On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 11:33 AM Bret Johnson <bretj...@juno.com> wrote: > > I personally like DOS WordPerfect a lot -- version 6.2 is what I have and > what I use to write the documentation for my DOS programs. I've never used > WordStar myself.
It's a matter of personal preference. I learned WordStar in the early days when the original IBM PC was first appearing on corporate desktops as an engine to run the Lotus 123 spreadsheet. WordStar was the second editor you learned, because the one you preferred might not be available on the PC you needed to work on, but WS probably was. WS was keyboard independent. It used Ctrl-key combos to specify editing commands. If your keyboard had a Ctrl key and standard alphabetic characters, you could run WS. WS originated on CP/M where there was wide variation in keyboards used, so it made sense. The WS command set was implemented by a number of other editors as the default or a selectable option. I stayed fluent long after moving away from original WordStar, and had Gnu Emacs customized to use WS commands to avoid retraining my fingers. MicroPro International, WS's vendor, took their eye off the ball in a misguided attempt to diversify. WP for DOS promptly ate them for lunch and became the default standard. WordPerfect took its eye off the ball and waited too long to develop for Windows, and Microsoft Word ate WP for lunch. (And I recall much angst back when IBM changed their keyboard layout from two rows of 5 Fkeys down the left side to one row of 12 Fkeys across the top, Many WP users had gotten used to being able to use WP Fkey combos with the pinky of their left hand on the Ctrl key and and other finger on the Fkeys. They could do things without moving their hands from the home row. Then the KB layout changed and productivity plummeted... :-p ) > Anyway, like Dennis indicated the files probably aren't "split" like you > might be thinking and need to be "combined" again before they are usable. In > DOS programs there are usually just a bunch of separate files, several on > each floppy with the installation program on the first disk. With many > programs, all you need to do is copy all of the files into a common directory > and install from there. I think WP works that way, but don't remember for > sure. That's my recollection. I actually have a set of WP for DOS installation floppies, but they are on 5.25" 360K floppies I can no longer read. <...> > Also like Dennis mentioned, there is a lot of information about WP on the > website he mentioned. It's run by Ed Mendelson who was a frequent > contributor to the venerable PC Magazine back in the day when DOS was still > pretty popular. The site is mostly oriented towards running WP in a virtual > machine called vDosWP, a fork of DOSBox specifically oriented at running WP > under newer versions of Windows. I'm able to run WP in other VM's as well -- > as long as it will run FreeDOS, it will probably also run WP. vDos was a fork of DOSbox intended specifically for DOS character mode productivity applications, like word processors. It drops the specialized support for DOS graphics and sound. I run the vDOS Plus fork of vDOS under Windows, but have successfully run DOS programs under Linux and Android using ports of DOSbox. ______ Dennis _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
