WordPerfection
November 6, 2020 8:27 AM Subscribe
WordPerfect for DOS has been updated to run on modern Windows and macOS with new printer drivers, euro symbol support, and more. The creator refers to XKCD for the burning question of why some people still use a DOS-era word processor.
I used to be a WP5.1 wizard. This is amazing - I had no idea it was still alive and well.
posted by jquinby at 8:39 AM on November 6, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by jquinby at 8:39 AM on November 6, 2020 [6 favorites]
One downside of always-install-updates culture is that sometimes things are just fine and basically feature complete.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:41 AM on November 6, 2020 [26 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 8:41 AM on November 6, 2020 [26 favorites]
*reveals hidden codes*
posted by thelonius at 8:47 AM on November 6, 2020 [51 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 8:47 AM on November 6, 2020 [51 favorites]
From the same site Running WPDOS under Linux
posted by otherchaz at 8:51 AM on November 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by otherchaz at 8:51 AM on November 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
[Ben Kenobi voice]
WordPerfect. Now that's a name I have not heard in a long time...
posted by vibrotronica at 8:52 AM on November 6, 2020 [32 favorites]
WordPerfect. Now that's a name I have not heard in a long time...
posted by vibrotronica at 8:52 AM on November 6, 2020 [32 favorites]
vi and EMACS are still widely used, I don't see how this is different.
posted by farlukar at 9:03 AM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by farlukar at 9:03 AM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
Bah, you beat me to the punch! I'm still astonished how in 2020, otherwise aggressive technophiles are still using 1970s editors like emacs and vi. (No, no, please don't see this as an opportunity to explain your retro choices.) Some amazing things have been invented like mouse pointers and variable width fonts and bitmap graphics. Editors built with those as native UI elements really are a lot easier to use.
posted by Nelson at 9:04 AM on November 6, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by Nelson at 9:04 AM on November 6, 2020 [6 favorites]
When I was in high school in the late nineties the computer lab was about nine macs that look fifteen minutes to open a window and one PS2 era PC with Wordperfect 5.1 on it. Wrote all my papers and assignments for creative writing on it. Best part? Nobody else ever used it, so it was always free.
posted by selfnoise at 9:07 AM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by selfnoise at 9:07 AM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
I'm still astonished how in 2020, otherwise aggressive technophiles are still using 1970s editors like emacs and vi. (No, no, please don't see this as an opportunity to explain your retro choices.)
Sometimes it's not a choice -- editors like those might be the only editors available on a machine you have to do stuff on
posted by treepour at 9:11 AM on November 6, 2020 [12 favorites]
Sometimes it's not a choice -- editors like those might be the only editors available on a machine you have to do stuff on
posted by treepour at 9:11 AM on November 6, 2020 [12 favorites]
I just missed the WordPerfect era of computing. If taking your hands off your keyboard is such a big deal why didn't it live on? Or is it that text is entered all over the place is is not consistent. For example if I do shift+up I highlight text to the beginning of the line in this text box, but in my iMessages app it doesn't work the same and I personally default into the lowest common denominator.
posted by geoff. at 9:14 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by geoff. at 9:14 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
Huh, we might be able to open some of my company's oldest archived files again. Neat!
posted by me3dia at 9:18 AM on November 6, 2020 [8 favorites]
posted by me3dia at 9:18 AM on November 6, 2020 [8 favorites]
editors like those might be the only editors available on a machine you have to do stuff on
Oh but Unix has a solution for that! Ed Is The Standard Text Editor.
But even I'm not old enough to have ever really used to learn ed well; for me it was emacs. These days in those situations it's mg, which is a tiny little lightweight thing but has emacs keybindings for folks whose brains are sadly still dedicating space to obsolete UIs.
posted by Nelson at 9:19 AM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
Oh but Unix has a solution for that! Ed Is The Standard Text Editor.
But even I'm not old enough to have ever really used to learn ed well; for me it was emacs. These days in those situations it's mg, which is a tiny little lightweight thing but has emacs keybindings for folks whose brains are sadly still dedicating space to obsolete UIs.
posted by Nelson at 9:19 AM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
Lawyers. Once lawyers adopted something you had to wait for the Sr. Partners to change before software could change.
posted by mikelieman at 9:19 AM on November 6, 2020 [20 favorites]
posted by mikelieman at 9:19 AM on November 6, 2020 [20 favorites]
When I was in college I was forced to take a "practical computer skills" class, probably because some parents complained or something. I learned how to use WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, and DBASE Ⅲ, all on DOS. Gosh I'm sure glad I took that class, I use those skills every day!
posted by Ampersand692 at 9:22 AM on November 6, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by Ampersand692 at 9:22 AM on November 6, 2020 [5 favorites]
Ah yes, I remember using WordPerfect in DOS.
posted by ckape at 9:23 AM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by ckape at 9:23 AM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
*reveals hidden codes*
Someone pointed out that that is aesthetically a very Mormon concept.
posted by acb at 9:33 AM on November 6, 2020 [12 favorites]
Someone pointed out that that is aesthetically a very Mormon concept.
posted by acb at 9:33 AM on November 6, 2020 [12 favorites]
I work with the federal judiciary, they literally just got rid of WordPerfect (and Lotus Notes!) about 18 months ago. Once the judges got used to them, they pretty much had to keep supporting them. We also had Word, but lots of chambers had 20 years of templates that only worked right with WordPerfect, so they weren't budging. I guess they gave up over security issues which required upgrades to Windows 10.
Anyway, I was surprised how much less frustrating I found WordPerfect to be, and how much from my 1994-era keyboarding class I remembered (alt-f3, reveal codes!).
posted by skewed at 9:42 AM on November 6, 2020 [8 favorites]
Anyway, I was surprised how much less frustrating I found WordPerfect to be, and how much from my 1994-era keyboarding class I remembered (alt-f3, reveal codes!).
posted by skewed at 9:42 AM on November 6, 2020 [8 favorites]
Editors built with those as native UI elements really are a lot easier to use.
Easier to learn? No doubt. Easier to use? Not necessarily.
posted by bendybendy at 9:47 AM on November 6, 2020 [22 favorites]
Easier to learn? No doubt. Easier to use? Not necessarily.
posted by bendybendy at 9:47 AM on November 6, 2020 [22 favorites]
The last time I paid for a word processor was Corel WordPerfect Suite 8, back in 1997 when I was in university. I have LibreOffice now so I have something that can work with new file formats, but I still re-install WP8 on every new computer. Still works fine and is incredibly fast on 2020-era hardware compared to modern bloated programs -- it opens up in less than one second.
posted by fimbulvetr at 9:48 AM on November 6, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by fimbulvetr at 9:48 AM on November 6, 2020 [5 favorites]
Mind you, that is a windows version of WP. I never liked WP for dos and adopted windows versions as soon as they came out.
posted by fimbulvetr at 9:51 AM on November 6, 2020
posted by fimbulvetr at 9:51 AM on November 6, 2020
What was that one that was popular with academics in the 90's? Nota Bene. I see it still exists. I also used to look at the big box for Nisus Writer, and dream of owning it, back when the University store still had shelves and shelves of boxed software in the computer store, but it was expensive. It symbolized for me, I suppose, success in the scholarly life, which I did not ever achieve, but I am finally at peace with that after all these years.
I think these programs had far better support than the main word processing packages for non-standard-English character sets, and also the paradigm of MS Word was very much "you must be doing business writing!" and it was very awkward for endnotes and citations and book-length documents with sections. So I think the above alternatives were a lot better for those applications.
posted by thelonius at 10:03 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
I think these programs had far better support than the main word processing packages for non-standard-English character sets, and also the paradigm of MS Word was very much "you must be doing business writing!" and it was very awkward for endnotes and citations and book-length documents with sections. So I think the above alternatives were a lot better for those applications.
posted by thelonius at 10:03 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
I loved it and I miss it. I think one reason MeFi looks so cozy in dark mode is its resemblance to WP5.1.
My thesis advisor and I used it to prep a transcription of a Renaissance transcript for publication, and it was just perfect for that. We never tried an alternative, so maybe something else would have been better? But somehow its spare, uniform aesthetic was the perfect counterpoint to the wild orthography and letter forms of our source text.
