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Reminds me of George RR Martin (author of the Game of Thrones books) who uses DOS for writing books. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27407502 https://w

Reminds me of George RR Martin (author of the Game of Thrones books) who uses DOS for writing books. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27407502 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27407502

taviso 6y ago
I use WordPerfect 6.2 for DOS, not for any nostalgia or legacy reasons, just because it's a full-featured and highly configurable word processor that I can use in a terminal. I only use it for writing letters and so on, nothing too serious, but I prefer to stay in the terminal if I can. It works beautifully under dosemu2, which has a terminal mode that can translate various VGA modes into S-Lang calls (S-Lang is like ncurses, so no X11 required). I find this technically impressive and makes a lot of old DOS software indistinguishable from native linux software; stdin/stdout, parameters, host filesystem access, etc all work transparently. Here's a screenshot: https://twitter.com/taviso/status/1272670107043368960/photo/1 https://twitter.com/taviso/status/1272670107043368960/photo/... It can import TTF fonts and print to PostScript, which I just pipe into ps2pdf and then handle on the host. I'm not aware of any other full-featured modern word processor that can run in an xterm. I know about wordgrinder but it's very very basic. You could use a text editor, but it's not ideal for layout because it doesn't understand things like proportional font geometries - you need that to know how lines/glyphs will fit on the physical page when it's printed. You could write it in some form of markup, html, TeX, markdown, whatever, but if I'm just trying to format a document I prefer a word processor. (Note: dosemu2 doesn't require virtual 8086 mode, so it works fine on x86-64)
- boring_twenties 6y ago
  Great idea, but how can one get their hands on this software nowadays? I can only assume it's not sold anywhere?
  - taviso 6y ago
    You can still purchase it, but it's a lot of hoops to jump through! http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/links.html#obtain http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/links.html#obtain There is still a community (apparently mostly paralegals) who actively use it and answer questions, e.g. http://wpdos.org http://wpdos.org and https://www.wpuniverse.com/ https://www.wpuniverse.com/
    - coronadisaster 6y ago
      > http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/links.html#obtain http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/links.html#obtain Looks like they deleted the file ... now 404 not found...
      - banana_giraffe 6y ago
        Odd, it works for me. It's also an odd little page. It includes directions to buy it, if you already have a copy. If you don't have a copy, it includes some details on how to use eBay.
        coronadisaster 6y ago
        https://i.imgur.com/hQvs1X3.png https://i.imgur.com/hQvs1X3.png
        brewmarche 6y ago
        http not https
        coronadisaster 6y ago
        oops, thanks...had the 'encrypt all sites' setting to ON in https everywhere.
    - jtchang 6y ago
      Who is Carol Reese? And how is she related to Corel and WordPerfect?!
- jhoechtl 6y ago
  WP6.2, fond memories. How is this mode called where you can see and edit every control sequence you entered like bold and italics formatting?
  - williamjackson 6y ago
    Reveal Codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect#Reveal_codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect#Reveal_codes
  - Beldin 6y ago
    While I've seen its real name now, for me this will always be the Under Water Screen.
- toast0 6y ago
  > I'm not aware of any other full-featured modern word processor that can run in an xterm Word Perfect was available for UNIX as well. The SCO binaries might run with iBCS. I don't know if that would provide a significantly different experience than running the DOS version in dosemu though.
  - kjs3 6y ago
    I tried running WP for SCO under iBCS 10-15 years ago. I couldn't get it to work. Don't remember all the details but it seemed they cheated with some of the video routines and I mostly got a corrupted screen. I didn't spend a lot of time on it, though, and I very well might have just not hit on the right incantations.
- lqet 6y ago
  Would you be so kind to post an example Postscript file generated by WordPerfect?
  - taviso 6y ago
    Sure, I normally have this in my .dosemurc: $_lpt1 = "dosprint" Which just pipes the printer port output into a bash script that runs ps2pdf, but I changed it to save to a file instead. https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/wppostscript.ps.txt https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/wppostscript.ps.txt
    - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
      Oh, nicely formatted and readable PostScript. I wish the Windows drivers could do that.
- badsectoracula 6y ago
  There is Wordgrinder[0] and can export to LaTeX for printing. In classic Unix tradition, it looks way more plain than the screenshots of WordPerfect you posted :-P. [0] http://cowlark.com/wordgrinder/screenshots.html http://cowlark.com/wordgrinder/screenshots.html
- anthk 6y ago
  >nto S-Lang calls So like SLRN and Jed? Amazing. I used DOSEmu back in the day for Redneck Rampage under an AMD Athlon (Dear DOSBox users, DOSEmu was zillions times faster than DOSBox, I ran it at native speeds). This is impressive.
- anthk 6y ago
  Also I'd use WP 6.1 for DOS in Spanish if it wasn't a "little" inconvenience: we don't use Pesetas as a currency anymore, but I think there's an Euro patch somewere. EDIT: On graphics, that's a solved problem. Everyone uses framebuffer today, even on obsolete chipsets it's doable. Just map VGA calls to FB and everything would be fast enough, I think.
- simonblack 6y ago
  I use WordStar when programming in CP/M. I use 'jstar' (one of the 'joe' alter-egos) which uses the same commands when programming in Linux.
  - anthk 6y ago
    You'll love Wordtsar then.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  I believe George R. R. Martin has said he uses some kind of ancient word processing software to write the GoT novels.
  - fastball 6y ago
    Might want to use the past tense of "to write", otherwise you're giving GRRM the benefit of the doubt when you say he is writing GoT novels...
  - superhuzza 6y ago
    DOS machine, disconnected from the internet, running WordStar 4.0 https://www.cnet.com/news/george-r-r-martin-writes-with-a-dos-word-processor/ https://www.cnet.com/news/george-r-r-martin-writes-with-a-do...
- cafard 6y ago
  I have known lawyers and legal secretaries who just would not give up on WordPerfect, I think because of the footnotes. The two that I most recently had dealings with have since retired, but I'd be anything but surprised to learn that their are recent .wpd (is it?) files on the General Counsel's Office's shared drive. I liked WordPerfect well enough from 4.2 through 5.1. Version 6 on Windows was not good. Even a slow typist (me) could get ahead of the cursor. But at some point my employer switched to Word and I haven't been back.
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    can confirm, i worked for a company producing an online version of their legal books, we could export pages to word and... word perfect!
  - dpvan 6y ago
    During the 4.X and 5.X era at WP, the company paid very close attention to the needs of the legal market and WP could do things with a couple of keystrokes that would take 10 minutes with MS Word. WP also had a potent macro capability and a good macro editor as well. I was practicing law at this time and had created 80-99 WP macros that made legal docs appear like magic. There was no e-filing and court clerks and judges could be more than a little picky about the formatting of the paper documents they received. If a doc wasn’t formatted in the proper manner, some clerks would refuse to file it and return the doc to the lawyer’s office for a re-do.
    - dpvan 6y ago
      The acquisition of WP by Novell was a disaster. Way different corporate cultures and leadership styles. Ashton and Bastian had been generous with stock grants to key people, particularly on the technical side. Most of the key people below the two founders had enough money that they didn’t have to put up with the sharp elbows and confrontational styles that predominated at Novell. Combine a brain drain with a Microsoft push for Windows and built-in integration with the first passable version of Word and you had a recipe for disaster. Some of the WP people who remained claimed that MS had mislead them about Windows vs DOS roadmap and been slow in providing Windows info necessary for WP engineers to build a decent first release of WP for the new release of Windows, but I could never determine if this was what had really happened or just sour grapes because WP stumbled badly after the ownership change.
