7 ms·

WordPerfect for Unix character terminals

214 points by metadat 4y ago

insane_dreamer 4y ago
Very cool. Brings back memories! Though by the time WP came along I was already a solid WordStar user so customized all the keyboard shortcuts to match WordStar.
stereolambda 4y ago
These terminal word processors always looked attractive to me, but what is the path from this, or WordGrinder, to some mainstream document formats - that are accepted in publishing and academic settings? From what I remember RTF is the easiest to implement from common filetypes, and openable in office suites like MS or LibreOffice. Then, in theory (unless it breaks a bunch of stuff inside), you can save it as DOCX or something. Anyone has experience with this?
- roter 4y ago
  Perhaps tangential, but there is a Pandoc marco [0] for this program to DOCX via RTF. But I agree, I can do all sorts of things but eventually I am often required to get a document in DOCX. Love Pandoc. [0] https://github.com/taviso/wpunix/issues/17 https://github.com/taviso/wpunix/issues/17
- iudqnolq 4y ago
  WordPerfect is still used a little by lawyers. Here's how the free law project parses it: wpd2html https://github.com/freelawproject/doctor/blob/main/doctor/tasks.py#L375 https://github.com/freelawproject/doctor/blob/main/doctor/ta...
- kcartlidge 4y ago
  > These terminal word processors always looked attractive to me, but what is the path from this, or WordGrinder, to some mainstream document formats The early WordPerfect file format is pretty straightforward. It pretty much mirrors what you see in Reveal Codes, which is a single stream of text interspersed with special inline codes that switch things on/off (eg bold) or do something special (eg table of contents). As it's linear you can just whizz along taking plain text as it is, converting features as you reach them, and discarding the ones you don't care about. I did it myself in C# for WP4 (DOS) files to Markdown, but RTF is also trivial to write to. Search for the filename "WP42FF.TXT" and you'll find the format online. Incidentally, DOCX is just a ZIP file with special contents. Make a single sentence document in Word and save it out, rename the file to .ZIP and extract it. The contents are obvious when you look through them, and you can use that as a 'skeleton' and switch the text with your own. For RTF look for a copy of "RTF Pocket Guide" by Sean Burke.
ansible 4y ago
Oh, neat. We actually ran WordPerfect for SCO Unix back in the day. This was on a dual-processor Acer / Altos system, with a whole bunch of serial terminals. That was the first Unix system I had ever purchased! Though one of the two CPUs had to be disabled because of OS stability issues. I wanted to use Livingston Portmaster Ethernet terminal servers, but was overridden by my boss. I eventually got them anyway, because expanding the RS-485 for the serial ports was severely limited. Overall, WP ran pretty well on the hardware of the day. With Wyse 160 terminals running at 115200 bps, it wasn't quite as fast as on a DOS PC, but still pretty snappy. It even had print preview, because the 160 was a graphics terminal.
jasoneckert 4y ago
I remember that this was the killer app for Xenix back in the day. Many organizations bought Xenix workstations because of it.
reaperducer 4y ago
I wonder what the minimum screen size is for this. I have a couple of old low-end terminals that might get new life if I could use them with WordPerfect.
- kjs3 4y ago
  It worked fine on a vt220 or Wyse 60.
- toast0 4y ago
  If this is just the old version of WordPerfect with some help to get it running on a modern system, I don't know why 80x24/25 would be too small... I certainly saw it running on a normal terminal back in the day.
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    One of the machines I'm targeting is 60 wide, and another 40. But I'll give it a shot and see what happens!
    - toast0 4y ago
      Yeah, I was afraid about that. I'd guess you might have some trouble with a narrow terminal, but it's still worth trying. I remember word perfect not having much in the way of menus (thus the keyboard templates for the commands), so it might be no big deal.
- prmoustache 4y ago
  Do you really thing you would put aside your regular laptop to use an old terminal for writing? I mean I am all for recycling but if you already own something that can do more I have very little faith that anyone would regularly fire up an old power hungry machine to do one single task unless it does it significantly better than the newer one or some kind of compatibility factor forces it like needing a particular port/interface unavailable on newer machines.
  - 4y ago
geocrasher 4y ago
This is interesting! My first exposure to Unix was in 1990 when my mother worked for a law firm in California. Everyone had dumb terminals on their desks connected to a very very large tower computer in the server room. I don't remember anything about it (I was only about 14) except that it said Santa Cruz operations Unix on it. And of course, at her desk I could see my mom log into her Unix account and launch WordPerfect with wp. I was blown away! There was also a spreadsheet application but I have to admit that I don't remember what it was. It was probably Lotus 123 but I don't know if it was ported to Unix or not. Little did I know that I would be making a living with Linux all these years later!
- cafard 4y ago
  My recollection is that WordPerfect Office on minicomputers had its own spreadsheet application. Wikipedia says "PlanPerfect". By now I don't remember.
- taviso 4y ago
  123 was indeed ported to UNIX, I have that working as well! https://github.com/taviso/123elf https://github.com/taviso/123elf (Although it was more likely procalc - a popular low-end lotus clone) I'm also working on porting dBase IV, another popular package from the era :)
  - skissane 4y ago