I think you used to be able to change the look of MS Word to mimic WP5.1 - is that still possible?
posted by Caxton1476 at 10:05 AM on November 6, 2020 [10 favorites]
My thesis advisor and I used it to prep a transcription of a Renaissance transcript for publication, and it was just perfect for that. We never tried an alternative, so maybe something else would have been better? But somehow its spare, uniform aesthetic was the perfect counterpoint to the wild orthography and letter forms of our source text.
I think you used to be able to change the look of MS Word to mimic WP5.1 - is that still possible?
posted by Caxton1476 at 10:05 AM on November 6, 2020 [10 favorites]
Word for WordPerfect users, 2020 edition.
If it looks like '96, it's quality./s
Can I just mention how much I lover that html is code-based and thus, by extention so is mefi? It's like the best part of the world still exists in this time of wysiwyg whirligigs; you just have to know where to look.
posted by bonehead at 10:11 AM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
If it looks like '96, it's quality.
Can I just mention how much I lover that html is code-based and thus, by extention so is mefi? It's like the best part of the world still exists in this time of wysiwyg whirligigs; you just have to know where to look.
posted by bonehead at 10:11 AM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
When I log into my Xenix system with my 110 baud teletype, both vi
*and* Emacs are just too damn slow. They print useless messages like,
'C-h for help' and '"foo" File is read only'. So I use the editor
that doesn't waste my VALUABLE time.
Ed, man! !man ed
ED(1) UNIX Programmer's Manual ED(1)
NAME
ed - text editor
SYNOPSIS
ed [ - ] [ -x ] [ name ]
DESCRIPTION
Ed is the standard text editor.
---
Computer Scientists love ed, not just because it comes first
alphabetically, but because it's the standard. Everyone else loves ed
because it's ED!
"Ed is the standard text editor."
And ed doesn't waste space on my Timex Sinclair. Just look:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 24 Oct 29 1929 /bin/ed
-rwxr-xr-t 4 root 1310720 Jan 1 1970 /usr/ucb/vi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 5.89824e37 Oct 22 1990 /usr/bin/emacs
Of course, on the system *I* administrate, vi is symlinked to ed.
Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog
message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K;
and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!!
"Ed is the standard text editor."
Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty ed:
golem> ed
?
help
?
?
?
quit
?
exit
?
bye
?
hello?
?
eat flaming death
?
^C
?
^C
?
^D
?
---
Note the consistent user interface and error reportage. Ed is
generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm
the novice with verbosity.
"Ed is the standard text editor."
Ed, the greatest WYGIWYG editor of all.
ED IS THE TRUE PATH TO NIRVANA! ED HAS BEEN THE CHOICE OF EDUCATED
AND IGNORANT ALIKE FOR CENTURIES! ED WILL NOT CORRUPT YOUR PRECIOUS
BODILY FLUIDS!! ED IS THE STANDARD TEXT EDITOR! ED MAKES THE SUN
SHINE AND THE BIRDS SING AND THE GRASS GREEN!!
When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra KILOBYTES of worthless
help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an EDitor!!
Not a "viitor". Not a "emacsitor". Those aren't even WORDS!!!! ED!
ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!!
TEXT EDITOR.
When IBM, in its ever-present omnipotence, needed to base their
"edlin" on a UNIX standard, did they mimic vi? No. Emacs? Surely
you jest. They chose the most karmic editor of all. The standard.
Ed is for those who can *remember* what they are working on. If you
are an idiot, you should use Emacs. If you are an Emacs, you should
not be vi. If you use ED, you are on THE PATH TO REDEMPTION. THE
SO-CALLED "VISUAL" EDITORS HAVE BEEN PLACED HERE BY ED TO TEMPT THE
FAITHLESS. DO NOT GIVE IN!!! THE MIGHTY ED HAS SPOKEN!!!
?posted by leotrotsky at 10:12 AM on November 6, 2020 [28 favorites] [Ben Kenobi voice]
An elegant word processor...for a more civilized age.
posted by zamboni at 10:16 AM on November 6, 2020 [8 favorites]
An elegant word processor...for a more civilized age.
posted by zamboni at 10:16 AM on November 6, 2020 [8 favorites]
I am pretty sure my dad had that template eye of newt mentioned. Right up until he died in 2008, he never installed Windows. Wrote all his books and plays in WordPerfect on a DOS box.
posted by bixfrankonis at 10:18 AM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by bixfrankonis at 10:18 AM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
ed - text editor
"With Ed Mastery, you too can become a proper sysadmin."
posted by zamboni at 10:18 AM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
"With Ed Mastery, you too can become a proper sysadmin."
posted by zamboni at 10:18 AM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
Word for WordPerfect users, 2020 edition.
This bit from that page explains SO MANY of my frustrations with formatting things in MS Word:
Word and Wordperfect look at a document in very different ways.
Primarily, WP sees a stream of text that you do things to, like damming a river to change it's course. You turn on Bold and everything from then on is Bold until you turn it off. Likewise with changing margins or tabs. Wordperfect inserts unseen codes (like printer codes in ASCII text files of old) to turn things on and off. You can see these codes by selecting "reveal codes." (see g. below)
Word sees documents as built up of compartments, one inside of the other.
Characters fit into paragraphs which fit into sections which fit into documents. Formatting changes change only the compartment to which they are applied. If you change the tab settings on one paragraph, the paragraphs that follow aren't changed (if those paragraphs exist when you make the change). Changes made in one paragraph will carry through in subsequent paragraphs which are created from that paragraph.
posted by fimbulvetr at 10:22 AM on November 6, 2020 [11 favorites]
This bit from that page explains SO MANY of my frustrations with formatting things in MS Word:
Word and Wordperfect look at a document in very different ways.
Primarily, WP sees a stream of text that you do things to, like damming a river to change it's course. You turn on Bold and everything from then on is Bold until you turn it off. Likewise with changing margins or tabs. Wordperfect inserts unseen codes (like printer codes in ASCII text files of old) to turn things on and off. You can see these codes by selecting "reveal codes." (see g. below)
Word sees documents as built up of compartments, one inside of the other.
Characters fit into paragraphs which fit into sections which fit into documents. Formatting changes change only the compartment to which they are applied. If you change the tab settings on one paragraph, the paragraphs that follow aren't changed (if those paragraphs exist when you make the change). Changes made in one paragraph will carry through in subsequent paragraphs which are created from that paragraph.
posted by fimbulvetr at 10:22 AM on November 6, 2020 [11 favorites]
Once lawyers adopted something you had to wait for the Sr. Partners to change before software could change.
The reason IETF standards are all still fixed width text with ASCII diagrams in this godforsaken year of our lord 2020 is because of one guy with a white-knuckle grip on a Symbolics Lisp machine that doesn’t have a web browser, who absolutely won’t budge.
I wish I was joking.
posted by mhoye at 10:24 AM on November 6, 2020 [17 favorites]
The reason IETF standards are all still fixed width text with ASCII diagrams in this godforsaken year of our lord 2020 is because of one guy with a white-knuckle grip on a Symbolics Lisp machine that doesn’t have a web browser, who absolutely won’t budge.
I wish I was joking.
posted by mhoye at 10:24 AM on November 6, 2020 [17 favorites]
A Text Editor like Ed or Vi is a different tool to a Word Processor, little things like having a proportional font that will fill a line of text and then automatically wrap onto the next line.
posted by Lanark at 10:25 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by Lanark at 10:25 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
I wound up learning/using WordStar, probably because my housemate's homebrew Z80-based PC was running CP/M and not DOS. Then once I got my first real Silicon Valley job (as a tech writer) it was vi with formatting handled by troff and nroff. My department even had an honest to goodness phototypesetter with font licenses priced according to output resolution plus a guy who did paste-up.
That was a million years ago!
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 10:28 AM on November 6, 2020 [5 favorites]
That was a million years ago!
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 10:28 AM on November 6, 2020 [5 favorites]
Editors built with those as native UI elements really are a lot easier to use.