- Crontab 6y ago
  I really don't want a word processor, per se, so much as I want really robust (realtime) text wrapping/unwrapping as I edit paragraphs. I've tried to get Vim and Emacs to do reflows but both were very flakey compared to something like WordPerfect for DOS.
  - Bud 6y ago
    BBEdit might be just right for you.
    - Crontab 6y ago
      My apologies, I was specifically referring to text-based/console-based applications. All the GUI text editors seem to wrap and unwrap just fine.
      - jaclaz 6y ago
        Not exactly a word processor but it seems to me like you could try (if you can find it) the TSE or QEdit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_SemWare_Editor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_SemWare_Editor what Qedit (often renamed simply to Q.exe) was capable of doing in the (good) old times was incredible.
  - genuinebyte 6y ago
    I think I know what you mean. I try to wrap at 80 col. and I often need to go back and edit a paragraph, which breaks all my wrapping.
  - lbruder 6y ago
    Have you tried soft line wrapping in GNU nano (M-S)? As long as you're running nano in an 80 column wide window, that should work fine.
- immigrantsheep 6y ago
  There is a modern-ish clone of Wordstar around as well called WordTsar http://wordtsar.ca http://wordtsar.ca
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    Doesn't RR Martin use the original Wordstar? I remember reading about him using an old school physical word processor and USB-floppy drive when he needs to backup/transfer his work.
    - Bad_CRC 6y ago
      Came here just for the GRRM comment :) But for I can see, he is NOT really using it...
  - pier25 6y ago
    Woah. Apparently the guy who made it also uses it to write his novels. http://geraldbrandt.com/ http://geraldbrandt.com/
- sys_64738 6y ago
  What about Protext from Arnor? Another text only word processor now available for free for the Atari ST, Amiga, and PC. https://web.archive.org/web/20140825104412/http://www.tigerteam.co.uk/protext/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140825104412/http://www.tigert...
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > […] just because it's a full-featured and highly configurable word processor that I can use in a terminal. The 'reveal codes' functionality is something that I always liked with WP, and that no other word processors seems to have implemented.
  - hackyhacky 6y ago
    Nota Bene is another text-based word processor from that era. It defaults to showing embedded formatting commands. The primary means of operation is via an integrated DOS-like command prompt.
    - tssva 6y ago
      Nota Bene although no longer text based still exists and is actively developed. Nota Bene used the XyWrite word processor engine. XyWrite was very popular in news rooms back in the day.
    - JdeBP 6y ago
      That's a description that also matches Arnor's Protext. The command window was the bottom half of the screen, and one embedded rulers and suchlike into the document text with ">" lines.
  - oska 6y ago
    This is testing my memory but I think WordStar from the early to mid 80s had something similar. Codes all started with a ^ (again from memory) and their visibility could be toggled on and off.
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  I have very fond memories of WP5.1.... I still have some Model-M keyboards, so I could really recreate the "glory days" if I wanted. I could print out the little F-key cheat sheet for the keyboard as well. But... What about Unicode? Lack of Unicode seems like a dealbreaker for a lot of use cases. Even if you're not using Unicode, seems like you'd eventually want to work with Unicode text. As an engineer, a lot of the "word processing" I do involves cutting and pasting text from other sources (citations, code samples, names, etc) that tend to be chock full of non-ASCII characters. Or has this been solved somehow? I see that there are various hacks involved in getting support for the Euro symbol. What about a general purposes solution? I know that WP5.1 had support for international character sets. Perhaps somebody's cooked up an emulation layer that translates Unicode into whatever it is that WP needs.
- sickcodebruh 6y ago
  My parents got their first computer in the 90s so my mom could do freelance work editing medical texts on nights and weekends after her day job. She used Word Perfect and she taught me to type with it, I still remember the exact shade of blue and the white text. She’d use Reveal Codes and I thought all the special characters were so cool. I can still picture her sitting at the desk working on it while I’d play video games. I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. They’re vivid memories that are kind of meaningful that I haven’t thought about in decades, tied directly to that application. Weird how that works.
  - rconti 6y ago
    Somehow WordPerfect/MultiMate with reveal codes is still a more intuitive text formatting tool than anything I've used since. Or maybe it's just nostalgia. There's nothing I hate more these days than trying to format text in WYSIWYG editors, in-browser confluence and jira, notepads, markdown, etc.
- drpixie 6y ago
  Brilliant - I've long observed that almost everything we are doing with our GHz computers, we were doing previously with old MHz systems. We have more pixels (but use them for the same result), more memory (but everything has grown to fill it), more bandwidth (but websites packed with junk bytes). The only "new" thing enabled by our bigger systems is "big data", which is largely a process of finding patterns that will fool the user/purchaser/customer.
  - abraxas 6y ago
    Well that and high quality video. One and only one tangible benefit of this new web is better quality video. Everything else sucks as much or worse than in the days of Altavista and punch the monkey ads.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - nl 6y ago
      And browsers that don't crash all the time.
      - narwally 6y ago
        And search is good now. But apart from the HD video, the search, the aqueducts, the roads, the education, the browsers that don't crash all the time, and the wine... what have the Romans ever done for us?
        nl 6y ago
        Oh, and XMLHttpRequest and Websockets, so we don't have to rely on META REFRESH in hidden frames...
        1_player 6y ago
        > And search is good now. I disagree. Searching for keywords is practically impossible nowadays, with all smart AI-powered™ search engines that unhelpfully return results that are not relevant to your query. And SEO spam, which has killed the niche high signal-to-noise handcrafted websites for content aggregators.
- slvrspoon 6y ago
  microsoft word today - with "onedrive" and "server-connected DRM" sucks so bad when you are offline just trying use YOUR @#$23 PC it is a travesty. just wait til the exact same UX comes to your automobile. and after that...
  - BostonEnginerd 6y ago
    I had Office decide that checking the license at the start of an Internet-free 6hr flight was a good idea. At least I had brought a good book with me.
- dh303 6y ago
  It would be great if one of the "classic" word processors (WP, MS Word, WordStar) would get open sourced, so it could be updated and made useful in the 21st century.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  I had that version of WordPerfect on my 286! I remember how you could install the Trident video drivers and get some pretty high console resolutions. F11/Reveal Codes was super helpful too. I wish modern word processors had something similar. It basically shows you the equivalent of formatting tags. I have the Win3.1 version of WP from that era in a DosBox. I've been meaning to compare it's grammar check to modern word processors. It was way ahead of its time. I know Corel bough it, but it looks like it spun off again. I wonder if the current release still has any of the old source code, or if it was just rewritten and has the name for the brand: https://www.wordperfect.com/en/ https://www.wordperfect.com/en/
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    Still owned by Corel (they have a weird "Corel Advantage" logo at the bottom of that marketing site and the Contact Us link goes to a bunch of Corel info). The Corel of 2020 seems a fascinating Enterprise Licensing zombie. They appear to make all their revenue from (very) legacy Enterprise Licenses and government contracts and all of the software seems stuck in a time warp stasis with only the bare minimum of maintenance (presumably just enough to keep the Enterprise Licenses alive and well). It's almost sad to see how many classic computing brands they own and let languish in this state.
- wly_cdgr 6y ago
  ...Cool?
- dfboyd 6y ago
  I use troff (groff) under Linux. The really freaky thing is that you already have groff on your Mac -- it's installed by default.
