Neat! I will try it.

On Wed, May 10, 2023 at 8:55 AM Gerald Brandt gbr@majentis.com wrote:

Coded by a single person here in Winnipeg. Me. It's a fun project.

Gerald On 2023-05-10 08:31, Adam Thompson wrote:

http://wordtsar.ca/ - WordStar for the 21st Century!

You're welcome :-) -Adam

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I remember one of my favourite text editors of all time was a freeware/shareware/well-I-didnt-pay-for-it-anyway WordStar-inspired thing that ran under CP/M. I still remember most of the control codes started with ^K. ^K^E did... something... justified the paragraph or something? It also supported some of the roff(1)-style dot codes that IIRC WordStar stole^H^H^H^H^H used for inspiration. But after all this time, damned if I can remember the name of the editor!

I do prefer vi(1), but even to this day there are things vi can't do that that editor could. -Adam

EDIT: looks like it might have been Eric Meyer's VDE. The "About" page (https://sites.google.com/site/vdeeditor/Home/about-vde) lines up pretty well with my memory. Or possibly ZDE, which was the continuation of VDE once VDE jumped to MS-DOS.

________________________________ From: Roundtable roundtable-bounces@muug.ca on behalf of Scott Toderash scott@100percenthelpdesk.com Sent: May 10, 2023 13:29 To: Continuation of Round Table discussion roundtable@muug.ca Subject: Re: [RndTbl] WordTsar – A Wordstar clone

Guys will literally write their own editor rather than learning how to exit VI.

:wq

But seriously, I'm tempted to try it, if only to realize how much I've forgotten about WordStar. Or maybe it just comes back.

On 2023-05-10 09:08, Chris Audet wrote:

Neat! I will try it.

On Wed, May 10, 2023 at 8:55 AM Gerald Brandt <gbr@majentis.com mailto:gbr@majentis.com> wrote:

Coded by a single person here in Winnipeg. Me. It's a fun project.

Gerald

On 2023-05-10 08:31, Adam Thompson wrote:

...

http://wordtsar.ca/ <http://wordtsar.ca/> - WordStar for the 21st
Century!

You're welcome :-)
-Adam


Get Outlook for Android <https://aka.ms/AAb9ysg>

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For serious editing some of the reasons why I still use Wordstar

Although I was introduced to Wordstar over 40 years ago, for serious drafting or editing I still use it to this day as it is so superior to anything I have seen from several proprietary programs like Window's Word to LibreOffice.

And the size of the program or any of its files only take a small fraction to load compared to any other, though I can not speak to the one possible exception Adam made mention of.

In a moment I will outline a few very efficient text editing features not available in any of the so-called bells and whistle programs but even for serious programing Wordstar can be a very handy tool as with but two or three keystrokes a text file can be stripped to a no nonsense ASCII file. As it make visible on the screen and in a file, both the carriage return and carriage increment, imported files that are missing either (such as Foxy Tab in FF when copying the title and urls of multi open tabs) such a file easily corrected for use in any higher priced wordprocssing or spreadsheet, without the learning curve those programs demand even for basic uses.

In ASCII mode Wordstar also has a true column mode copy/erase/insert function.

Now for some text editing pluses.

At any place in a document (up to 10, more with a little ingenuity) with but two keystrokes an anchor can be placed which with but another two keystrokes can be returned to patch in text of nearly unlimited length from another area in the file.

The wordspeller, especially in live quasi batch mode can correct an entire file in but a tiny fraction of other programs by simply with one keystroke entering the number associated with every offered suggestion or adding the word to your dictionary file, or making your correction on the fly, or moving on to the next word flagged. For every word flagged one at a time the screen also shows the word in context, with but hitting Escape you can edit to your hearts content and then continue spell-check.

Because its a keyboard based program with but two keystrokes either the begin or end of an unlimited length section can be highlighted and then with but a further two keystrokes, deleted, copied to another place in the file and/or saved to any new file or appended to an existing file!

With but two keystrokes you can transpose any two words, or from the cursor with three keystrokes delete to the character just entered as the third keystroke which can be any length away. The system will warn you if the undo memory is not big enough to undo the deletion.

And better still, the learning curve is a tiny fraction of all other programs seen AND the exceptionally functional help screens are also available with but a keystroke or two.

While I personally have no need of a new text editor, for the serious editor, the one who initiated this thread (my system lost the email) and Gerald, you are to be applauded for reintroducing the future of no nonsense superior text editing capacity.

One caveat though, this is for text editing, formatting is another matter but as said before exporting as pure ASCII text to any other program is a synch, including as well in CSV format!

Eduard

PS I first came across Wordstar some four decades ago via Osborne's CPM system including at some time migrating to a MsDos version which I still use today in a Windows environment via an emulator, either DosBox or Virtual Box. Incidentally, maybe with more knowhow but for me, a few other MsDos programs work in one or the other but not both.

On Wed, May 10, 2023 at 8:55 AM Gerald Brandt gbr@majentis.com wrote:

...

Coded by a single person here in Winnipeg. Me. It's a fun project.

Gerald On 2023-05-10 08:31, Adam Thompson wrote:

...

http://wordtsar.ca/ - WordStar for the 21st Century!