As noted above, easier to learn, sure. But for folks who have already learned how to use emacs or vi, they are much quicker and easier. Also, I can do a heck of a lot more with LaTeX typesetting in emacs than I can with Word.
posted by eviemath at 10:28 AM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
As noted above, easier to learn, sure. But for folks who have already learned how to use emacs or vi, they are much quicker and easier. Also, I can do a heck of a lot more with LaTeX typesetting in emacs than I can with Word.
posted by eviemath at 10:28 AM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
There was an era there at the end of the 90s before USB pen drives and reliable internet connections with cloud storage when 3.5" floppies were still the removeable media of choice (well, and expensive "ZIP" drives). I was an undergrad dependant on lab computers, and it was so frustrating that the college's installed version of Word bloated file sizes of even modest documents with excess code that quickly exceeded the storage capacity of a floppy. It was then that I felt my first pangs of nostalgia for earlier technology: Word Perfect and "reveal codes".
posted by St. Oops at 10:28 AM on November 6, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by St. Oops at 10:28 AM on November 6, 2020 [6 favorites]
*sobs* reveal codes I miss you all the time
posted by jeather at 10:30 AM on November 6, 2020 [30 favorites]
posted by jeather at 10:30 AM on November 6, 2020 [30 favorites]
Oh, and PostScript was just a glimmer in John Warnock's & Chuck Geschke's at the time.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 10:32 AM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 10:32 AM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
I remember being so mad at my dad for switching the word processor from WordStar 2000 to WordPerfect. I didn't understand why I needed to learn a whole new program when there was one I already knew how to use, and as far as I could tell they both did essentially the same thing. He told me that all lawyers were switching to it and he didn't really have any choice in the matter.
It did make the switch from WordPerfect to Word less traumatic, though. I had been through it all before.
posted by Quonab at 10:33 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
It did make the switch from WordPerfect to Word less traumatic, though. I had been through it all before.
posted by Quonab at 10:33 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
WordPerfect, with its paired codes, would have been a good html editor. Reveal codes made it easy to understand errors. In DOS, WP had printer drivers well before they were standardized. It was straightforward. People like to grab the mouse; I still use the keyboard more, and I do think it's more efficient. I use a Thinkpad, have never taught my fingers to use the nubbin, but I use the touchpad mostly. (recently got a good version of minesweeper, mouse required)
I still own a WPerfect keyboard template somewhere. I temped someplace, photocopied a template from 1 desk, made a template to use, color-coded with highlighters, and made color-coded stickies for ctrl, alt, shift. One of the managers asked about it, made him a template and stickers. Ran into him months later after I'd moved on; he thanked me profusely. It was genuinely speedier.
MSoft went after WPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 with everything they had, and they had a lot, kind of a shame.
I also really preferred it when Alt opened menu options, and you could just type the underlined letter; that's pretty well abandoned. MSoft looks at whatever Apples , tries to emulate it, baby:bathwater, as Apple products are very mouse-dependent. The menus listed almost every task you could do. Then Office moved to the Ribbon, and many tasks are never shown, though they usually still exist.
posted by theora55 at 10:33 AM on November 6, 2020 [8 favorites]
I still own a WPerfect keyboard template somewhere. I temped someplace, photocopied a template from 1 desk, made a template to use, color-coded with highlighters, and made color-coded stickies for ctrl, alt, shift. One of the managers asked about it, made him a template and stickers. Ran into him months later after I'd moved on; he thanked me profusely. It was genuinely speedier.
MSoft went after WPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 with everything they had, and they had a lot, kind of a shame.
I also really preferred it when Alt opened menu options, and you could just type the underlined letter; that's pretty well abandoned. MSoft looks at whatever Apples , tries to emulate it, baby:bathwater, as Apple products are very mouse-dependent. The menus listed almost every task you could do. Then Office moved to the Ribbon, and many tasks are never shown, though they usually still exist.
posted by theora55 at 10:33 AM on November 6, 2020 [8 favorites]
The question I want to know is whether you can still get those temporary keyboard labels for function keys.
I can't imagine wanting to use this. But, I'm also writing this post in emacs, spawned from elinks, so I have no grounds to argue with other people's weird choices. Cheers!
posted by eotvos at 10:36 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
I can't imagine wanting to use this. But, I'm also writing this post in emacs, spawned from elinks, so I have no grounds to argue with other people's weird choices. Cheers!
posted by eotvos at 10:36 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
I also really preferred it when Alt opened menu options, and you could just type the underlined letter
Alt still does this ...
posted by fimbulvetr at 10:44 AM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
Alt still does this ...
posted by fimbulvetr at 10:44 AM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
I've got WordPerfect 8 open right now. The job it was meant to do hasn't changed so why should it?
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 10:54 AM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 10:54 AM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
>I'm still astonished how in 2020, otherwise aggressive technophiles are still using 1970s editors like emacs and vi. (No, no, please don't see this as an opportunity to explain your retro choices.) Some amazing things have been invented like mouse pointers and variable width fonts and bitmap graphics. Editors built with those as native UI elements really are a lot easier to use.
No, writing is about writing. I write better when I separate presentation from content. Putting the tools to render it behind a GUI is OK but with my fingers on the keyboard, the keyboard shortcuts for other functionality activate the functions faster than finding and moving a mouse cursor to hit a button. #macro:ymmv Your Mileage May Vary.
The mouse isn't a good pointing device, the stylus is much better; variable-width fonts -- by which you mean kerned and well-spaced typefaces with subpixel hinting -- are wonderful for final presentation and easy reading while writing but they're a distraction from your actual words until you've got actual words; bitmap graphics aren't scalable vector graphics or display postscript or (thank you Microsoft) WPF XAML on a high-resolution display, and bitmap glyphs for the floppy disc leave us a legacy 'save icon'.
>The reason IETF standards are all still fixed width text with ASCII diagrams in this godforsaken year of our lord 2020 is because of one guy with a white-knuckle grip on a Symbolics Lisp machine that doesn’t have a web browser, who absolutely won’t budge.
Systems design really gets unmanageably complex when you can't draw simple boxes for how it works. Is any of BGP or cryptographically-verifiable DNS records or IPv6 address allocation a problem that needs vector graphics to describe the workflows in their respective RFC documents? Like I said above about separating presentation from content: simple encapsulation of ideas forces you to clearly explain the idea and not lose coherence attempting a flashy presentation.
Plus you can keep an archive of all the IETF RFC documents on a floppy disc.
posted by k3ninho at 11:05 AM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
No, writing is about writing. I write better when I separate presentation from content. Putting the tools to render it behind a GUI is OK but with my fingers on the keyboard, the keyboard shortcuts for other functionality activate the functions faster than finding and moving a mouse cursor to hit a button. #macro:ymmv Your Mileage May Vary.
The mouse isn't a good pointing device, the stylus is much better; variable-width fonts -- by which you mean kerned and well-spaced typefaces with subpixel hinting -- are wonderful for final presentation and easy reading while writing but they're a distraction from your actual words until you've got actual words; bitmap graphics aren't scalable vector graphics or display postscript or (thank you Microsoft) WPF XAML on a high-resolution display, and bitmap glyphs for the floppy disc leave us a legacy 'save icon'.
>The reason IETF standards are all still fixed width text with ASCII diagrams in this godforsaken year of our lord 2020 is because of one guy with a white-knuckle grip on a Symbolics Lisp machine that doesn’t have a web browser, who absolutely won’t budge.
Systems design really gets unmanageably complex when you can't draw simple boxes for how it works. Is any of BGP or cryptographically-verifiable DNS records or IPv6 address allocation a problem that needs vector graphics to describe the workflows in their respective RFC documents? Like I said above about separating presentation from content: simple encapsulation of ideas forces you to clearly explain the idea and not lose coherence attempting a flashy presentation.
Plus you can keep an archive of all the IETF RFC documents on a floppy disc.
posted by k3ninho at 11:05 AM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
Some amazing things have been invented like mouse pointers and variable width fonts and bitmap graphics. Editors built with those as native UI elements really are a lot easier to use.
if it doesn't work on half-duplex 9600 baud serial TTY then does it really work at all?
Mice and graphics are great, they're often not available.
