick:

For more details about VMware Workstation refer :
http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation/

Mark P. Fishman wrote:

> Many graphical FTP clients will allow you to transfer whole directory
> trees with one click.

The DESQview/X File Manager works like that. It preserves timestamps, so
in the past I've been able to update directories from remote FTP sites
transferring only the new or changed files.

> You do not need an ftp server on your Win7 machine, you
> need something like ws_ftp or Core FTP Lite (which is free). This is a
> client that goes on the Win7 computer.
>
> It should also preserve file modification timestamps, which command-line
> ftp doesn't do.

I'll give them a try.

Tks,
Gary

[Moy Wong]

Hi Gary,

There are a plethora of low-cost USB-to-SCSI adapters that might allow
you to plug your SCSI drive in to the Windows 7 machine's USB port.

I've had a similar problem that I solved by using an IDE/PATA-to-USB
adapter to transfer data from some old IDE drives to a Windows 7
machine.

Under Windows 7, I've successfully used DOSBox to run Alpha/FOUR, an
oldie-but-goodie DOS-based database program, as well some other
programs.

http://www.dosbox.com

-moy

]Panic has subsided with news the local Mac shop tech says they can copy

]
]--

]

[Moy Wong]

Gary,

Your question isn't very off topic, as I am sure many of us who still
use VDE already have, or will soon bump in to the challenge of data
trapped on old media and old hardware.

-m

]I've been struggling with my failing/failed computers and now urgently

]need to transfer/backup the files on my old SCSI machine to the new Win7

[snip]

]This isn't of general interest so please consider private replys.

[Gary Welles]

Jim Oliver wrote:

> Gary - it's been a while.

No kidding! My computer has been out of action for months. On Sunday I
stumbled upon a way to bypass the failed power and reset switch panel
circuit board by disconnecting and reconnection the 5v standby power
connection at the motherboard. It's worked three times now allowing me to
print my rolodex file and catch up on two months of bookkeeping.

> Why can't you connect the SCSI drive to the Win7 machine. I _know_ you
> thought of this but surely thats the best way.

That was the plan two months ago when I called to order a new machine and
got the word on SCSI and Windows 8. Eventually called back to ask "Haven't
good machines always cost $1,500 to $2,000?" and was pointed to the Win7
workstations also certified to run Red Hat Linux.

> or even better :
>
> http://reviews.cnet.com/i-o-cards/adaptec-scsi-card-29160/4014-3019_7-31879339.html

Thanks! I just ordered it. It appears to offer an external Ultra 3 SCSI
connection which I hope will support my Dell PowerEdge Scalable Disk
Subsystem 100 with SCSI disks containing copies of all the data from my
failed/failing machines. I'd to think I could use it to back up the Win7
system, but the once monstrous 16Gb drives are probably too small/slow.

Gary

[Gary Welles]

Moy Wong wrote:

> Your question isn't very off topic, as I am sure many of us who still
> use VDE already have, or will soon bump in to the challenge of data
> trapped on old media and old hardware.

Hi Moy,

Thanks for the encouragement. There's something to be said for buying a
new machine every five years, while the older ones remain useful. My going
to the bitter end, 15 and 20 years, left me in a tough spot.

BTW: Core FTP, suggested by Mark Fishman, worked well.

Tks,
Gary

[Eric Meyer]

Gary Welles wrote:
> Thanks for the encouragement. There's something to be said for buying a
> new machine every five years, while the older ones remain useful. My
> going to the bitter end, 15 and 20 years, left me in a tough spot.

I get that; sticking with things I like that work is definitely my style!
Glad you found a solution.

I keep imagining that instead of eventually succumbing to Win7/8 I may switch
to a Mac... but my laptop is still running, so no reality test just yet. I
don't even have a backup computer now, so if it dies I'll really panic. (I
could have said "when", but...)

Best wishes to everyone -- Eric Meyer.

[dmccunney]

On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 3:47 PM, Moy Wong <m...@panix.com> wrote:

> Under Windows 7, I've successfully used DOSBox to run Alpha/FOUR, an
> oldie-but-goodie DOS-based database program, as well some other
> programs.
>
> http://www.dosbox.com

I've used DOSBox under Linux to run DOS applications. VDE works in it.

I see a lot of "How do I access my old DOS applications under Win7?"
on the WordStar list. (Some folks cling to WordStar like a drowning
man and a life preserver.)

If you happen to run the 32 bit version of Win7, it's fairly straight
forward. If you run the 64 bit version, it's not, because 16 bit apps
aren't supported.

If you run Win7 Pro, you can run Microsoft's XP Virtual Machine, which
still supports 16 bit DOS apps in a console. If you run Win7 Home,
that's not an option.

