6 ms·

Even just reading that home screen brings back strange sense memories. For anyone curious the main font used for this website is the "IBMVGA8" one. As a writer

by CPLX 9y ago

Even just reading that home screen brings back strange sense memories. For anyone curious the main font used for this website is the "IBMVGA8" one. As a writer, I still think drafting things from scratch was best done on a 90's era black background PC running WordPerfect. I guess theoretically it's still possible to do that -- I wonder if anyone makes turnkey systems for that the way some people still specialize in old typewriters.

digi_owl 9y ago
I guess you could try booting freedos from a thumbdrive. Or some kind of console only Linux live boot. And i do believe that George R R Martin is (in)famous for using a DOS setup for writing. That said, i think i have seen a few "distraction free" writing devices pop up on kickstarter. Not sure if any of them reached mass market though. Oh and btw, there is a font selector for the site in the top right corner.
- slantyyz 9y ago
  >> That said, i think i have seen a few "distraction free" writing devices pop up on kickstarter. Not sure if any of them reached mass market though. Aren't those basically rehashed Tandy TRS-80 Model 100's? Those were damned cool devices back in the day.
hh3k0 9y ago
> For anyone curious the main font used for this website is the "IBMVGA8" one. I feel like I should point out that it even says so in the upper right corner -- and there you can variate between 6 fonts for the website, too.
- CPLX 9y ago
  Indeed you can, can't believe I missed that.
csense 9y ago
George R. R. Martin (author of the Game of Thrones novel series that the HBO show is based on, probably one of the most well-known fiction writers in the world right now) actually uses WordStar 4.0 for DOS [1]. [1] https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/videos/george-r-r-martin-tells-conan-his-secret-weapon-a-dos-computer-20140514 https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/videos/george-r-r-martin...
- andyv133 9y ago
  And if you've got joe, you can emulate Wordstar with jstar: https://joe-editor.sourceforge.io/ https://joe-editor.sourceforge.io/ It works well for distraction-free writing.
Xephyrous 9y ago
You can run a headless Linux distro (although that's not exactly turnkey, I know). If you're already running linux, you can hit something like ctrl+alt+F3 to get a commandline only UI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getty_(Unix) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getty_(Unix) Note for anyone who tries this out - to get back to your main session, try ctrl+alt+F1 or ctrl+alt+F2
- gglitch 9y ago
  Last time I was on Ubuntu, ctl+alt+F1 through F6 were virtual terminals; F7 was the gui. Edit: I've usually been on Macs for the last three years, and I miss that functionality almost daily.
  - gglitch 9y ago
    2nd edit: Alt plus the side arrows scrolls between them.
  - LeoPanthera 9y ago
    On most modern distros (I think it was systemd that caused this change?) 1 is now the GUI, 2 is a text console, and 3-7 don't exist unless you manually add them.
    - JdeBP 9y ago
      Graphical splash screens in the RedHat bootstrap process caused the change, about 2 years before systemd even existed. * https://lwn.net/Articles/305047/ https://lwn.net/Articles/305047/ * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BetterStartup http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BetterStartup * https://blogs.gnome.org/halfline/2009/11/28/plymouth-%E2%9F%B6-x-transition/ https://blogs.gnome.org/halfline/2009/11/28/plymouth-%E2%9F%... * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=480113 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=480113
      - LeoPanthera 9y ago
        I stand corrected.
girvo 9y ago
I’m currently in the process of building a case for my Raspberry Pi 3 with a 7” LCD (switchable, so one can use the HDMI instead) and a mechanical keyboard, that boots into my own custom “distro” of Linux that is basically a pure TTY, some fonts, a BusyBox shell and Wordgrinder. While I’m missing the difficult bits (the case, the battery, the switches and so on — I want to be able to use it as a word processsor, a “home computer” plugged into the TV, and a pure keyboard depending on what switches are flipped!) it works wonderfully for distraction free writing. Ctrl-Shift-F1, ‘$ wordgrinder’ and away we go! Best part is, I can swap the SD card out to get the data off it without needing network abilities. Think of it like a DIY Freewrite (née Hemingwrite)
- CodexArcanum 9y ago
  I've been considering building something very similar myself! I hope it turns out well, and do write a post about it!
  - shakna 9y ago
    I burnt out two cheap touchscreens after failing to follow poorly translated docs. So, I gave up on doing it myself, and got a PocketCHIP. (Cost effective, but less exciting). It's not a terrible piece of kit.
hnal943 9y ago
>Even just reading that home screen brings back strange sense memories. Agree. It's like a smell memory. For me, I'm transported back to playing MINERVGA.
- CPLX 9y ago
  For me it's Rogue. Those upside down exclamation points will forever be potions in my head.
Joeri 9y ago
I’ve used writeroom in the past to get a similar distraction-free writing experience.
shakna 9y ago
> I guess theoretically it's still possible to do that -- I wonder if anyone makes turnkey systems for that the way some people still specialize in old typewriters. I still run WordPerfect. No other writing software has come close to making that same experience. Til Win8.1, I was able to get it running natively with a little bit of effort, but it became too much of a hassle at that point. Now, I run Win3.1 inside DOSBox, with WordPerfect installed. It's more stable than the my old IBM PC was, so I'm fairly happy, though crashes do still occur. The keymap differences do take some getting used to when swapping between everyday things and WP though: F1->Escape, F3->F1, etc. Getting files from WP to the rest of the world isn't entirely straight forward, and I've found a lot of the WP->DOCX converters fail with typesetting and other issues, so I just print to PDF now.
- vog 9y ago
  Very interesting approach! I often hear people complain about how all programs in the old days were more efficient, but I never met anybody who actually lived up to the logical conclusion. [1] > I run Win3.1 inside DOSBox Out of curiosity: What is the avantage of DOSBox compared to QEMU for your use case? > The keymap differences do take some getting used to when swapping between everyday things and WP though: F1->Escape, F3->F1, etc. Can't you just define different mappings in your virtualization tool? (DOSBox) [1] Except for large institutes like banks, air traffic control, etc. working with huge legacy systems, which is perhaps the other extreme.
  - shakna 9y ago
    I've actually done a lot of work with legacy systems, maybe I'm a bit sentimental. > Out of curiosity: What is the avantage of DOSBox compared to QEMU for your use case? None, for the most part. DOSBox is a little better documented around things that might break. I chose DOSBox a few years back, because I still had my Windows 3.1 disks, but I didn't have any DOS disks anymore. Which gave me the option of Virtual Machine + FreeDOS, or Dosbox. And FreeDOS was very unstable at the time. I know lots of publishers for DOS-era software are gone, and so people do tend to choose to pirate if they want to get hold of that sort of thing, but I have and continue to contract to the government for very sensitive areas, so I always have to walk a legal tightrope. So, I can only use my old software. Thankfully, I've never thrown out my floppy disks. I imaged them all in about '02, being in a country that allows you to transfer your owned data into half a dozen different mediums as you see fit. I have actually been having some mounting issues with Dosbox recently, so I might think about tearing it down and building a VM with FreeDOS instead sometime soon. (Though thanks to DOS' super simple structure, that doesn't mean reinstalling everything from scratch). --- > Can't you just define different mappings in your virtualization tool? (DOSBox) You could. But it's just WordPerfect. They decided to ignore the standard, and go with a keymapping that made a little more sense, because of keyboard designs back then. However, I've got a couple dozen programs I use, and I'd rather not have WordPerfect with it's own keymapping and a restart to switch between it and the default. It isn't particularly onerous, just requires a bit of mental task switching. I've written two novels in WP, so the keymappings are ingrained, I just have to get into the "flow" of things before my mind stops hitting the wrong key.
noir_lord 9y ago
You can get a good setup with FocusWriter https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/ https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/ (don't be put off by the screenshots, it is very customisable) and one of those fonts.