Also maybe someone already said this...
He had one of those keyboard templates that showed the functions of all of the many special-function keys.
That came in the box for WordPerfect. How else could you possible remember what each function key did? Each one had four different functions (shift+, alt+, ctrl+, unaltered) and that's a lot of combinations to remember.
posted by GuyZero at 11:07 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
if it doesn't work on half-duplex 9600 baud serial TTY then does it really work at all?
Mice and graphics are great, they're often not available.
Also maybe someone already said this...
He had one of those keyboard templates that showed the functions of all of the many special-function keys.
That came in the box for WordPerfect. How else could you possible remember what each function key did? Each one had four different functions (shift+, alt+, ctrl+, unaltered) and that's a lot of combinations to remember.
posted by GuyZero at 11:07 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
fimbulvetr, not uniformly, mostly I have to remember that it was Alt, F, S.
posted by theora55 at 11:09 AM on November 6, 2020
posted by theora55 at 11:09 AM on November 6, 2020
But it should not be surprising that legal transcriptionists and people debugging embedded linux boards have different visions of what a good editor looks like.
posted by GuyZero at 11:09 AM on November 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by GuyZero at 11:09 AM on November 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
We used to call it WeirdDefect...I'll show myself out.
posted by kaymac at 11:14 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by kaymac at 11:14 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
It's pretty great if you're an American writing simple documents in English. But witness all the workarounds you need to attempt to get a € symbol. WP5.1 predates (the uptake of) Unicode, and is limited to 8-bit character sets. As much as I used to love WP (after Protext disappeared, sigh) I don't think I could go back to such limited text handling.
posted by scruss at 11:21 AM on November 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by scruss at 11:21 AM on November 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
I can believe a mouse-less text editor could be more efficient for typing a first draft, but it's hard to imagine how it could be more efficient at editing. I can't see how a keyboard interface could select an arbitrary section of a page of text more quickly than a mouse pointer. Maybe the difference isn't enough to offset other efficiencies?
Or it could be like the QWERTY/DVORAK issue where DVORAK is superior in some ways that aren't actually a bottleneck for most users who won't get much actual benefit from switching.
posted by straight at 11:26 AM on November 6, 2020
Or it could be like the QWERTY/DVORAK issue where DVORAK is superior in some ways that aren't actually a bottleneck for most users who won't get much actual benefit from switching.
posted by straight at 11:26 AM on November 6, 2020
For reasons I cannot begin to understand, my son, who is a high-school Sophomore in what I believe is the year 2020, is being taught LaTeX in his Chemistry class. It's not that I object--I mean go nerds, for sure--but... really?
posted by The Bellman at 11:27 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by The Bellman at 11:27 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
WP sees a stream of text that you do things to...Word sees documents as built up of compartments, one inside of the other.
Thanks. I kinda knew that but never thought of it that way explicitly. Is there a way in Word to see all the compartment boundaries at once and which ones each bit of text resides in? That's one of the main strengths of WP--feeling like you can get a look at exactly how the program sees the document.
posted by straight at 11:33 AM on November 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
Thanks. I kinda knew that but never thought of it that way explicitly. Is there a way in Word to see all the compartment boundaries at once and which ones each bit of text resides in? That's one of the main strengths of WP--feeling like you can get a look at exactly how the program sees the document.
posted by straight at 11:33 AM on November 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
And to be clear, the job I am referring to is quickly spitting out signing documents from my work-specific software (which is updated quite regularly). If I have to do anything beyond that and routine correspondence I'll open up Word instead.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:35 AM on November 6, 2020
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:35 AM on November 6, 2020
I’ll pour one out for the WP equation editor, which seemed to use the same markup principles to format complex mathematical expressions. It is so much more intuitive than whatever it is that word is doing, probably because it is more like programming.
posted by cardboard at 11:45 AM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by cardboard at 11:45 AM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
My mother was in the legal profession, which pretty much meant that everything was done in WP5.1. She brought it home and installed it on our PC, and I started to use it instead of the Microsoft Works that came with our Windows installation.
It reminded me of using the Appleworks word processor on the Apple IIs at school, and I didn't particularly like the fact that it was not a WYSIWYG-style editor. However, it won me over when I printed my first WP5.1 paper out on our 24-pin dot matrix printer. I don't know why, but the text looked a million times better coming out of this old DOS program than it did through Windows. I mean, the Windows output looked like absolute garbage by comparison.
posted by TrialByMedia at 11:48 AM on November 6, 2020
It reminded me of using the Appleworks word processor on the Apple IIs at school, and I didn't particularly like the fact that it was not a WYSIWYG-style editor. However, it won me over when I printed my first WP5.1 paper out on our 24-pin dot matrix printer. I don't know why, but the text looked a million times better coming out of this old DOS program than it did through Windows. I mean, the Windows output looked like absolute garbage by comparison.
posted by TrialByMedia at 11:48 AM on November 6, 2020
WP equation builder was a god-send in jr college for my STEM classes. My teachers were baffled at how I pulled that off in 1994.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 11:53 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 11:53 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
but it's hard to imagine how it could be more efficient at editing. I can't see how a keyboard interface could select an arbitrary section of a page of text more quickly than a mouse pointer.
What are you doing! Are you trying to summon vim and emacs zealots? Because this is how you summon vim and emacs zealots. Pipe down or they will be parking their silver hummer next to your convention center with their "My other Pynchon novel is org-mode" bumper stickers and :q! hats.
posted by bdc34 at 11:57 AM on November 6, 2020 [17 favorites]
What are you doing! Are you trying to summon vim and emacs zealots? Because this is how you summon vim and emacs zealots. Pipe down or they will be parking their silver hummer next to your convention center with their "My other Pynchon novel is org-mode" bumper stickers and :q! hats.
posted by bdc34 at 11:57 AM on November 6, 2020 [17 favorites]
If taking your hands off your keyboard is such a big deal why didn't it live on?--
geoff
DOS had no printer drivers, so you judged your word processing program by how many printer drivers they included. It wasn't very useful if you couldn't print the result on your printer. Every word processing program came with disks of their own printer drivers.
Windows solved that. The OS did the printer handling for the programs. The major advantage of the DOS software giants disappeared overnight.
Also Microsoft wanted to show off all the Windows advantages so Word was very graphic and mouse oriented. Writing a word processor for the early, very buggy, Windows was difficult. It no doubt helped if you were sitting down the hall from the OS software designers.
They all tried to switch over to Windows, but Word quickly replaced them all.
posted by eye of newt at 11:59 AM on November 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
geoff
DOS had no printer drivers, so you judged your word processing program by how many printer drivers they included. It wasn't very useful if you couldn't print the result on your printer. Every word processing program came with disks of their own printer drivers.
Windows solved that. The OS did the printer handling for the programs. The major advantage of the DOS software giants disappeared overnight.
Also Microsoft wanted to show off all the Windows advantages so Word was very graphic and mouse oriented. Writing a word processor for the early, very buggy, Windows was difficult. It no doubt helped if you were sitting down the hall from the OS software designers.
They all tried to switch over to Windows, but Word quickly replaced them all.
posted by eye of newt at 11:59 AM on November 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
I really wanted to title this “Show me the real word processor. No, the real word processor. Perfection.”
But then I figured it was getting too long and relied on too many hidden codes.
posted by adrianhon at 11:59 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
But then I figured it was getting too long and relied on too many hidden codes.
posted by adrianhon at 11:59 AM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
vi and EMACS are still widely used, I don't see how this is different.
because it's a different program on a different platform for a different purpose?
posted by Dr. Twist at 11:59 AM on November 6, 2020
because it's a different program on a different platform for a different purpose?
posted by Dr. Twist at 11:59 AM on November 6, 2020
WP equation builder was a god-send in jr college for my STEM classes. My teachers were baffled at how I pulled that off in 1994
Then there was the time I'd used Word 9x to write a game theory paper with some equation stacks and one time I opened it and aaaaaaalllll the equations had irreversibly transformed to uneditable random garbage.
Started using latex right after that.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:01 PM on November 6, 2020 [5 favorites]
Then there was the time I'd used Word 9x to write a game theory paper with some equation stacks and one time I opened it and aaaaaaalllll the equations had irreversibly transformed to uneditable random garbage.