Aside from VMWare Workstation, people have reported success using the
open source Virtual Box VM software originally created by Sun
Microsystems and now offered by Oracle: https://www.virtualbox.org/

I've been gradually migrating stuff that would be a pain to lose to
Google Drive, where I can reach it anywhere I have a decent browser.

< -moy
______
Dennis

[Jim Oliver]

Eric - do consider installing Windows 7 using Boot Camp on the new Mac
if that turns out. I left Windows behind and went cold to a Mac and
sorely regretted it. I spent hours staring at the screen and cursing the
things I couldn't get to work. I then took the step to install Windows
7 and never looked back. Friends of mine have installed Win7 (and no Mac
OS) onto a new Mac and tell me the Mac hardware works beautifully.




Jim

[Gary Welles]

Dennis writes:

> If you run Win7 Pro, you can run Microsoft's XP Virtual Machine, which
> still supports 16 bit DOS apps in a console.

This is (presumably) very good news to me. My DOS bookkeeping application
is significant, while the related REXX and dBase code are supported in
Windows versions. Also, I've been intending to rewrite my one significant
WordStar merge print application in dBase.

Later I'll can explore these emulations that should allow me to wander
away from Windows:

> Aside from VMWare Workstation, people have reported success using the
> open source Virtual Box VM software originally created by Sun
> Microsystems and now offered by Oracle: https://www.virtualbox.org/

I also discovered and switched on the FTP server in Win7 Pro, which could
make transfers from the DESQview/X File Manager easier.

Thanks to my friends on the VDE list I finally know why I bought this
machine. :)

[Gary Welles]

Moy Wong wrote:

> Under Windows 7, I've successfully used DOSBox to run Alpha/FOUR, an
> oldie-but-goodie DOS-based database program, as well some other
> programs.
>
> http://www.dosbox.com

Doh! What was I thinking! I don't need Microsoft's XP Virtual Machine.
Aside from a .PDF viewer and Web browser I haven't relied on any Windows
applications.

Gary

[Gary Welles]

Jim Oliver <J...@oliver.net.nz> wrote:

> I then took the step to install Windows 7 and never looked back. Friends
> of mine have installed Win7 (and no Mac OS) onto a new Mac and tell me
> the Mac hardware works beautifully.

My understanding is that VMWare is available for the Mac or PC. Their
website wasn't clear to me so I called tech support to learn that as long
as I had "plenty of resources" one could run different operating system
applications side by side. No rebooting.

-- Gary

[dmccunney]

VMWare is available for Linux, too. PCs, Macs, and many Linux boxes
all run X86 architecture CPUs, so things are similar on a hardware
instruction set level.

At a previous employer, we ran VMWare Enterprise on Dell 1950 rack
mount servers with dual four-core Xeon CPUs and 32GB RAM. We spun up
multiple virtual machines running Centos and Windows Server, with a
backend SAN where data lived, and load balancing on the incoming
Internet connections so they connected to whatever VM was available
and had the capacity. If a VM crashed and burned, no matter: spin up
another.

VMWare is a pretty efficient hypervisor, and OSes running it think
they own the machine (though what machine they think that is is
defined in software when you create the VM.) Current CPUs are
building in support for virtualization as well.

But while you can run multiple OSes, each running multiple apps on the
same machine, they *are* running on the same machine. You want fast
multi-core processors and as much RAM as the machine will take.

Virtualization goes *way* back. I first encountered it in the late
70's working for a bank, where you could run IBM's VM/CMS system on a
mainframe, and run other IBM mainframe OSes under it as guests. It
was popular for doing things like migrating from DOS/VSE to MVS - put
up a product DOS/VSE system as one guest, a test MVS system as
another, migrate your apps one by one to the MVS side, and when
everything was certified as working correctly, turn off VSE and make
MVS the live system. VM took about 10% off the top for its own
overhead. I think VMWare is in about the same rsne on PCs.

> -- Gary
______
Dennis

[Jim Oliver]

Gary

Thats correct. I tried Parallels software which is a VMWare lookalike.
It was full of bugs which defeated it's raison d'�tre.




Jim

[Gary Welles]

A $55 Adaptec 29160 PCI card suggested by Jim Oliver did the trick:

> Why can't you connect the SCSI drive to the Win7 machine. I _know_ you
> thought of this but surely thats the best way.

For the first time in month's I can relax knowing I've a way forward.

Even before locating Adaptec's Win7 64-bit driver, I was able to boot
DR-DOS 7 from one of the disk subsystem's drives and run VDE on my new
machine. Just as earlier I'd run VDE, transfered from my old machine with
Core FTP, with DOS Box.

As Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, exclaimed on the return
of his razors: "My arm is complete!"

Tks,
Gary