  - massysett 6y ago
    What macros do you use? I have some simple programs that generate documents to print out, and I use LaTeX and a bunch of packages. It takes hundreds of megabytes of software with all the packages. I've long toyed with using the MOM macros but can't get motivated to rewrite my programs and learn troff. It used to bother me that groff doesn't support Unicode (as far as I can tell) but then realized that all I write is English so why am I fetishizing Unicode? groff will get me any accented character that I would realistically need.
    - dfboyd 6y ago
      Just the plain .ms macros. Plus "pic", I like that a lot.
    - smartmic 6y ago
      You can have UTF-8 with groff using the preconv [1] tool, just pass the "-k" or "-Kutf8" paramater. It will preprocess your source and replace Unicode symbols with its groff special character form. Of course, the built-in standard fonts do not support many glyphs but it is no big thing to use a more Unicode friendly font like DejaVu Sans or Noto, check [2]. So this is my setup using MOM macros for nice typesetting. But I fully agree on your last point, in the end I seldom need the Unicode universe for most of my documents. [1] https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/preconv.1.html https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/preconv.1.html [2] http://www.schaffter.ca/mom/momdoc/appendices.html#fonts http://www.schaffter.ca/mom/momdoc/appendices.html#fonts
      - anthk 6y ago
        https://n-t-roff.github.io/heirloom/doctools.html https://n-t-roff.github.io/heirloom/doctools.html
    - 6y ago
- lsllc 6y ago
  I was a huge fan of Wordstar 6! Wrote so much with that thing ... way better than Word, Pages etc. even still. It's no wonder I prefer Markdown for writing / documents etc. I should try to see if I can get Wordstar running under dosemu2 (I probably have a 3.5" floppy somewhere with it on, but I don't think I have the disk drive to read it).
- apricot 6y ago
  I had no idea dosemu2 could translate VGA to S-Lang. That's very nice, and I will look into it. WordPerfect was a great word processor, I remember using version 5.1 for years because it was wicked fast, rock stable, and most importantly, it was predictable. By contrast, MS Word -- even today -- seems to have a mind of its own. You move an image, and suddenly all your numbered bullet points appear in a different font except for the last one, and nothing short of retyping the whole thing in another document seems to fix it.
  - D13Fd 6y ago
    Have you actually used the GUI version of WordPerfect? I was forced to use it heavily for a year of pure writing for a previous job. It's incredibly unpredictable. It's like whack-a-mole. You make text in one place bold, and all the sudden some of your footnote text on a different page becomes bold. The people at that job who were really good knew all of the tricks, digging into the codes that WordPerfect inserts to address various issues. But even then, it was an extra step, and I never became as productive in WordPerfect as I had been in Word. Plus WordPerfect has been on maintenance mode with Corel for decades at this point, catching lots of bugs and half-implemented features.
    - apricot 6y ago
      The only version of WordPerfect I ever used was 5.1 for MS-DOS, and my comments apply to that one only. I heard the GUI version left a lot to be desired, so I never upgraded.
      - tambourine_man 6y ago
        5.1 was the magic version of word processors. Word 5.1 on the Mac was amazing. Fast, powerful, probably everything one would need even today, aside from track changes.
    - asveikau 6y ago
      I am having flashbacks to late 90s Linux. One of the distros back then was Caldera OpenLinux. It had a Linux port of WordPerfect. It got a lot of criticism at the time for being nonfree.
- femto113 6y ago
  Version 4 got me through the first couple years of college. My freshman year I actually had a steady stream of people coming into my dorm room to use it on my PS/2. Eventually I switched from English to Math and moved on to vi and the various roff markup tools and then LaTeX, but I think what ultimately killed the magic of that generation of WordPerfect was the change in keyboard layouts that moved the function keys from the left side to the top. Before that when combined with Ctrl, Alt, and Shift there were 40 commands available just a pinky reach away, and it came with a cheat sheet card that fit neatly around them.
  - femto113 6y ago
    I guess I'm not the only one who misses those keyboards, they go for around ~$300 on eBay[1] [1] https://www.ebay.com/b/IBM-Model-F/175690/bn_55189929 https://www.ebay.com/b/IBM-Model-F/175690/bn_55189929
    - WorldMaker 6y ago
      IBM spun out their keyboard division decades back when they they spun out printers (into Lexmark). The current inheritor of the keyboards is Unicomp (having bought it from Lexmark/IBM): https://www.pckeyboard.com/ https://www.pckeyboard.com/ It's a bit cheaper to buy from them than to pay for an antique on eBay. Also, there's a wave of mechanical options from more recent companies like Das Keyboard or the various DIY kits with choose your Cherry switch adventures.
  - tssva 6y ago
    Versions 4.1 and 4.2 got me through the first couple of years of college also. I briefly updated to 5.0 but quickly reverted to version 4.2. I have never been as productive in a word processor as I was using WordPerfect and a Model F XT keyboard.
- ghettoimp 6y ago
  It really is a beautiful program, in its own way.
- fmakunbound 6y ago
  Reveal codes should be part of any rich text editor. Ever sat wondering why pressing return added a new bullet to a list rather than a gap to the text preceding it? I see it all the time while watching engineers and manager using tools like Jira, Confluence etc. Reveal codes would make it plainly obvious - the cursor was after the list start but before first bullet.
  - uxp100 6y ago
    Nothing more delightful to work with than a requirements management tool whose wysiwyg editor changed the text of the bullet points when the indentation level changed. Never figured out what was going on, but there was somehow two different texts occupying the same line, and if you pressed tab to make the line deeper in the hierarchy it would display the other text. You start wondering how bad DOORS really is if this is how the "modern" web app replacement works.
- mattbillenstein 6y ago
  I'd almost try this, but I don't write documents enough - auto-correct in modern word processors infuriates me. It almost never does what you want.
- trts 6y ago
  Amazing. I used WP6.2 to write papers in high school and remember not only the tables and line drawings but you could also place images and annotate them. It's hard to remember how that worked but in those days it seemed those things were only possible on Macs. As I recall there was a big reference binder that documented the features.
- tootie 6y ago
  Wow. I think Wordperfect may be the last time I enjoyed using a word processor. It was also maybe the first time I realized how important good design is. I couldn't you tell a specific reason it was better than Word, just that it always did what I expected.
- tregoning 6y ago
  Surprised nobody has mentioned the main advantages of web-based apps: * Collaboration (including real-time collaboration) * Ease (or more like lack of it) installation process * Always up to date
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    If you look at what happened to Word Perfect when it shifted to Windows then you might consider always being up to date a disadvantage.
  - anthk 6y ago
    >* Collaboration (including real-time collaboration) Abiword did that >* Ease (or more like lack of it) installation process You need an ISP. And an Internet connection. >* Always up to date It can be worse for your specs.
- brylie 6y ago
  I wish there was a mandate that companies had to register sourcecode, e.g. with the Library of Congress, so that it could be released as Public Domain after a couple of decades. We are losing quite a lot of our software heritage when companies bury projects like WordPerfect or milk older games for a few more bucks. We could have a thriving, open-source ecosystem around the sometimes excellent software that is currently locked away.
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
    We've decided 20 years is long enough for drug patents, and in my opinion, it should be good enough for almost all intellectual property, really. Create something new? Great! You're officially granted a monopoly on that thing for 2 decades - plenty of time to monetize it, and use the money to create some other new things. If you can't figure out a way to monetize it in that timeframe, then we'll allow others to compete with you and take a crack at it.