Started using latex right after that.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:01 PM on November 6, 2020 [5 favorites]
WP 5.1 was definitely the go-to in the house (but before that was WordStar), but to be honest, when WYSIWYG showed up, you can't not switch over if you want that sort of feedback (sort of like film versus digital photography chimping).
When a family relative gifted us their used MacPlus, I immediately switched over to using Word for Mac 3.01, then in college, I was on WP 6, but eventually, with Windows machines, it became MS Word again, and has been to this day, when it comes to writing for printing or PDF purposes.
But yeah, WP 5.1 on a CGA screen brings back a lot of memories.
posted by linux at 12:05 PM on November 6, 2020
When a family relative gifted us their used MacPlus, I immediately switched over to using Word for Mac 3.01, then in college, I was on WP 6, but eventually, with Windows machines, it became MS Word again, and has been to this day, when it comes to writing for printing or PDF purposes.
But yeah, WP 5.1 on a CGA screen brings back a lot of memories.
posted by linux at 12:05 PM on November 6, 2020
Systems design really gets unmanageably complex when you can't draw simple boxes for how it works
I have bad news about how many computers there are in your computer.
posted by mhoye at 12:07 PM on November 6, 2020 [8 favorites]
I have bad news about how many computers there are in your computer.
posted by mhoye at 12:07 PM on November 6, 2020 [8 favorites]
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the "Hole in the Wall" experiment Sugata Mitra ran by sticking a Windows computer in a wall in a slum in India.
Kids with zero computer experience could figure out how to operate it without much problems. (And wanted to operate it when they found it could play media).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugata_Mitra#Hole_in_the_Wall
Having command line codes embedded in fingers is *very* powerful and efficient. But not to the casual user of the program(s) who constantly have to re-learn after not touching it for a while. Unfortunately (?) the numbers of that kind of user has only increased.
posted by aleph at 12:22 PM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
Kids with zero computer experience could figure out how to operate it without much problems. (And wanted to operate it when they found it could play media).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugata_Mitra#Hole_in_the_Wall
Having command line codes embedded in fingers is *very* powerful and efficient. But not to the casual user of the program(s) who constantly have to re-learn after not touching it for a while. Unfortunately (?) the numbers of that kind of user has only increased.
posted by aleph at 12:22 PM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
I learned word processing on WordPerfect in DOS (and spreadsheets in QuattroPro!)and was unimpressed by Word when the office switched to Windows95. I've spent a lot of time cursing at the monitor over Word and Excel.
posted by corvikate at 12:26 PM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by corvikate at 12:26 PM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
Approximately the time when Corel owned WP, the WP equation editor was kind of a weird cut-down LaTeX math mode implementation. You could sort of type TeX commands, but mostly they were false friends, never quite working how you wanted them to, or doing what you knew how to do in TeX. I just remember it being pretty frustrating knowing I could type exactly what I wanted in TeX faster than I could approximate what I wanted through the hybrid graphical interface. To this day, the equation editors in mainstream software continue to be major disappointments in usability and expressiveness.
posted by bonehead at 12:33 PM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by bonehead at 12:33 PM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
Apple products are very mouse-dependent.
In these days with Electron apps and Catalyst apps (using the Page Down key is an advanced feature that has to be specially coded) that’s true.
But if you run an app written around an NSTextView then a lot of keyboard possibilities are open to you.
posted by Monochrome at 12:44 PM on November 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
In these days with Electron apps and Catalyst apps (using the Page Down key is an advanced feature that has to be specially coded) that’s true.
But if you run an app written around an NSTextView then a lot of keyboard possibilities are open to you.
posted by Monochrome at 12:44 PM on November 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
Using "reveal codes" on other people's Word Perfect documents was useful for revealing why the printed version looked all wonky: because dozens of hidden codes, all contradictory, would be stacked on top of each other, causing the printed output to be bad. Not a great system.
posted by jabah at 12:51 PM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by jabah at 12:51 PM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
Previously, a book by an executive that was there until the 5.x days. The OS/2 debacle really screwed Wordperfect, and then they made the mistake of not giving due priority to the Windows version. But the more graphical Word, which didn't have to make compromises to appeal to DOS users, would have been very difficult to beat. All the other independent software vendors found it very hard to deal with competition from Microsoft when it moved in on their turf in the 90s, and eventually they tended to aggregate. So you had Novell (networking), Wordperfect and Borland (development tools) under the same umbrella, with a sad ending, and Lotus with its sad ending.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 12:53 PM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 12:53 PM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
WordPerfect 20 is my word processor of choice. You can select earlier versions of its keyboards including MS-DOS.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 12:58 PM on November 6, 2020
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 12:58 PM on November 6, 2020
My spousal unit is a medical editor and lives in Word 8-10 hours every day. I've never heard a good thing about it and plenty of not so good, which is sad considering the 15+ years this has been her life so far.
I started learning Vim circa 1997 and not a day goes by that I don't invoke it for something. I have a deep and abiding love for Vim. I would join a Vim based cult if one existed and I hate joining things. I would start a vim based cult even though I hardly like spending time with other people. I have seriously considered designing an eink based laptop that only runs vim and nothing else. I named my eldest daughter Bram. When I die, provided my body isn't lost in wild nature somewhere, I've requested that my tombstone be emblazoned with ":q!" at the bottom. I know this comment has nothing to do with Wordperfect. I just want everyone to know that Vim is fantastic. ZZ
posted by roue at 1:25 PM on November 6, 2020 [19 favorites]
I started learning Vim circa 1997 and not a day goes by that I don't invoke it for something. I have a deep and abiding love for Vim. I would join a Vim based cult if one existed and I hate joining things. I would start a vim based cult even though I hardly like spending time with other people. I have seriously considered designing an eink based laptop that only runs vim and nothing else. I named my eldest daughter Bram. When I die, provided my body isn't lost in wild nature somewhere, I've requested that my tombstone be emblazoned with ":q!" at the bottom. I know this comment has nothing to do with Wordperfect. I just want everyone to know that Vim is fantastic. ZZ
posted by roue at 1:25 PM on November 6, 2020 [19 favorites]
I would join a Vim based cult if one existed
if?
IF???
buddy, do I have some good news for you. Enjoy this cup of koolaid while I explain myself...
posted by GuyZero at 1:43 PM on November 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
if?
IF???
buddy, do I have some good news for you. Enjoy this cup of koolaid while I explain myself...
posted by GuyZero at 1:43 PM on November 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
My PhD thesis was among the first to be handed in on those new-fangled word processors. I decided to learn the best word processing program, and our IT people told me to learn WordPerfect. Miss you, Wordperfect
posted by acrasis at 1:44 PM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by acrasis at 1:44 PM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
IMO the problem domain of word processing was solved completely, from two different directions, around the same time and by products with (coincidentally) the same version number: Microsoft Word 5.1 for the Mac and WP 5.1 for DOS. Although the approaches of these two applications are very different, and people have their own preferences, word processing hasn't gotten any better since their releases ~30 years ago.
posted by 4CFCFF at 2:14 PM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by 4CFCFF at 2:14 PM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
WriteNow FTW!
posted by Thorzdad at 2:34 PM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Thorzdad at 2:34 PM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
I started out with WordPerfect 5.0 in 1987. I have faithfully upgraded to each new version as it came out. I have written untold millions of words using it, including 11 novels. I have upward of 100 macros that I use regularly. I use reveal codes instinctively. I am forced to supply clients with content in Word. I hate Word with the burning hate of a thousand suns. I originate their work in WordPerfect and then, when I have it done, I convert it to Word and off it goes. I love hearing people who somehow think that Word is a) a word processor, and b) the only one, bitch when it throws random glitches in that With WordPerfect are instantly solved. I will give up WordPerfect when they pry my cold dead fingers from it.
posted by charris5005 at 2:40 PM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by charris5005 at 2:40 PM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
I loved reveal codes, and I really miss the Make It Fit Expert.