    > 123 was indeed ported to UNIX I keep on hoping that some day the IBM mainframe port (MVS and VM/CMS) might turn up. It was further away from the DOS original than the UNIX port was, due to the changes required by 3270 block mode terminals.
  - unixhero 4y ago
    That is a darn fine spreadsheet in the console. I am tempted to try it!
    - alchemist1e9 4y ago
      Imagine all the great commercial code lost to time. There should be a historical preservation movement to try and find the source code for old abandoned applications like this.
harshreality 4y ago
Nerd-sniped by nostalgia. I wonder if he's looked for unsafe input handling leading to potential security issues.
- walterbell 4y ago
  It can be run in a VM with non-persistent root filesystem.
- usr1106 4y ago
  Did you ask out of serious technical concern? Or just because the main contributor seems to be a famous security researcher?
  - harshreality 4y ago
    Both, but more the second one. How many people, even of those few who care enough to get this set up, would think to open some arbitrary WordPerfect document from an untrusted source, or even from anyone at all? Who would they be collaborating with who also uses WordPerfect?
    - prmoustache 4y ago
      I don't think this is the kind of tool used by people who collaborate and or share the working documents in a business setting anyway. I think it mostly exist for the challenge of making it run reliably, work locally and to publish documents in pdf or printed form. If you are only using it for your own document, don't include images randomly downloaded from the internet, there is not much risk.
teruakohatu 4y ago
After reading the FAQ and Tips and Tricks, I can only imagine how amazing a modern terminal WordPerfect clone with Vim keybindings would be. I write a lot of pandoc markdown documents, vim and vscode are fine, but they are text editors not word processors.
- theli0nheart 4y ago
  I began a complete clone about a year ago, but paused work when I decided to start a startup :) It was mainly just a technical exercise, but comments like yours make me think that people would actually use it.
- timellis-smith 4y ago
  WordPerfect 6 for Dos was my favourite word processor. Vim keybindings would make WP pretty incredible.
  - pedrow 4y ago
    Also you need a template to drop over the function keys. How would that work on a modern keyboard!? https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/1604126863067008/UI__3_WordPerfect.pdf https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/1604126863067008/UI__3_WordPer...
  - xattt 4y ago
    Don’t forget a buckling spring keyboard for that ultimate bare metal experience.
- DevOfNull 4y ago
  I don't use it personally, but from what I hear this is exactly the use case Emacs was made for.
- Apfel 4y ago
  Neovim with the markdown preview plugin does a really really neat job if you haven't tried it.
ksenzee 4y ago
There is _still_ no other word processor I'm aware of that can properly convert to title case. Not to mention Reveal Codes. I... might actually use this, not just play with it.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > There is _still_ no other word processor I'm aware of that can properly convert to title case. Not to mention Reveal Codes. I... might actually use this, not just play with it. Like this? http://aitech.ac.jp/~ckelly/midi/help/caps.html http://aitech.ac.jp/~ckelly/midi/help/caps.html
  - ksenzee 4y ago
    Yep. They're complicated rules to memorize but you can definitely reduce them to an algorithm.
- currency 4y ago
  I was a computer labs staffer in the early 90s, and for a lot of students our labs were their first exposure to word processors, and man, I hated supporting WordPerfect for DOS. Students couldn't figure out how to apply formatting correctly. Trying to change something's format, they would would reveal codes and delete half of a formatting code pair. I spent so much time explaining why half their paper was now in italics or bold. WYSIWYG works so much better for most people.
  - ksenzee 4y ago
    "this sure is a great circular saw" "table knives work so much better for most people"
- 2b3a51 4y ago
  Equation editor and outlines with 'move family' type functionality as well. Those are not exclusive features but interesting for a terminal application.
- boffinAudio 4y ago
nichtverstehen 4y ago
The print preview in a terminal is mind-blowing. Just learnt about Sixels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel). Quite a few terminal emulators support them: https://www.arewesixelyet.com/ https://www.arewesixelyet.com/ I wonder though which terminal with sixels Tavis used on Windows to produce the screenshots in README. Can't recognize the icon.
hestefisk 4y ago
Dream come true for me! Yet another reason to live on the terminal full time, without starting X. Does WP save to Doc easily? I remember using WP 5-something at school on PC-DOS. It was very cool.
gadders 4y ago
Someone did the same with Lotus 1-2-3. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31455968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31455968
- TMWNN 4y ago
  Same person, Tavis Ormandy.
creamyhorror 4y ago
Now to plug in LLM functionality into it to supercharge your retro word-processing with word-generating courtesy of GPT.
vrglvrglvrgl 4y ago
[dead]
boffinAudio 4y ago
Fine. Now do PC-Write, won't someone please ..
ToddWBurgess 4y ago
I was the high school student that used to teach the teachers how to use WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS back in the day. So many memories seeing it again
anthk 4y ago
Image support might be simulated with sixels, I guess. EDIT: it already does. For a libre alternative, I suggest wordgrinder. Or, much better, groff+mom, and entr+make to run groff -mom -step -k < file.groff > file.pdf Viewers like MUPDF will update the document on file changes I think. Help on Groff+Mom: https://www.schaffter.ca/mom/mom-01.html https://www.schaffter.ca/mom/mom-01.html