    - vanderZwan 6y ago
      Given that Disney made its fortune by adapting public domain stories and then abusing the copyright protection of their adaptation of these stories, I think there are more loopholes to patch than just the expiration date.
  - ilnmtlbnm 6y ago
    Take a look at : https://www.softwareheritage.org/ https://www.softwareheritage.org/ They've made it their mission to collect and preserve source code.
    - brylie 6y ago
      Very cool! I couldn't find a trove where I could browse by category or other metadata, although I did find the search interface. Is there a categorised trove?
- jake_morrison 6y ago
  I used WordPerfect in my first job as a tech writer. It was beneficial to have a separation between writing and the layout done by desktop publishing systems. As a programmer building websites, I do the same thing, writing in vim. Learning how to make your editor work for you is a great investment.
- fizzled 6y ago
  "was already there 15 years ago." MSOffice ca. 1992 for Win3.111 was the high watermark. Been downhill ever since because basic features have been breaking (Excel 2016 sometimes forgets how to render axis fonts vertically... its 36+ years old!)
- bni 6y ago
  Using WordPerfect on the Amiga: https://www.amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=101 https://www.amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=101 This whole site is wonderful, btw
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 60secz 6y ago
  Word perfect 5 and 6 in many respects are still vastly superior to any version of word, especially when it comes to aligning text left and right, which are properly treated as line flow instead of a properties of a tab stop. Without leaving the keyboard I could easily align text on the same line to left aligned, centered and right aligned. For typing / journaling the non-wysiwyg was a feature. I honestly think wordperfect 5.1 is a big reason why sublime is so popular now.
- timmit 6y ago
  I am just very curious how to get a copy of the wordperfect 6.2 for DOS. Can it be downloaded from Internet Archive?
  - laserdancepony 6y ago
    https://winworldpc.com/product/wordperfect/6x-dos https://winworldpc.com/product/wordperfect/6x-dos
- teekert 6y ago
  Nice that you are using WP on dosemu2 on Ubuntu on Windows. I once spoke to someone active in research into keeping data (formats) and programs available for very long time (like centuries) and I always thought it was a no-brainer because one could just run X on Y on Z on A on B on C to get ancient software D working. Allthough I also have to admit that this approach didn't work for my favorite game [0] but now that I'm googling, I does seem to work! So someone got DirectX 9 or something working? [0] https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=3140&letter=A https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=3140&letter=A
  - anthk 6y ago
    Cryo Engine? Then SCUMMVM will implement that soon. Compile Scummvm with sh configure --enable-all-engines --prefix=/opt make sudo make install /opt/scummvm/bin/scumvmm https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Atlantis:_The_Lost_Tales https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Atlantis:_The_Lost_Tales https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/tree/master/engines/cryomni3d https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/tree/master/engines/cryom... Nightly builds (but they may not set the "--enable-all-engines" switch to configure/
- antonyh 6y ago
  Having disposed of a PowerMac G3 running System 9 this week, this strikes a chord with me. I'm already regretting it. Despite the age and 'underpoweredness' of it, it was still quicker, still more responsive, and still subjectively nicer to use than anything modern.
- iuguy 6y ago
  This week I built a home-made computer using an ESP32 instead of a Z80 and hodge-podge of 74xx logic chips to run CP/M and started playing with Wordstar 3 and 4. I used it many decades ago briefly on the Amiga and it was more graphical but I'm only just getting to grips with it now. Obligatory screenshot here: https://mastodon.social/@stevelord/104824411022687268 https://mastodon.social/@stevelord/104824411022687268
- nix23 6y ago
  Former employee had a Inventory system based on dos6 but the hardware (the pc and the barcode scanner) was getting really old. So i buy a new PC, installed FreeDOS and a new barcode scanner with Dos compatibility and it works perfect. DOS especially FreeDOS is just great.
  - brohee 6y ago
    Is there a DOS working on an UEFI computer? If not there must be a very limited choice of hardware.
    - cosarara 6y ago
      UEFI systems generally can boot in compatibility BIOS mode. Macs can't, but they are the only exception I know.
    - devenblake 6y ago
      Most modern computers have legacy BIOS support.
- Theodores 6y ago
  I am finding that semantic HTML and CSS Grid where you style the elements works nicely for documents. This goes against what Tim Berners Lee imagined in that I am typing in the HTML tags and happy to navigate them in text. I prefer the tags as they describe my work. Visually there is no evidence that something is a 'section' or an 'aside' but I make sure my words do have document structure, so a 'section' will probably have a 'h3' at the start of it. I wish there was a 'what you see is what you mean' editor that was visual but only allowed you to add HTML semantic elements. WYSIWYG editors tend to just add local styles and 'br' elements, resulting in HTML that is useless for my style of HTML. I can do diagrams in various ways including SVG that I just write out manually. Or I can use the wonders of CSS Grid and a 'dl' list with first of type/last of type CSS selectors to style up a simple linear flow diagram. I really wish there was a super neat word processor or HTML editor that only wrote lean HTML with semantic markup for document structure. But here I am in 2020 using my IDE or Vim to write documents and even craft diagrams. I am impressed that I am not alone in spurning drag and drop wonder gadgets. As much as I would like to give Wordprerfect a go, I feel the world has moved on from documents printed out as memos and put in pigeon holes. Stuff has to look good in a browser and with stripped down HTML that uses the elements and a simple stylesheet that loads a font and puts in some CSS Grid layout I feel I have the tools I need.
- chinathrow 6y ago
  My dad still uses Framework at times on an old machine. It just works and is perfect for his use case of large spreadsheets. https://framework.com/ https://framework.com/
- gauchojs 6y ago
  Why did you update from 5.1?
- canadian_tired 6y ago
  Nostalgia: Reveal Codes!
- rietta 6y ago
  This reminds me that WordPerfect 6.2 for Windows 3.1 could possibly work under Wine. That could be interesting.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- imroot 6y ago
  I remember using WordPerfect on VAX/VMS (on a decterm, no less), and I recall them having some flavor of Unix based binary, but, I can't find references to either out there anymore.
- mikorym 6y ago
  Could you link to an example of an output file?
- gosukiwi 6y ago
  Those diagrams look powerful, it might even be even better than modern text editors for that :v
- nickdothutton 6y ago
  Most of what I do in a word processor today, I could have done in Wordstar 3 under CP/M. Perhaps only the printing (no postscript) would have been a problem. Certainly most of what I do in Excel could be done in SuperCalc.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  While I support your travels with Wordperfect (I wrote many term papers on that puppy), I can support the quote by the person you responded on twitter. He just showed arrogance and silliness when he said "All that was ever really needed by an OS or Office apps was already there 15 years ago. Everything "invented" beyond that was just vanity changes with negligible long term added value, and constant moving around of UI to appear new and better. Change my mind."
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  I still use Word 97 for writing. I've tried many WPs, but haven't found anything better. I run it inside a VM and it is still faster and better than LibreOffice by a long shot. When I'm done writing, I paste the text into one of my blogs with IE6, which my sites still support.
  - dingdingdang 6y ago
    Like your style on this. I'm contemplating similar setup but going bit more oldschool with Word 6.0 Win 3.1 edition, gotta work out what the smoothest way of integration with my Linux (Mint) desktop though. Integration is key for me and have to say my prior exp with Wine have been less than comforting (working but just so, not long term functional feel).
    - forgotmypw17 6y ago
      Wine doesn,t work great with Microsoft software, because they would take advantage of undocumented APIs, but W6W31 may be old and basic enough to work... I would still take the VM route.
