PC OUTLINE

Posted by Cyganet
Aug 16, 2024 at 09:48 AM

jaslar wrote:
> Reviving Wordstar looks like a fun way to spend a day!

Fun is the right word for it :-)

I had never heard of WordStar before, and it’s quite interesting to look at what it can do. As a veteran CRIMPer of many years, I have learned that it’s not the software per se that I am interested in, but the workflow ideas that I get from people using different programs. For someone to stick with WordStar for so long suggests that it can do things that other programs can’t.

Some of the features that Robert Sawyer appreciates are a clean interface, easy-to-write comments, fast bookmarks, transparent formatting codes, full keyboard control, and different on-screen and print fonts (https://sfwriter.com/strength.txt). It seems to me that those features are now found in a markdown editor like Obsidian or Typora (with css and Pandoc export) rather than in MS Word. So they were there a long time ago and now they are back, but not in Word.

One feature that I would like to use is the fast bookmarks. I haven’t found its closest analogue yet, but the search led me to discover that Word has a lousy bookmarking interface. However, LibreOffice Writer’s navigator, writemonkey 3’s jump list and Atlantis Word Processor’s Control Board are all quite useful. I had been using Word’s navigator when writing long notes and I might use one of these instead.