214 points by metadat 4y ago

Very cool. Brings back memories! Though by the time WP came along I was already a solid WordStar user so customized all the keyboard shortcuts to match WordStar.

stereolambda 4y ago

These terminal word processors always looked attractive to me, but what is the path from this, or WordGrinder, to some mainstream document formats - that are accepted in publishing and academic settings? From what I remember RTF is the easiest to implement from common filetypes, and openable in office suites like MS or LibreOffice. Then, in theory (unless it breaks a bunch of stuff inside), you can save it as DOCX or something. Anyone has experience with this?

roter 4y ago
Perhaps tangential, but there is a Pandoc marco [0] for this program to DOCX via RTF. But I agree, I can do all sorts of things but eventually I am often required to get a document in DOCX. Love Pandoc. [0] https://github.com/taviso/wpunix/issues/17 https://github.com/taviso/wpunix/issues/17
iudqnolq 4y ago
WordPerfect is still used a little by lawyers. Here's how the free law project parses it: wpd2html https://github.com/freelawproject/doctor/blob/main/doctor/tasks.py#L375 https://github.com/freelawproject/doctor/blob/main/doctor/ta...
kcartlidge 4y ago
> These terminal word processors always looked attractive to me, but what is the path from this, or WordGrinder, to some mainstream document formats The early WordPerfect file format is pretty straightforward. It pretty much mirrors what you see in Reveal Codes, which is a single stream of text interspersed with special inline codes that switch things on/off (eg bold) or do something special (eg table of contents). As it's linear you can just whizz along taking plain text as it is, converting features as you reach them, and discarding the ones you don't care about. I did it myself in C# for WP4 (DOS) files to Markdown, but RTF is also trivial to write to. Search for the filename "WP42FF.TXT" and you'll find the format online. Incidentally, DOCX is just a ZIP file with special contents. Make a single sentence document in Word and save it out, rename the file to .ZIP and extract it. The contents are obvious when you look through them, and you can use that as a 'skeleton' and switch the text with your own. For RTF look for a copy of "RTF Pocket Guide" by Sean Burke.

ansible 4y ago

Oh, neat. We actually ran WordPerfect for SCO Unix back in the day. This was on a dual-processor Acer / Altos system, with a whole bunch of serial terminals. That was the first Unix system I had ever purchased! Though one of the two CPUs had to be disabled because of OS stability issues. I wanted to use Livingston Portmaster Ethernet terminal servers, but was overridden by my boss. I eventually got them anyway, because expanding the RS-485 for the serial ports was severely limited. Overall, WP ran pretty well on the hardware of the day. With Wyse 160 terminals running at 115200 bps, it wasn't quite as fast as on a DOS PC, but still pretty snappy. It even had print preview, because the 160 was a graphics terminal.

jasoneckert 4y ago

I remember that this was the killer app for Xenix back in the day. Many organizations bought Xenix workstations because of it.

reaperducer 4y ago

I wonder what the minimum screen size is for this. I have a couple of old low-end terminals that might get new life if I could use them with WordPerfect.

kjs3 4y ago
It worked fine on a vt220 or Wyse 60.
toast0 4y ago
If this is just the old version of WordPerfect with some help to get it running on a modern system, I don't know why 80x24/25 would be too small... I certainly saw it running on a normal terminal back in the day.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  One of the machines I'm targeting is 60 wide, and another 40. But I'll give it a shot and see what happens!
  - toast0 4y ago
    Yeah, I was afraid about that. I'd guess you might have some trouble with a narrow terminal, but it's still worth trying. I remember word perfect not having much in the way of menus (thus the keyboard templates for the commands), so it might be no big deal.
prmoustache 4y ago
Do you really thing you would put aside your regular laptop to use an old terminal for writing? I mean I am all for recycling but if you already own something that can do more I have very little faith that anyone would regularly fire up an old power hungry machine to do one single task unless it does it significantly better than the newer one or some kind of compatibility factor forces it like needing a particular port/interface unavailable on newer machines.
- 4y ago

geocrasher 4y ago

This is interesting! My first exposure to Unix was in 1990 when my mother worked for a law firm in California. Everyone had dumb terminals on their desks connected to a very very large tower computer in the server room. I don't remember anything about it (I was only about 14) except that it said Santa Cruz operations Unix on it. And of course, at her desk I could see my mom log into her Unix account and launch WordPerfect with wp. I was blown away! There was also a spreadsheet application but I have to admit that I don't remember what it was. It was probably Lotus 123 but I don't know if it was ported to Unix or not. Little did I know that I would be making a living with Linux all these years later!