by CPLX 9y ago

digi_owl 9y ago

I guess you could try booting freedos from a thumbdrive. Or some kind of console only Linux live boot. And i do believe that George R R Martin is (in)famous for using a DOS setup for writing. That said, i think i have seen a few "distraction free" writing devices pop up on kickstarter. Not sure if any of them reached mass market though. Oh and btw, there is a font selector for the site in the top right corner.

slantyyz 9y ago
>> That said, i think i have seen a few "distraction free" writing devices pop up on kickstarter. Not sure if any of them reached mass market though. Aren't those basically rehashed Tandy TRS-80 Model 100's? Those were damned cool devices back in the day.

hh3k0 9y ago

> For anyone curious the main font used for this website is the "IBMVGA8" one. I feel like I should point out that it even says so in the upper right corner -- and there you can variate between 6 fonts for the website, too.

CPLX 9y ago
Indeed you can, can't believe I missed that.

csense 9y ago

George R. R. Martin (author of the Game of Thrones novel series that the HBO show is based on, probably one of the most well-known fiction writers in the world right now) actually uses WordStar 4.0 for DOS [1]. [1] https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/videos/george-r-r-martin-tells-conan-his-secret-weapon-a-dos-computer-20140514 https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/videos/george-r-r-martin...

andyv133 9y ago
And if you've got joe, you can emulate Wordstar with jstar: https://joe-editor.sourceforge.io/ https://joe-editor.sourceforge.io/ It works well for distraction-free writing.

Xephyrous 9y ago

You can run a headless Linux distro (although that's not exactly turnkey, I know). If you're already running linux, you can hit something like ctrl+alt+F3 to get a commandline only UI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getty_(Unix) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getty_(Unix) Note for anyone who tries this out - to get back to your main session, try ctrl+alt+F1 or ctrl+alt+F2

gglitch 9y ago
Last time I was on Ubuntu, ctl+alt+F1 through F6 were virtual terminals; F7 was the gui. Edit: I've usually been on Macs for the last three years, and I miss that functionality almost daily.
- gglitch 9y ago
  2nd edit: Alt plus the side arrows scrolls between them.
- LeoPanthera 9y ago
  On most modern distros (I think it was systemd that caused this change?) 1 is now the GUI, 2 is a text console, and 3-7 don't exist unless you manually add them.
  - JdeBP 9y ago
    Graphical splash screens in the RedHat bootstrap process caused the change, about 2 years before systemd even existed. * https://lwn.net/Articles/305047/ https://lwn.net/Articles/305047/ * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BetterStartup http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BetterStartup * https://blogs.gnome.org/halfline/2009/11/28/plymouth-%E2%9F%B6-x-transition/ https://blogs.gnome.org/halfline/2009/11/28/plymouth-%E2%9F%... * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=480113 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=480113
    - LeoPanthera 9y ago
      I stand corrected.

