On Fri, 7 May 2021 at 03:58, dmccunney <dennis.mccun...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Once upon a time, an outfit called Mark of the Unicorn made an editor > for CP/M called Mince, which was an acronym for Mince Is Not Complete > Emacs. It used the Emacs design and keyboard mappings, but there were > limits to what you could do in CP/M where you *might* have 48K to hold > OS, program, and data. It was ported to MS DOS by MOTU. As far as I > can tell, it was then acquired by a company called Underware and > sold/supported by them. > > Borland acquired the product from Underware, and released a version as > The Final World. Final Word was then released in a new version and > renamed Sprint. Sprint was a popular word processor for MS DOS, > notable for an extensive macro language making it more like "real" > emacs.. As DOS became moribund and Windows took over. Borland > withdrew Sprint from the market. I have a copy of Sprint sent to me > in the original distribution archive, but he didn't specify where *he* > got it. Lacking provenance, I *didn't* make it available for download > from TextEditors. I just documented that it used to exist. Fair. I tried Sprint back when it was new. It was a remarkable program, with 2 compelling features: • it could emulate the UIs of most of the leading DOS WPs of the time, so whatever one you knew, you could use Sprint; • it saved continuously in the background, so even if the PC crashed, you shouldn't lose more than a word or 2 of your text. The snags were: #1 was rapidly becoming irrelevant as everyone's DOS apps converged on the IBM CUA standard of look and feel, as even today, most GUIs still honour, even on Linux... ... and #2 didn't work so reliably with the fairly new tech of DOS disk caches that could cache writes as well as reads. Meanwhile, Sprint was relatively poor at formatting and layout, and printer drivers, which were becoming killer features at the time. A very good idea that came along a bit too late. > Borland has been gradually releasing ancient stuff under a Community > license, and things like Turbo Pascal and Turbo C are available as a > free download and free to use. If memory serves, source is available > too, but of questionable use. Good luck acquiring the proper > toolchain and being *able* to change and rebuild.it. > > I recall Brief being promised, but not available the last time I > looked. Should it *become* available. I\ll link to it on TextEditors/ I never used Brief but then I was not and am not really a programmer. However I note that there is a GPL clone of it: https://github.com/adamyg/grief And a commercial one: https://crisp.com/ Neither supports DOS, but as Grief looks to be a text-mode app, it might be feasible to port it. Probably a lot of work for someone, though. > There *isn't* one. WordStar was never formally made freeware. It was > simply abandoned. Note that the WordStar.org site explicitly *states* > you will not find binaries there, and why.. It's front and center on > the site.. Indeed so. There is the unfinished-but-working WordTsar: http://wordtsar.ca/ > Bluntly, the implicit assumption I might *not* have is offensive and > personally *insultiing*., If you want to continue this conversation > with me, you can give me a formal apology and *not* do that again.. To be honest, I have felt the same way about several people's replies to me here on this list. I was part of this community 12+ years ago, but I found the tone rather hostile so I left. Now I have returned, because I am intermittently pursuing a couple of DOS-related projects of my own, I quickly remembered why I left. All I can say is: it's not just you. :-( I get a strong feeling of being treated like an idiot and condescended to. -- Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