- jfrisby 6y ago
  George R.R. Martin? Is that you?

Reminds me of George RR Martin (author of the Game of Thrones books) who uses DOS for writing books. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27407502 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27407502

taviso 6y ago

I use WordPerfect 6.2 for DOS, not for any nostalgia or legacy reasons, just because it's a full-featured and highly configurable word processor that I can use in a terminal. I only use it for writing letters and so on, nothing too serious, but I prefer to stay in the terminal if I can. It works beautifully under dosemu2, which has a terminal mode that can translate various VGA modes into S-Lang calls (S-Lang is like ncurses, so no X11 required). I find this technically impressive and makes a lot of old DOS software indistinguishable from native linux software; stdin/stdout, parameters, host filesystem access, etc all work transparently. Here's a screenshot: https://twitter.com/taviso/status/1272670107043368960/photo/1 https://twitter.com/taviso/status/1272670107043368960/photo/... It can import TTF fonts and print to PostScript, which I just pipe into ps2pdf and then handle on the host. I'm not aware of any other full-featured modern word processor that can run in an xterm. I know about wordgrinder but it's very very basic. You could use a text editor, but it's not ideal for layout because it doesn't understand things like proportional font geometries - you need that to know how lines/glyphs will fit on the physical page when it's printed. You could write it in some form of markup, html, TeX, markdown, whatever, but if I'm just trying to format a document I prefer a word processor. (Note: dosemu2 doesn't require virtual 8086 mode, so it works fine on x86-64)

boring_twenties 6y ago
Great idea, but how can one get their hands on this software nowadays? I can only assume it's not sold anywhere?
- taviso 6y ago
  You can still purchase it, but it's a lot of hoops to jump through! http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/links.html#obtain http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/links.html#obtain There is still a community (apparently mostly paralegals) who actively use it and answer questions, e.g. http://wpdos.org http://wpdos.org and https://www.wpuniverse.com/ https://www.wpuniverse.com/
  - coronadisaster 6y ago
    > http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/links.html#obtain http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/links.html#obtain Looks like they deleted the file ... now 404 not found...
    - banana_giraffe 6y ago
      Odd, it works for me. It's also an odd little page. It includes directions to buy it, if you already have a copy. If you don't have a copy, it includes some details on how to use eBay.
      - coronadisaster 6y ago
        https://i.imgur.com/hQvs1X3.png https://i.imgur.com/hQvs1X3.png
        brewmarche 6y ago
        http not https
        coronadisaster 6y ago
        oops, thanks...had the 'encrypt all sites' setting to ON in https everywhere.
  - jtchang 6y ago
    Who is Carol Reese? And how is she related to Corel and WordPerfect?!
jhoechtl 6y ago
WP6.2, fond memories. How is this mode called where you can see and edit every control sequence you entered like bold and italics formatting?
- williamjackson 6y ago
  Reveal Codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect#Reveal_codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect#Reveal_codes
- Beldin 6y ago
  While I've seen its real name now, for me this will always be the Under Water Screen.
toast0 6y ago
> I'm not aware of any other full-featured modern word processor that can run in an xterm Word Perfect was available for UNIX as well. The SCO binaries might run with iBCS. I don't know if that would provide a significantly different experience than running the DOS version in dosemu though.
- kjs3 6y ago
  I tried running WP for SCO under iBCS 10-15 years ago. I couldn't get it to work. Don't remember all the details but it seemed they cheated with some of the video routines and I mostly got a corrupted screen. I didn't spend a lot of time on it, though, and I very well might have just not hit on the right incantations.
lqet 6y ago
Would you be so kind to post an example Postscript file generated by WordPerfect?
- taviso 6y ago
  Sure, I normally have this in my .dosemurc: $_lpt1 = "dosprint" Which just pipes the printer port output into a bash script that runs ps2pdf, but I changed it to save to a file instead. https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/wppostscript.ps.txt https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/wppostscript.ps.txt
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    Oh, nicely formatted and readable PostScript. I wish the Windows drivers could do that.
badsectoracula 6y ago
There is Wordgrinder[0] and can export to LaTeX for printing. In classic Unix tradition, it looks way more plain than the screenshots of WordPerfect you posted :-P. [0] http://cowlark.com/wordgrinder/screenshots.html http://cowlark.com/wordgrinder/screenshots.html
anthk 6y ago
>nto S-Lang calls So like SLRN and Jed? Amazing. I used DOSEmu back in the day for Redneck Rampage under an AMD Athlon (Dear DOSBox users, DOSEmu was zillions times faster than DOSBox, I ran it at native speeds). This is impressive.
anthk 6y ago
Also I'd use WP 6.1 for DOS in Spanish if it wasn't a "little" inconvenience: we don't use Pesetas as a currency anymore, but I think there's an Euro patch somewere. EDIT: On graphics, that's a solved problem. Everyone uses framebuffer today, even on obsolete chipsets it's doable. Just map VGA calls to FB and everything would be fast enough, I think.
simonblack 6y ago
I use WordStar when programming in CP/M. I use 'jstar' (one of the 'joe' alter-egos) which uses the same commands when programming in Linux.
- anthk 6y ago
  You'll love Wordtsar then.
AndrewBissell 6y ago
I believe George R. R. Martin has said he uses some kind of ancient word processing software to write the GoT novels.
- fastball 6y ago
  Might want to use the past tense of "to write", otherwise you're giving GRRM the benefit of the doubt when you say he is writing GoT novels...
- superhuzza 6y ago
  DOS machine, disconnected from the internet, running WordStar 4.0 https://www.cnet.com/news/george-r-r-martin-writes-with-a-dos-word-processor/ https://www.cnet.com/news/george-r-r-martin-writes-with-a-do...
cafard 6y ago
I have known lawyers and legal secretaries who just would not give up on WordPerfect, I think because of the footnotes. The two that I most recently had dealings with have since retired, but I'd be anything but surprised to learn that their are recent .wpd (is it?) files on the General Counsel's Office's shared drive. I liked WordPerfect well enough from 4.2 through 5.1. Version 6 on Windows was not good. Even a slow typist (me) could get ahead of the cursor. But at some point my employer switched to Word and I haven't been back.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  can confirm, i worked for a company producing an online version of their legal books, we could export pages to word and... word perfect!
- dpvan 6y ago
  During the 4.X and 5.X era at WP, the company paid very close attention to the needs of the legal market and WP could do things with a couple of keystrokes that would take 10 minutes with MS Word. WP also had a potent macro capability and a good macro editor as well. I was practicing law at this time and had created 80-99 WP macros that made legal docs appear like magic. There was no e-filing and court clerks and judges could be more than a little picky about the formatting of the paper documents they received. If a doc wasn’t formatted in the proper manner, some clerks would refuse to file it and return the doc to the lawyer’s office for a re-do.
  - dpvan 6y ago
    The acquisition of WP by Novell was a disaster. Way different corporate cultures and leadership styles. Ashton and Bastian had been generous with stock grants to key people, particularly on the technical side. Most of the key people below the two founders had enough money that they didn’t have to put up with the sharp elbows and confrontational styles that predominated at Novell. Combine a brain drain with a Microsoft push for Windows and built-in integration with the first passable version of Word and you had a recipe for disaster. Some of the WP people who remained claimed that MS had mislead them about Windows vs DOS roadmap and been slow in providing Windows info necessary for WP engineers to build a decent first release of WP for the new release of Windows, but I could never determine if this was what had really happened or just sour grapes because WP stumbled badly after the ownership change.