There was also a way to strip HTML out of documents.
posted by jgirl at 3:02 PM on November 6, 2020
There was also a way to strip HTML out of documents.
posted by jgirl at 3:02 PM on November 6, 2020
While WordPerfect was common in the lower kingdoms, it is known that WordStar is still King in the North.
posted by Ber at 3:03 PM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by Ber at 3:03 PM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
WordPerfect is what the people inside of Dwarf Fortress use so it must be good
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:27 PM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:27 PM on November 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
I once installed Windows 3.11 and AbiWord on a computer that didn't even belong to me just so i could avoid using WP 5.1.
I also use pico instead of vi or whatever. I'm a heretic.
posted by 1adam12 at 4:22 PM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
I also use pico instead of vi or whatever. I'm a heretic.
posted by 1adam12 at 4:22 PM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
I had to learn WP5.1 in school, and then in my first real gig, a data processing shop in a bank. There was this one secretary who was like a sorceress, she had Secret Powers, she could do anything, painlessly. I had that stupid blue pamphlet, which might as well have been written in Greek, or Polish.
Pretty much anyone with WP5.1 voodoo could get work in a law office.
But. I was a mainframe programmer. A plug-compatible mainframe, and of course we used ISPF to write programs and JCL, ISPF is essentially a word processor with which one can communicate with a mainframe computer. I got really good at that (which you really have to, if you're going to be a programmer) but I got good at it, and I miss the hell out of using it sometimes -- it's stupidly limited yet remarkably powerful, by which I mean what it did it did painlessly.
OK, so you mastered WP5.1. I wrote CoBOL, and assembler language, and TONS of JCL. So there.
posted by dancestoblue at 5:29 PM on November 6, 2020
Pretty much anyone with WP5.1 voodoo could get work in a law office.
But. I was a mainframe programmer. A plug-compatible mainframe, and of course we used ISPF to write programs and JCL, ISPF is essentially a word processor with which one can communicate with a mainframe computer. I got really good at that (which you really have to, if you're going to be a programmer) but I got good at it, and I miss the hell out of using it sometimes -- it's stupidly limited yet remarkably powerful, by which I mean what it did it did painlessly.
OK, so you mastered WP5.1. I wrote CoBOL, and assembler language, and TONS of JCL. So there.
posted by dancestoblue at 5:29 PM on November 6, 2020
Many comments about separation of content from format and yet not a single mention of FrameMaker AKA Frame or GML. Also no one's brought up Adobe InCopy, a tool specifically designed for content entry. And I have to say this doesn't surprise me.
Tools designed to allow the user to manage content entry separately from formatting ("style") turn out to be kind of unwieldy unless you're trained to think about keeping the two separated---and have the discipline to maintain that separation. I think it's why we often feel like were fighting with a program like Word, which supports styling but we "forget" that and just wind up trying to fix things on the page we've got up on the screen at any given moment.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 5:45 PM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
Tools designed to allow the user to manage content entry separately from formatting ("style") turn out to be kind of unwieldy unless you're trained to think about keeping the two separated---and have the discipline to maintain that separation. I think it's why we often feel like were fighting with a program like Word, which supports styling but we "forget" that and just wind up trying to fix things on the page we've got up on the screen at any given moment.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 5:45 PM on November 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
To get into my high school's computer program course, you had to have a semester of typing (on electric typewriters) and a semester of word processing (on some ancient at the time workstations running Word Perfect for DOS).
I remember the function key overlays, and the colour coded stickers for the ctrl, alt, and shift keys very well.
posted by thecjm at 6:36 PM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
I remember the function key overlays, and the colour coded stickers for the ctrl, alt, and shift keys very well.
posted by thecjm at 6:36 PM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
The cross-assembler for our 6800-derivative micro in the 80s ran under TSO, so I was very familiar with ispf and 3270 terminals. When we switched to DOS pcs I used SPF/PC for several years. Now it's mainly vim. The strangest word processor I ever used was Lotus Symphony, which used the spreadsheet paradigm for text.
posted by rfs at 6:42 PM on November 6, 2020
posted by rfs at 6:42 PM on November 6, 2020
I spent the 1990s and the early 2000s in the legal industry, and for much of that time WordPerfect was king. I still smile at my memories of sitting on the toll-free WordPerfect help line, listening to the hold jockeys spinning tunes and telling us how long a wait we had for any one of half a dozen specialized help queues. WordPerfect 5.1 worked as well under Windows 95 as it did under DOS, and no one wanted to switch to Word. In Seattle, even in the legal industry Word was a behemoth that could not be resisted.
I've become something of an explorer in the world of text editors and old word processors lately, just for nostalgia and curiosity. I was surprised Mendelson has based his system for running WP under 64-bit Windows on vDOS instead of vDOSPlus, which recognizes long filenames and their shortened, DOS-friendly formats. It's what science fiction author Robert W. Sawyer uses to keep Wordstar running in these graphical times.
What attracts me to Wordstar over WordPerfect (which is an excellent word processor and deserves its reputation) is what attracts me to vim: removing the need to take my hands off the keyboard. Mice are nice, but when it comes to producing text, they get in the way.
posted by lhauser at 7:28 PM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
I've become something of an explorer in the world of text editors and old word processors lately, just for nostalgia and curiosity. I was surprised Mendelson has based his system for running WP under 64-bit Windows on vDOS instead of vDOSPlus, which recognizes long filenames and their shortened, DOS-friendly formats. It's what science fiction author Robert W. Sawyer uses to keep Wordstar running in these graphical times.
What attracts me to Wordstar over WordPerfect (which is an excellent word processor and deserves its reputation) is what attracts me to vim: removing the need to take my hands off the keyboard. Mice are nice, but when it comes to producing text, they get in the way.
posted by lhauser at 7:28 PM on November 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
editors like those might be the only editors available on a machine you have to do stuff on
This is definitely why I first learned vi - editing files on a headless machine.
it's hard to imagine how it could be more efficient at editing. I can't see how a keyboard interface could select an arbitrary section of a page of text more quickly than a mouse pointer
It's pretty efficient, once you learn how it works. I waffle quite a bit on this, because on one level I can be faster and more precise with basic select character/word/line shortcuts, and on another level I still end up using a mouse when I have one, however much effort I make to stay on the keyboard.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:50 PM on November 6, 2020
This is definitely why I first learned vi - editing files on a headless machine.
it's hard to imagine how it could be more efficient at editing. I can't see how a keyboard interface could select an arbitrary section of a page of text more quickly than a mouse pointer
It's pretty efficient, once you learn how it works. I waffle quite a bit on this, because on one level I can be faster and more precise with basic select character/word/line shortcuts, and on another level I still end up using a mouse when I have one, however much effort I make to stay on the keyboard.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:50 PM on November 6, 2020
Nothing since gave you as much control over formating of a document. None of this paragraph-based formatting, you could make a single line with 1.85 spacing instead of double-spacing which would sometimes move a footnote onto that page - an incredible boom with page-limited documents.
But I also remember that too much complex formatting could make document crash and that only certain magician with just the right touch could save them
posted by rtimmel at 9:04 PM on November 6, 2020
But I also remember that too much complex formatting could make document crash and that only certain magician with just the right touch could save them
posted by rtimmel at 9:04 PM on November 6, 2020
rtimmel, this idea of the page-limited document is an important clue about why WordPerfect was so important in the legal world and why Word drove lawyers crazy. Many legal documents, such as appellate court briefs, are limited by court rules to a certain number of pages. WordPerfect made formatting pages to stay within court-mandated limits a predictable exercise; the document viewed on two different machines was consistent. This wasn't true in Word, at least in the late 90s and early 2000s, when I supported it, because Word's paragraph-oriented formatting tends to fit output to match its current environment. A carefully formatted document that looks good on one screen -- say, the lawyer's who drafted the document -- may look different on their secretary's screen.
Huge differences have become less common over time, as Word has gotten "better," but during the transition from the certainties of WordPerfect, the hours before the deadline for submitting an appellate brief produced in Word could be fraught.
posted by lhauser at 9:29 PM on November 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
Huge differences have become less common over time, as Word has gotten "better," but during the transition from the certainties of WordPerfect, the hours before the deadline for submitting an appellate brief produced in Word could be fraught.
posted by lhauser at 9:29 PM on November 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
Where is the necessary XyWrite? There should be full and customary XyWrite!
posted by away for regrooving at 1:24 AM on November 7, 2020
posted by away for regrooving at 1:24 AM on November 7, 2020
>>Systems design really gets unmanageably complex when you can't draw simple boxes for how it works.