girvo 9y ago

I’m currently in the process of building a case for my Raspberry Pi 3 with a 7” LCD (switchable, so one can use the HDMI instead) and a mechanical keyboard, that boots into my own custom “distro” of Linux that is basically a pure TTY, some fonts, a BusyBox shell and Wordgrinder. While I’m missing the difficult bits (the case, the battery, the switches and so on — I want to be able to use it as a word processsor, a “home computer” plugged into the TV, and a pure keyboard depending on what switches are flipped!) it works wonderfully for distraction free writing. Ctrl-Shift-F1, ‘$ wordgrinder’ and away we go! Best part is, I can swap the SD card out to get the data off it without needing network abilities. Think of it like a DIY Freewrite (née Hemingwrite)

CodexArcanum 9y ago
I've been considering building something very similar myself! I hope it turns out well, and do write a post about it!
- shakna 9y ago
  I burnt out two cheap touchscreens after failing to follow poorly translated docs. So, I gave up on doing it myself, and got a PocketCHIP. (Cost effective, but less exciting). It's not a terrible piece of kit.

hnal943 9y ago

>Even just reading that home screen brings back strange sense memories. Agree. It's like a smell memory. For me, I'm transported back to playing MINERVGA.

CPLX 9y ago
For me it's Rogue. Those upside down exclamation points will forever be potions in my head.

Joeri 9y ago

I’ve used writeroom in the past to get a similar distraction-free writing experience.

shakna 9y ago

> I guess theoretically it's still possible to do that -- I wonder if anyone makes turnkey systems for that the way some people still specialize in old typewriters. I still run WordPerfect. No other writing software has come close to making that same experience. Til Win8.1, I was able to get it running natively with a little bit of effort, but it became too much of a hassle at that point. Now, I run Win3.1 inside DOSBox, with WordPerfect installed. It's more stable than the my old IBM PC was, so I'm fairly happy, though crashes do still occur. The keymap differences do take some getting used to when swapping between everyday things and WP though: F1->Escape, F3->F1, etc. Getting files from WP to the rest of the world isn't entirely straight forward, and I've found a lot of the WP->DOCX converters fail with typesetting and other issues, so I just print to PDF now.

vog 9y ago
Very interesting approach! I often hear people complain about how all programs in the old days were more efficient, but I never met anybody who actually lived up to the logical conclusion. [1] > I run Win3.1 inside DOSBox Out of curiosity: What is the avantage of DOSBox compared to QEMU for your use case? > The keymap differences do take some getting used to when swapping between everyday things and WP though: F1->Escape, F3->F1, etc. Can't you just define different mappings in your virtualization tool? (DOSBox) [1] Except for large institutes like banks, air traffic control, etc. working with huge legacy systems, which is perhaps the other extreme.
- shakna 9y ago
  I've actually done a lot of work with legacy systems, maybe I'm a bit sentimental. > Out of curiosity: What is the avantage of DOSBox compared to QEMU for your use case? None, for the most part. DOSBox is a little better documented around things that might break. I chose DOSBox a few years back, because I still had my Windows 3.1 disks, but I didn't have any DOS disks anymore. Which gave me the option of Virtual Machine + FreeDOS, or Dosbox. And FreeDOS was very unstable at the time. I know lots of publishers for DOS-era software are gone, and so people do tend to choose to pirate if they want to get hold of that sort of thing, but I have and continue to contract to the government for very sensitive areas, so I always have to walk a legal tightrope. So, I can only use my old software. Thankfully, I've never thrown out my floppy disks. I imaged them all in about '02, being in a country that allows you to transfer your owned data into half a dozen different mediums as you see fit. I have actually been having some mounting issues with Dosbox recently, so I might think about tearing it down and building a VM with FreeDOS instead sometime soon. (Though thanks to DOS' super simple structure, that doesn't mean reinstalling everything from scratch). --- > Can't you just define different mappings in your virtualization tool? (DOSBox) You could. But it's just WordPerfect. They decided to ignore the standard, and go with a keymapping that made a little more sense, because of keyboard designs back then. However, I've got a couple dozen programs I use, and I'd rather not have WordPerfect with it's own keymapping and a restart to switch between it and the default. It isn't particularly onerous, just requires a bit of mental task switching. I've written two novels in WP, so the keymappings are ingrained, I just have to get into the "flow" of things before my mind stops hitting the wrong key.

noir_lord 9y ago

You can get a good setup with FocusWriter https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/ https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/ (don't be put off by the screenshots, it is very customisable) and one of those fonts.