Crontab 6y ago
I really don't want a word processor, per se, so much as I want really robust (realtime) text wrapping/unwrapping as I edit paragraphs. I've tried to get Vim and Emacs to do reflows but both were very flakey compared to something like WordPerfect for DOS.
- Bud 6y ago
  BBEdit might be just right for you.
  - Crontab 6y ago
    My apologies, I was specifically referring to text-based/console-based applications. All the GUI text editors seem to wrap and unwrap just fine.
    - jaclaz 6y ago
      Not exactly a word processor but it seems to me like you could try (if you can find it) the TSE or QEdit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_SemWare_Editor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_SemWare_Editor what Qedit (often renamed simply to Q.exe) was capable of doing in the (good) old times was incredible.
- genuinebyte 6y ago
  I think I know what you mean. I try to wrap at 80 col. and I often need to go back and edit a paragraph, which breaks all my wrapping.
- lbruder 6y ago
  Have you tried soft line wrapping in GNU nano (M-S)? As long as you're running nano in an 80 column wide window, that should work fine.
immigrantsheep 6y ago
There is a modern-ish clone of Wordstar around as well called WordTsar http://wordtsar.ca http://wordtsar.ca
- djsumdog 6y ago
  Doesn't RR Martin use the original Wordstar? I remember reading about him using an old school physical word processor and USB-floppy drive when he needs to backup/transfer his work.
  - Bad_CRC 6y ago
    Came here just for the GRRM comment :) But for I can see, he is NOT really using it...
- pier25 6y ago
  Woah. Apparently the guy who made it also uses it to write his novels. http://geraldbrandt.com/ http://geraldbrandt.com/
sys_64738 6y ago
What about Protext from Arnor? Another text only word processor now available for free for the Atari ST, Amiga, and PC. https://web.archive.org/web/20140825104412/http://www.tigerteam.co.uk/protext/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140825104412/http://www.tigert...
throw0101a 6y ago
> […] just because it's a full-featured and highly configurable word processor that I can use in a terminal. The 'reveal codes' functionality is something that I always liked with WP, and that no other word processors seems to have implemented.
- hackyhacky 6y ago
  Nota Bene is another text-based word processor from that era. It defaults to showing embedded formatting commands. The primary means of operation is via an integrated DOS-like command prompt.
  - tssva 6y ago
    Nota Bene although no longer text based still exists and is actively developed. Nota Bene used the XyWrite word processor engine. XyWrite was very popular in news rooms back in the day.
  - JdeBP 6y ago
    That's a description that also matches Arnor's Protext. The command window was the bottom half of the screen, and one embedded rulers and suchlike into the document text with ">" lines.
- oska 6y ago
  This is testing my memory but I think WordStar from the early to mid 80s had something similar. Codes all started with a ^ (again from memory) and their visibility could be toggled on and off.
JohnBooty 6y ago
I have very fond memories of WP5.1.... I still have some Model-M keyboards, so I could really recreate the "glory days" if I wanted. I could print out the little F-key cheat sheet for the keyboard as well. But... What about Unicode? Lack of Unicode seems like a dealbreaker for a lot of use cases. Even if you're not using Unicode, seems like you'd eventually want to work with Unicode text. As an engineer, a lot of the "word processing" I do involves cutting and pasting text from other sources (citations, code samples, names, etc) that tend to be chock full of non-ASCII characters. Or has this been solved somehow? I see that there are various hacks involved in getting support for the Euro symbol. What about a general purposes solution? I know that WP5.1 had support for international character sets. Perhaps somebody's cooked up an emulation layer that translates Unicode into whatever it is that WP needs.
sickcodebruh 6y ago
My parents got their first computer in the 90s so my mom could do freelance work editing medical texts on nights and weekends after her day job. She used Word Perfect and she taught me to type with it, I still remember the exact shade of blue and the white text. She’d use Reveal Codes and I thought all the special characters were so cool. I can still picture her sitting at the desk working on it while I’d play video games. I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. They’re vivid memories that are kind of meaningful that I haven’t thought about in decades, tied directly to that application. Weird how that works.
- rconti 6y ago
  Somehow WordPerfect/MultiMate with reveal codes is still a more intuitive text formatting tool than anything I've used since. Or maybe it's just nostalgia. There's nothing I hate more these days than trying to format text in WYSIWYG editors, in-browser confluence and jira, notepads, markdown, etc.
drpixie 6y ago
Brilliant - I've long observed that almost everything we are doing with our GHz computers, we were doing previously with old MHz systems. We have more pixels (but use them for the same result), more memory (but everything has grown to fill it), more bandwidth (but websites packed with junk bytes). The only "new" thing enabled by our bigger systems is "big data", which is largely a process of finding patterns that will fool the user/purchaser/customer.
- abraxas 6y ago
  Well that and high quality video. One and only one tangible benefit of this new web is better quality video. Everything else sucks as much or worse than in the days of Altavista and punch the monkey ads.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - nl 6y ago
    And browsers that don't crash all the time.
    - narwally 6y ago
      And search is good now. But apart from the HD video, the search, the aqueducts, the roads, the education, the browsers that don't crash all the time, and the wine... what have the Romans ever done for us?
      - nl 6y ago
        Oh, and XMLHttpRequest and Websockets, so we don't have to rely on META REFRESH in hidden frames...
      - 1_player 6y ago
        > And search is good now. I disagree. Searching for keywords is practically impossible nowadays, with all smart AI-powered™ search engines that unhelpfully return results that are not relevant to your query. And SEO spam, which has killed the niche high signal-to-noise handcrafted websites for content aggregators.
slvrspoon 6y ago
microsoft word today - with "onedrive" and "server-connected DRM" sucks so bad when you are offline just trying use YOUR @#$23 PC it is a travesty. just wait til the exact same UX comes to your automobile. and after that...
- BostonEnginerd 6y ago
  I had Office decide that checking the license at the start of an Internet-free 6hr flight was a good idea. At least I had brought a good book with me.
dh303 6y ago
It would be great if one of the "classic" word processors (WP, MS Word, WordStar) would get open sourced, so it could be updated and made useful in the 21st century.
djsumdog 6y ago
I had that version of WordPerfect on my 286! I remember how you could install the Trident video drivers and get some pretty high console resolutions. F11/Reveal Codes was super helpful too. I wish modern word processors had something similar. It basically shows you the equivalent of formatting tags. I have the Win3.1 version of WP from that era in a DosBox. I've been meaning to compare it's grammar check to modern word processors. It was way ahead of its time. I know Corel bough it, but it looks like it spun off again. I wonder if the current release still has any of the old source code, or if it was just rewritten and has the name for the brand: https://www.wordperfect.com/en/ https://www.wordperfect.com/en/
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  Still owned by Corel (they have a weird "Corel Advantage" logo at the bottom of that marketing site and the Contact Us link goes to a bunch of Corel info). The Corel of 2020 seems a fascinating Enterprise Licensing zombie. They appear to make all their revenue from (very) legacy Enterprise Licenses and government contracts and all of the software seems stuck in a time warp stasis with only the bare minimum of maintenance (presumably just enough to keep the Enterprise Licenses alive and well). It's almost sad to see how many classic computing brands they own and let languish in this state.
wly_cdgr 6y ago
...Cool?
dfboyd 6y ago
I use troff (groff) under Linux. The really freaky thing is that you already have groff on your Mac -- it's installed by default.