>I have bad news about how many computers there are in your computer.
I really like how this thread reveals teh hidden codes.
posted by k3ninho at 2:34 AM on November 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
>I have bad news about how many computers there are in your computer.
I really like how this thread reveals teh hidden codes.
posted by k3ninho at 2:34 AM on November 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
I used WordPerfect for DOS to write my doctoral dissertation and it made the whole thing possible. I was very happy I finished that thing before they broke WordPerfect by trying to make it a Windows program. I have used Word now for aeons but I never feel at home with it the way I did with WP.
posted by Peach at 2:42 AM on November 7, 2020
posted by Peach at 2:42 AM on November 7, 2020
I'm wondering if there has ever been a more prominent display of word processing in popular culture than Neil Patrick Harris journaling into a caricature of WP5.1 at the end of every episode of Doogie Howser MD.
posted by Chef Flamboyardee at 3:29 AM on November 7, 2020
posted by Chef Flamboyardee at 3:29 AM on November 7, 2020
None of this paragraph-based formatting, you could make a single line with 1.85 spacing..
There are a couple of problems with that, firstly anyone who is serious about typography standards will say that it is bad design to have the line spacing jump around unevenly in the same paragraph. It may fix the problem of making some text fit on a page but the overall effect will look unprofessional. Far better to adjust all the paragraphs and reduce the spacing by a point or two. In Word you can have a huge document with hundreds of paragraphs and adjust them all at the same time by just editing the style definition.
Secondly when you go to start editing that paragraph, perhaps without knowing about the janky formatting, it's going to mess up the format. Let's say you paste in 10 pages of text. Now to find out where the line spacing was changed, you need to step through all 10 pages with reveal codes.
Microsoft won the word processor war, partly through heavy discounting, but also because Word was the superior product.
Word does seem to have declined since its creator Richard Brodie left Microsoft in 1994. In Word 97 they introduced clippy and it's been downhill ever since.
posted by Lanark at 4:39 AM on November 7, 2020
There are a couple of problems with that, firstly anyone who is serious about typography standards will say that it is bad design to have the line spacing jump around unevenly in the same paragraph. It may fix the problem of making some text fit on a page but the overall effect will look unprofessional. Far better to adjust all the paragraphs and reduce the spacing by a point or two. In Word you can have a huge document with hundreds of paragraphs and adjust them all at the same time by just editing the style definition.
Secondly when you go to start editing that paragraph, perhaps without knowing about the janky formatting, it's going to mess up the format. Let's say you paste in 10 pages of text. Now to find out where the line spacing was changed, you need to step through all 10 pages with reveal codes.
Microsoft won the word processor war, partly through heavy discounting, but also because Word was the superior product.
Word does seem to have declined since its creator Richard Brodie left Microsoft in 1994. In Word 97 they introduced clippy and it's been downhill ever since.
posted by Lanark at 4:39 AM on November 7, 2020
I worked with a lawyer in the aughts who was still using WP (for Windows), every time he sent a document he had written and "converted" to Word it was an adventure.
posted by tommasz at 5:34 AM on November 7, 2020
posted by tommasz at 5:34 AM on November 7, 2020
I'm still astonished how in 2020, otherwise aggressive technophiles are still using 1970s editors like emacs and vi.
Fashion versus style, I guess ;-)
I use VS Code for editing code on PC and Mac, but when the interface to your servers is bash/fish/zsh/whatever, GUI apps aren't a lot of use. Then it's vim all the way.
(And does anyone really use proportional fonts for code? Ugh)
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 5:45 AM on November 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
Fashion versus style, I guess ;-)
I use VS Code for editing code on PC and Mac, but when the interface to your servers is bash/fish/zsh/whatever, GUI apps aren't a lot of use. Then it's vim all the way.
(And does anyone really use proportional fonts for code? Ugh)
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 5:45 AM on November 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
oh, this brings back memories. I LOVED WP. I resisted going to MSWord for a loooong time but when my university inexplicably (nobody was asked) started only supporting and providing updates to MSWord, I gave up. *Everything* I had to read came via Word. WP was the best - lots of functionality and ways to control the format. I never could get used to the stupid Word automatic formatting.
posted by bluesky43 at 6:17 AM on November 7, 2020
posted by bluesky43 at 6:17 AM on November 7, 2020
I also loved WordPerfect. Like any portmanteau in a storm, we were given free copies in University (as a result of Corel's influence in Ottawa). That said, I have this horrifying memory of WP's limitations from that time:
My project group had been working for like 48 straight hours in shifts to finish up a senior project. I came in for my shift at 6am on the due date only to find two horrible things: 1) my classmate who had the shift before me was no where to be found, and 2) the 500 page document he left was a complete mess with pictures, paragraphs and page breaks all in crazy places, and the table of content references all wrong. Dejected, I started the task of fixing things page by page. After 10 minutes though, my classmate came back from the washroom and told me to stop immediately! He walked over to my terminal, undid my "fixes", and then changed file -> print -> printers to match our lab printer. Suddenly all of the pagination fixed itself and the document was done. It was a big relief, and left a bit of lasting resentment against old-school programs that cared about what printer they used.
That said, I still think that WP's inline codes were a better approach to document formatting than Word's hidden object parameters. It blows my mind that I still can't get Word to do text-wrapped images without completely breaking every time the text moves. It's been 25 years!
posted by Popular Ethics at 12:32 PM on November 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
My project group had been working for like 48 straight hours in shifts to finish up a senior project. I came in for my shift at 6am on the due date only to find two horrible things: 1) my classmate who had the shift before me was no where to be found, and 2) the 500 page document he left was a complete mess with pictures, paragraphs and page breaks all in crazy places, and the table of content references all wrong. Dejected, I started the task of fixing things page by page. After 10 minutes though, my classmate came back from the washroom and told me to stop immediately! He walked over to my terminal, undid my "fixes", and then changed file -> print -> printers to match our lab printer. Suddenly all of the pagination fixed itself and the document was done. It was a big relief, and left a bit of lasting resentment against old-school programs that cared about what printer they used.
That said, I still think that WP's inline codes were a better approach to document formatting than Word's hidden object parameters. It blows my mind that I still can't get Word to do text-wrapped images without completely breaking every time the text moves. It's been 25 years!
posted by Popular Ethics at 12:32 PM on November 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
This thread needs more Wordstar. At least once it came to DOS, you had the option to use menus until you memorized all the commands. (which were handily printed next to the item in the menu). Not only that, but starting with Wordstar 5, you could get a WYSIWYG preview of your document, so long as you had a computer that supported some kind of graphical mode.
WordPerfect was still pretty good, though, as long as you didn't lose the keyboard overlay. If you did, $DIETY help you if you even wanted to exit the damn thing. At least that was an unmodified F key. In that sense, Word for DOS was better.
That said, what people said upthread about the consistency of WordPerfect's output is an important point. Windows made things so. much. worse. in that respect. WP for Windows had a ton of options to work around the broke-ass printer drivers, but the first few versions would lose their settings or need to be adjusted after a driver update, so it was an enormous pain in the ass. A good source of revenue for a consultant, but a pain in the ass nonetheless.
I haven't been doing desktop support for a few years, but last I saw there were still a few die hards using WP12 or whatever the latest version the firm bought is. It's still available for everyone just in case they need to access any of the old files, though. Even the people who never really used it find it better than pulling paper from the warehouse.
What I really miss, though, is Lotus SmartSuite. It was a way better option back in the Windows 9x days than either WP or Word, at least for general use. All the included programs seemed to run at warp speed compared to the competition.
