4 ms·

Wordstar was one of those programs back in the 80's that made me wonder how masochistic some computer users would be in order to try and remember all those dot

Wordstar was one of those programs back in the 80's that made me wonder how masochistic some computer users would be in order to try and remember all those dot commands and Ctrl keystrokes. The along came WordPerfect and made Wordstar look like UX bliss... For the life of me I can't recall which maniac thought up Shift-F7 (IIRC) as the 'Quit' key for WordPerfect.

Gibbon1 8y ago
WordPerfect document formatting was and is total trash compared to Wordstar's.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Wordperfect was far more powerful than Wordstar, you just had to get used to operating in their strange kinda-sorta-but not really WSYWIG mode; and pull up the codes view to sort out occasional oddities. All in the most unfriendly set of shortcuts and codes imaginable. :) WP had unbeatable table of contents, footnotes and index generation at the time - far better than Wordstar, and Word.
  - chx 8y ago
    To this day I am utterly lost without Reveal Codes. So lost. Something is happening to this text... but why? Gosh.
  - eggy 8y ago
    Do you mean WYSIWYG? I am not familiar otherwise.
    - eggy 8y ago
      I was genuinely asking since I couldn't find WSYWIG vs WYSIWYG, and thought it might be something else. Oh well...
- Shorel 8y ago
  I used to live in "show codes" mode, a.k.a. F3 In my opinion it was miles ahead of Wordstar and a bit similar to what is now HTML tags. The macro language of wordperfect 5.1 did let me add auto-correction for common typos. And some other things like: if typing a comma after a space, move the comma to be before the space, and the same for dots. I'm sure wordstar was nice, but for me it was just not as powerful.
Angostura 8y ago
I can still remember a few. ^KQ was quit, ISTR ^KS to save.
- tinus_hn 8y ago
  These were also used by the ‘joe’ editor, right?
  - wahern 8y ago
    s/were/are/ JOE 4.6 was released just this year.
    - sehugg 8y ago
      Still my primary editor on cli.
warrenmca 8y ago
The point was that those commands used muscle-memory and were conceived so that the majority of editing tasks could be executed with leaving the "home" position
mhd 8y ago
Function key overlays explain a lot.

Gibbon1 8y ago

WordPerfect document formatting was and is total trash compared to Wordstar's.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Wordperfect was far more powerful than Wordstar, you just had to get used to operating in their strange kinda-sorta-but not really WSYWIG mode; and pull up the codes view to sort out occasional oddities. All in the most unfriendly set of shortcuts and codes imaginable. :) WP had unbeatable table of contents, footnotes and index generation at the time - far better than Wordstar, and Word.
- chx 8y ago
  To this day I am utterly lost without Reveal Codes. So lost. Something is happening to this text... but why? Gosh.
- eggy 8y ago
  Do you mean WYSIWYG? I am not familiar otherwise.
  - eggy 8y ago
    I was genuinely asking since I couldn't find WSYWIG vs WYSIWYG, and thought it might be something else. Oh well...
Shorel 8y ago
I used to live in "show codes" mode, a.k.a. F3 In my opinion it was miles ahead of Wordstar and a bit similar to what is now HTML tags. The macro language of wordperfect 5.1 did let me add auto-correction for common typos. And some other things like: if typing a comma after a space, move the comma to be before the space, and the same for dots. I'm sure wordstar was nice, but for me it was just not as powerful.

Angostura 8y ago

I can still remember a few. ^KQ was quit, ISTR ^KS to save.

tinus_hn 8y ago
These were also used by the ‘joe’ editor, right?
- wahern 8y ago
  s/were/are/ JOE 4.6 was released just this year.
  - sehugg 8y ago
    Still my primary editor on cli.

warrenmca 8y ago

The point was that those commands used muscle-memory and were conceived so that the majority of editing tasks could be executed with leaving the "home" position

mhd 8y ago

Function key overlays explain a lot.