- massysett 6y ago
  What macros do you use? I have some simple programs that generate documents to print out, and I use LaTeX and a bunch of packages. It takes hundreds of megabytes of software with all the packages. I've long toyed with using the MOM macros but can't get motivated to rewrite my programs and learn troff. It used to bother me that groff doesn't support Unicode (as far as I can tell) but then realized that all I write is English so why am I fetishizing Unicode? groff will get me any accented character that I would realistically need.
  - dfboyd 6y ago
    Just the plain .ms macros. Plus "pic", I like that a lot.
  - smartmic 6y ago
    You can have UTF-8 with groff using the preconv [1] tool, just pass the "-k" or "-Kutf8" paramater. It will preprocess your source and replace Unicode symbols with its groff special character form. Of course, the built-in standard fonts do not support many glyphs but it is no big thing to use a more Unicode friendly font like DejaVu Sans or Noto, check [2]. So this is my setup using MOM macros for nice typesetting. But I fully agree on your last point, in the end I seldom need the Unicode universe for most of my documents. [1] https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/preconv.1.html https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/preconv.1.html [2] http://www.schaffter.ca/mom/momdoc/appendices.html#fonts http://www.schaffter.ca/mom/momdoc/appendices.html#fonts
    - anthk 6y ago
      https://n-t-roff.github.io/heirloom/doctools.html https://n-t-roff.github.io/heirloom/doctools.html
  - 6y ago
lsllc 6y ago
I was a huge fan of Wordstar 6! Wrote so much with that thing ... way better than Word, Pages etc. even still. It's no wonder I prefer Markdown for writing / documents etc. I should try to see if I can get Wordstar running under dosemu2 (I probably have a 3.5" floppy somewhere with it on, but I don't think I have the disk drive to read it).
apricot 6y ago
I had no idea dosemu2 could translate VGA to S-Lang. That's very nice, and I will look into it. WordPerfect was a great word processor, I remember using version 5.1 for years because it was wicked fast, rock stable, and most importantly, it was predictable. By contrast, MS Word -- even today -- seems to have a mind of its own. You move an image, and suddenly all your numbered bullet points appear in a different font except for the last one, and nothing short of retyping the whole thing in another document seems to fix it.
- D13Fd 6y ago
  Have you actually used the GUI version of WordPerfect? I was forced to use it heavily for a year of pure writing for a previous job. It's incredibly unpredictable. It's like whack-a-mole. You make text in one place bold, and all the sudden some of your footnote text on a different page becomes bold. The people at that job who were really good knew all of the tricks, digging into the codes that WordPerfect inserts to address various issues. But even then, it was an extra step, and I never became as productive in WordPerfect as I had been in Word. Plus WordPerfect has been on maintenance mode with Corel for decades at this point, catching lots of bugs and half-implemented features.
  - apricot 6y ago
    The only version of WordPerfect I ever used was 5.1 for MS-DOS, and my comments apply to that one only. I heard the GUI version left a lot to be desired, so I never upgraded.
    - tambourine_man 6y ago
      5.1 was the magic version of word processors. Word 5.1 on the Mac was amazing. Fast, powerful, probably everything one would need even today, aside from track changes.
  - asveikau 6y ago
    I am having flashbacks to late 90s Linux. One of the distros back then was Caldera OpenLinux. It had a Linux port of WordPerfect. It got a lot of criticism at the time for being nonfree.
femto113 6y ago
Version 4 got me through the first couple years of college. My freshman year I actually had a steady stream of people coming into my dorm room to use it on my PS/2. Eventually I switched from English to Math and moved on to vi and the various roff markup tools and then LaTeX, but I think what ultimately killed the magic of that generation of WordPerfect was the change in keyboard layouts that moved the function keys from the left side to the top. Before that when combined with Ctrl, Alt, and Shift there were 40 commands available just a pinky reach away, and it came with a cheat sheet card that fit neatly around them.
- femto113 6y ago
  I guess I'm not the only one who misses those keyboards, they go for around ~$300 on eBay[1] [1] https://www.ebay.com/b/IBM-Model-F/175690/bn_55189929 https://www.ebay.com/b/IBM-Model-F/175690/bn_55189929
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    IBM spun out their keyboard division decades back when they they spun out printers (into Lexmark). The current inheritor of the keyboards is Unicomp (having bought it from Lexmark/IBM): https://www.pckeyboard.com/ https://www.pckeyboard.com/ It's a bit cheaper to buy from them than to pay for an antique on eBay. Also, there's a wave of mechanical options from more recent companies like Das Keyboard or the various DIY kits with choose your Cherry switch adventures.
- tssva 6y ago
  Versions 4.1 and 4.2 got me through the first couple of years of college also. I briefly updated to 5.0 but quickly reverted to version 4.2. I have never been as productive in a word processor as I was using WordPerfect and a Model F XT keyboard.
ghettoimp 6y ago
It really is a beautiful program, in its own way.
fmakunbound 6y ago
Reveal codes should be part of any rich text editor. Ever sat wondering why pressing return added a new bullet to a list rather than a gap to the text preceding it? I see it all the time while watching engineers and manager using tools like Jira, Confluence etc. Reveal codes would make it plainly obvious - the cursor was after the list start but before first bullet.
- uxp100 6y ago
  Nothing more delightful to work with than a requirements management tool whose wysiwyg editor changed the text of the bullet points when the indentation level changed. Never figured out what was going on, but there was somehow two different texts occupying the same line, and if you pressed tab to make the line deeper in the hierarchy it would display the other text. You start wondering how bad DOORS really is if this is how the "modern" web app replacement works.
mattbillenstein 6y ago
I'd almost try this, but I don't write documents enough - auto-correct in modern word processors infuriates me. It almost never does what you want.
trts 6y ago
Amazing. I used WP6.2 to write papers in high school and remember not only the tables and line drawings but you could also place images and annotate them. It's hard to remember how that worked but in those days it seemed those things were only possible on Macs. As I recall there was a big reference binder that documented the features.
tootie 6y ago
Wow. I think Wordperfect may be the last time I enjoyed using a word processor. It was also maybe the first time I realized how important good design is. I couldn't you tell a specific reason it was better than Word, just that it always did what I expected.
tregoning 6y ago
Surprised nobody has mentioned the main advantages of web-based apps: * Collaboration (including real-time collaboration) * Ease (or more like lack of it) installation process * Always up to date
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  If you look at what happened to Word Perfect when it shifted to Windows then you might consider always being up to date a disadvantage.
- anthk 6y ago
  >* Collaboration (including real-time collaboration) Abiword did that >* Ease (or more like lack of it) installation process You need an ISP. And an Internet connection. >* Always up to date It can be worse for your specs.
brylie 6y ago
I wish there was a mandate that companies had to register sourcecode, e.g. with the Library of Congress, so that it could be released as Public Domain after a couple of decades. We are losing quite a lot of our software heritage when companies bury projects like WordPerfect or milk older games for a few more bucks. We could have a thriving, open-source ecosystem around the sometimes excellent software that is currently locked away.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
  We've decided 20 years is long enough for drug patents, and in my opinion, it should be good enough for almost all intellectual property, really. Create something new? Great! You're officially granted a monopoly on that thing for 2 decades - plenty of time to monetize it, and use the money to create some other new things. If you can't figure out a way to monetize it in that timeframe, then we'll allow others to compete with you and take a crack at it.