But the thing that really made people switch to Windows word processors was WYSIWYG, at least if the marketing was to be believed. Back then, people expected there to be a learning curve to use any tool, so arcane key combos were fine, especially if they helped you be more efficient on the slow ass computers of the day. What they hated was so often having an unwanted surprise upon printing, not really being sure what they'd get when the paper came out of the printer.
posted by wierdo at 4:22 PM on November 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
WordPerfect was still pretty good, though, as long as you didn't lose the keyboard overlay. If you did, $DIETY help you if you even wanted to exit the damn thing. At least that was an unmodified F key. In that sense, Word for DOS was better.
That said, what people said upthread about the consistency of WordPerfect's output is an important point. Windows made things so. much. worse. in that respect. WP for Windows had a ton of options to work around the broke-ass printer drivers, but the first few versions would lose their settings or need to be adjusted after a driver update, so it was an enormous pain in the ass. A good source of revenue for a consultant, but a pain in the ass nonetheless.
I haven't been doing desktop support for a few years, but last I saw there were still a few die hards using WP12 or whatever the latest version the firm bought is. It's still available for everyone just in case they need to access any of the old files, though. Even the people who never really used it find it better than pulling paper from the warehouse.
What I really miss, though, is Lotus SmartSuite. It was a way better option back in the Windows 9x days than either WP or Word, at least for general use. All the included programs seemed to run at warp speed compared to the competition.
But the thing that really made people switch to Windows word processors was WYSIWYG, at least if the marketing was to be believed. Back then, people expected there to be a learning curve to use any tool, so arcane key combos were fine, especially if they helped you be more efficient on the slow ass computers of the day. What they hated was so often having an unwanted surprise upon printing, not really being sure what they'd get when the paper came out of the printer.
posted by wierdo at 4:22 PM on November 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
I'm still astonished how in 2020, otherwise aggressive technophiles are still using 1970s editors like emacs and vi. (No, no, please don't see this as an opportunity to explain your retro choices.)
That appears to be exactly what you’re asking for - anyway I don’t really use vim as a primary editor but I do use the key bindings/modal paradigm in most any editor that supports it because, as one of the first comments in the thread addresses, an interface like that is really powerful once you do learn it.
Also who the hell wants proportional fonts for the sort of tasks people use vi and emacs for?
posted by atoxyl at 12:06 AM on November 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
That appears to be exactly what you’re asking for - anyway I don’t really use vim as a primary editor but I do use the key bindings/modal paradigm in most any editor that supports it because, as one of the first comments in the thread addresses, an interface like that is really powerful once you do learn it.
Also who the hell wants proportional fonts for the sort of tasks people use vi and emacs for?
posted by atoxyl at 12:06 AM on November 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
I can't see how a keyboard interface could select an arbitrary section of a page of text more quickly than a mouse pointer
If it’s a truly arbitrary selection it probably isn’t (though there are features available in some such editors/plugins for such editors that allow selection of a precise character onscreen within a few keypresses via a clever search mechanism). But the neat thing about vi is that its commands are sort of a mini language, and if you want to select/operate on characters to the end of the line or an arbitrary number of full lines or a certain number of words or a paragraph/block and so on there’s a concise way to express each of those things.
Now, does one need that? Is typographic efficiency of the essence in writing code (which is the major userbase for these editors)? Not really, but it feels really cool when you’re doing it!
posted by atoxyl at 12:22 AM on November 8, 2020
If it’s a truly arbitrary selection it probably isn’t (though there are features available in some such editors/plugins for such editors that allow selection of a precise character onscreen within a few keypresses via a clever search mechanism). But the neat thing about vi is that its commands are sort of a mini language, and if you want to select/operate on characters to the end of the line or an arbitrary number of full lines or a certain number of words or a paragraph/block and so on there’s a concise way to express each of those things.
Now, does one need that? Is typographic efficiency of the essence in writing code (which is the major userbase for these editors)? Not really, but it feels really cool when you’re doing it!
posted by atoxyl at 12:22 AM on November 8, 2020
When I ran a computer lab in college in the mid-90s, the WordPerfect machines got a lot more requests for use than the Word for Windows machines. Reveal codes always made much more sense than trying to figure out Word's buttons.
And really, when is the last new feature of a word processor you used? There's nothing that I use day-to-day in Google Docs that wasn't in Word 5.1 for Mac that I bought with my first computer. The way we share stuff has changed, but footnotes and page numbers are still a tremendous pain in the ass. Mail merge is cool but I'm not a secretary printing out letters anymore, thank goodness.
When I was working for a university library in the 2000s, the math students all had to learn LaTeX to do their homework. (Which, if memory serves, makes sense as figuring out mathematical formulae was exactly what it was built to do!) I remember reading up on it so I could help one student install it.
Now most of my work is in VS Code, which is fine except I still want to use the keyboard commands from Sublime Text and I can't. Have the same problem with Photoshop, I have NEVER unlearned the shortcut key for the pencil tool and they changed that in version 5.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 11:59 AM on November 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
And really, when is the last new feature of a word processor you used? There's nothing that I use day-to-day in Google Docs that wasn't in Word 5.1 for Mac that I bought with my first computer. The way we share stuff has changed, but footnotes and page numbers are still a tremendous pain in the ass. Mail merge is cool but I'm not a secretary printing out letters anymore, thank goodness.
When I was working for a university library in the 2000s, the math students all had to learn LaTeX to do their homework. (Which, if memory serves, makes sense as figuring out mathematical formulae was exactly what it was built to do!) I remember reading up on it so I could help one student install it.
Now most of my work is in VS Code, which is fine except I still want to use the keyboard commands from Sublime Text and I can't. Have the same problem with Photoshop, I have NEVER unlearned the shortcut key for the pencil tool and they changed that in version 5.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 11:59 AM on November 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
Shift + directional keys to select text, which is a thing that still works well and universally. Directional keys can include Page Down/Up.
posted by theora55 at 2:35 PM on November 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by theora55 at 2:35 PM on November 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
the math students all had to learn LaTeX to do their homework.I write non-math letters to politicians and family members in LaTeX. It's sometimes annoying and the error messages could be radically improved. But, it's so much less annoying than any other option! I don't understand why everyone on the planet doesn't use it. People really memorize how much space to put between the body of a letter an a signature? They change the number of spaces after a period depending on the journal to which they submit? They hard-code reference numbers and waste hours formatting their bibliography by hand? That's what computers are best at. Never having to check whether or not a recommendation letter has correct spacing and headers is really nice. Even more so if you include figures.
Watching my humanities spouse try to use image floats in word is astonishingly painful. It takes twenty minutes to do what TeX does in 10 seconds. Separating format from meaning is something I really appreciate. Especially when if means you can change the entire format of a document by changing two lines of text in the header and never, ever have to specifically reference images or references by number.
posted by eotvos at 9:30 AM on November 9, 2020 [2 favorites]
WordPerfect, with its paired codes, would have been a good html editor.
THIS. When I started working with HTML in the mid-90's, my mind went "Oh, just like WordPerfect with Reveal Codes". However, the tools I were using at the time were not as helpful as WordPerfect had been, years before.
posted by Unwandering star of the North at 3:49 AM on November 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
THIS. When I started working with HTML in the mid-90's, my mind went "Oh, just like WordPerfect with Reveal Codes". However, the tools I were using at the time were not as helpful as WordPerfect had been, years before.
posted by Unwandering star of the North at 3:49 AM on November 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
: because dozens of hidden codes, all contradictory, would be stacked on top of each other, causing the printed output to be bad. Not a great system.
You can easily make formatting break in Word too, but it doesn't give you any ability to robustly debug it, which is stupid since it's XML under the hood.
posted by benzenedream at 1:03 AM on November 12, 2020
You can easily make formatting break in Word too, but it doesn't give you any ability to robustly debug it, which is stupid since it's XML under the hood.
posted by benzenedream at 1:03 AM on November 12, 2020
Wrote all my high school papers in Word Perfect for Amiga. Seeing it again would be a software madeleine.
posted by condour75 at 5:12 AM on November 12, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by condour75 at 5:12 AM on November 12, 2020 [2 favorites]
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You could do amazing things without ever taking your fingers off of the keyboard, which is something I think is missing from a lot of software interfaces nowdays.
posted by eye of newt at 8:35 AM on November 6, 2020 [35 favorites]