  - vanderZwan 6y ago
    Given that Disney made its fortune by adapting public domain stories and then abusing the copyright protection of their adaptation of these stories, I think there are more loopholes to patch than just the expiration date.
- ilnmtlbnm 6y ago
  Take a look at : https://www.softwareheritage.org/ https://www.softwareheritage.org/ They've made it their mission to collect and preserve source code.
  - brylie 6y ago
    Very cool! I couldn't find a trove where I could browse by category or other metadata, although I did find the search interface. Is there a categorised trove?
jake_morrison 6y ago
I used WordPerfect in my first job as a tech writer. It was beneficial to have a separation between writing and the layout done by desktop publishing systems. As a programmer building websites, I do the same thing, writing in vim. Learning how to make your editor work for you is a great investment.
fizzled 6y ago
"was already there 15 years ago." MSOffice ca. 1992 for Win3.111 was the high watermark. Been downhill ever since because basic features have been breaking (Excel 2016 sometimes forgets how to render axis fonts vertically... its 36+ years old!)
bni 6y ago
Using WordPerfect on the Amiga: https://www.amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=101 https://www.amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=101 This whole site is wonderful, btw
deleted 6y ago
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60secz 6y ago
Word perfect 5 and 6 in many respects are still vastly superior to any version of word, especially when it comes to aligning text left and right, which are properly treated as line flow instead of a properties of a tab stop. Without leaving the keyboard I could easily align text on the same line to left aligned, centered and right aligned. For typing / journaling the non-wysiwyg was a feature. I honestly think wordperfect 5.1 is a big reason why sublime is so popular now.
timmit 6y ago
I am just very curious how to get a copy of the wordperfect 6.2 for DOS. Can it be downloaded from Internet Archive?
- laserdancepony 6y ago
  https://winworldpc.com/product/wordperfect/6x-dos https://winworldpc.com/product/wordperfect/6x-dos
teekert 6y ago
Nice that you are using WP on dosemu2 on Ubuntu on Windows. I once spoke to someone active in research into keeping data (formats) and programs available for very long time (like centuries) and I always thought it was a no-brainer because one could just run X on Y on Z on A on B on C to get ancient software D working. Allthough I also have to admit that this approach didn't work for my favorite game [0] but now that I'm googling, I does seem to work! So someone got DirectX 9 or something working? [0] https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=3140&letter=A https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=3140&letter=A
- anthk 6y ago
  Cryo Engine? Then SCUMMVM will implement that soon. Compile Scummvm with sh configure --enable-all-engines --prefix=/opt make sudo make install /opt/scummvm/bin/scumvmm https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Atlantis:_The_Lost_Tales https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Atlantis:_The_Lost_Tales https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/tree/master/engines/cryomni3d https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/tree/master/engines/cryom... Nightly builds (but they may not set the "--enable-all-engines" switch to configure/
antonyh 6y ago
Having disposed of a PowerMac G3 running System 9 this week, this strikes a chord with me. I'm already regretting it. Despite the age and 'underpoweredness' of it, it was still quicker, still more responsive, and still subjectively nicer to use than anything modern.
iuguy 6y ago
This week I built a home-made computer using an ESP32 instead of a Z80 and hodge-podge of 74xx logic chips to run CP/M and started playing with Wordstar 3 and 4. I used it many decades ago briefly on the Amiga and it was more graphical but I'm only just getting to grips with it now. Obligatory screenshot here: https://mastodon.social/@stevelord/104824411022687268 https://mastodon.social/@stevelord/104824411022687268
nix23 6y ago
Former employee had a Inventory system based on dos6 but the hardware (the pc and the barcode scanner) was getting really old. So i buy a new PC, installed FreeDOS and a new barcode scanner with Dos compatibility and it works perfect. DOS especially FreeDOS is just great.
- brohee 6y ago
  Is there a DOS working on an UEFI computer? If not there must be a very limited choice of hardware.
  - cosarara 6y ago
    UEFI systems generally can boot in compatibility BIOS mode. Macs can't, but they are the only exception I know.
  - devenblake 6y ago
    Most modern computers have legacy BIOS support.
Theodores 6y ago
I am finding that semantic HTML and CSS Grid where you style the elements works nicely for documents. This goes against what Tim Berners Lee imagined in that I am typing in the HTML tags and happy to navigate them in text. I prefer the tags as they describe my work. Visually there is no evidence that something is a 'section' or an 'aside' but I make sure my words do have document structure, so a 'section' will probably have a 'h3' at the start of it. I wish there was a 'what you see is what you mean' editor that was visual but only allowed you to add HTML semantic elements. WYSIWYG editors tend to just add local styles and 'br' elements, resulting in HTML that is useless for my style of HTML. I can do diagrams in various ways including SVG that I just write out manually. Or I can use the wonders of CSS Grid and a 'dl' list with first of type/last of type CSS selectors to style up a simple linear flow diagram. I really wish there was a super neat word processor or HTML editor that only wrote lean HTML with semantic markup for document structure. But here I am in 2020 using my IDE or Vim to write documents and even craft diagrams. I am impressed that I am not alone in spurning drag and drop wonder gadgets. As much as I would like to give Wordprerfect a go, I feel the world has moved on from documents printed out as memos and put in pigeon holes. Stuff has to look good in a browser and with stripped down HTML that uses the elements and a simple stylesheet that loads a font and puts in some CSS Grid layout I feel I have the tools I need.
chinathrow 6y ago
My dad still uses Framework at times on an old machine. It just works and is perfect for his use case of large spreadsheets. https://framework.com/ https://framework.com/
gauchojs 6y ago
Why did you update from 5.1?
canadian_tired 6y ago
Nostalgia: Reveal Codes!
rietta 6y ago
This reminds me that WordPerfect 6.2 for Windows 3.1 could possibly work under Wine. That could be interesting.
deleted 6y ago
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imroot 6y ago
I remember using WordPerfect on VAX/VMS (on a decterm, no less), and I recall them having some flavor of Unix based binary, but, I can't find references to either out there anymore.
mikorym 6y ago
Could you link to an example of an output file?
gosukiwi 6y ago
Those diagrams look powerful, it might even be even better than modern text editors for that :v
nickdothutton 6y ago
Most of what I do in a word processor today, I could have done in Wordstar 3 under CP/M. Perhaps only the printing (no postscript) would have been a problem. Certainly most of what I do in Excel could be done in SuperCalc.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
While I support your travels with Wordperfect (I wrote many term papers on that puppy), I can support the quote by the person you responded on twitter. He just showed arrogance and silliness when he said "All that was ever really needed by an OS or Office apps was already there 15 years ago. Everything "invented" beyond that was just vanity changes with negligible long term added value, and constant moving around of UI to appear new and better. Change my mind."
forgotmypw17 6y ago
I still use Word 97 for writing. I've tried many WPs, but haven't found anything better. I run it inside a VM and it is still faster and better than LibreOffice by a long shot. When I'm done writing, I paste the text into one of my blogs with IE6, which my sites still support.
- dingdingdang 6y ago
  Like your style on this. I'm contemplating similar setup but going bit more oldschool with Word 6.0 Win 3.1 edition, gotta work out what the smoothest way of integration with my Linux (Mint) desktop though. Integration is key for me and have to say my prior exp with Wine have been less than comforting (working but just so, not long term functional feel).
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    Wine doesn,t work great with Microsoft software, because they would take advantage of undocumented APIs, but W6W31 may be old and basic enough to work... I would still take the VM route.
jfrisby 6y ago
George R.R. Martin? Is that you?