cafard 4y ago
My recollection is that WordPerfect Office on minicomputers had its own spreadsheet application. Wikipedia says "PlanPerfect". By now I don't remember.
taviso 4y ago
123 was indeed ported to UNIX, I have that working as well! https://github.com/taviso/123elf https://github.com/taviso/123elf (Although it was more likely procalc - a popular low-end lotus clone) I'm also working on porting dBase IV, another popular package from the era :)
- skissane 4y ago
  > 123 was indeed ported to UNIX I keep on hoping that some day the IBM mainframe port (MVS and VM/CMS) might turn up. It was further away from the DOS original than the UNIX port was, due to the changes required by 3270 block mode terminals.
- unixhero 4y ago
  That is a darn fine spreadsheet in the console. I am tempted to try it!
  - alchemist1e9 4y ago
    Imagine all the great commercial code lost to time. There should be a historical preservation movement to try and find the source code for old abandoned applications like this.

harshreality 4y ago

Nerd-sniped by nostalgia. I wonder if he's looked for unsafe input handling leading to potential security issues.

walterbell 4y ago
It can be run in a VM with non-persistent root filesystem.
usr1106 4y ago
Did you ask out of serious technical concern? Or just because the main contributor seems to be a famous security researcher?
- harshreality 4y ago
  Both, but more the second one. How many people, even of those few who care enough to get this set up, would think to open some arbitrary WordPerfect document from an untrusted source, or even from anyone at all? Who would they be collaborating with who also uses WordPerfect?
  - prmoustache 4y ago
    I don't think this is the kind of tool used by people who collaborate and or share the working documents in a business setting anyway. I think it mostly exist for the challenge of making it run reliably, work locally and to publish documents in pdf or printed form. If you are only using it for your own document, don't include images randomly downloaded from the internet, there is not much risk.

teruakohatu 4y ago

After reading the FAQ and Tips and Tricks, I can only imagine how amazing a modern terminal WordPerfect clone with Vim keybindings would be. I write a lot of pandoc markdown documents, vim and vscode are fine, but they are text editors not word processors.

theli0nheart 4y ago
I began a complete clone about a year ago, but paused work when I decided to start a startup :) It was mainly just a technical exercise, but comments like yours make me think that people would actually use it.
timellis-smith 4y ago
WordPerfect 6 for Dos was my favourite word processor. Vim keybindings would make WP pretty incredible.
- pedrow 4y ago
  Also you need a template to drop over the function keys. How would that work on a modern keyboard!? https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/1604126863067008/UI__3_WordPerfect.pdf https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/1604126863067008/UI__3_WordPer...
- xattt 4y ago
  Don’t forget a buckling spring keyboard for that ultimate bare metal experience.
DevOfNull 4y ago
I don't use it personally, but from what I hear this is exactly the use case Emacs was made for.
Apfel 4y ago
Neovim with the markdown preview plugin does a really really neat job if you haven't tried it.

ksenzee 4y ago

There is _still_ no other word processor I'm aware of that can properly convert to title case. Not to mention Reveal Codes. I... might actually use this, not just play with it.

tablespoon 4y ago
> There is _still_ no other word processor I'm aware of that can properly convert to title case. Not to mention Reveal Codes. I... might actually use this, not just play with it. Like this? http://aitech.ac.jp/~ckelly/midi/help/caps.html http://aitech.ac.jp/~ckelly/midi/help/caps.html
- ksenzee 4y ago
  Yep. They're complicated rules to memorize but you can definitely reduce them to an algorithm.
currency 4y ago
I was a computer labs staffer in the early 90s, and for a lot of students our labs were their first exposure to word processors, and man, I hated supporting WordPerfect for DOS. Students couldn't figure out how to apply formatting correctly. Trying to change something's format, they would would reveal codes and delete half of a formatting code pair. I spent so much time explaining why half their paper was now in italics or bold. WYSIWYG works so much better for most people.
- ksenzee 4y ago
  "this sure is a great circular saw" "table knives work so much better for most people"
2b3a51 4y ago
Equation editor and outlines with 'move family' type functionality as well. Those are not exclusive features but interesting for a terminal application.
boffinAudio 4y ago

nichtverstehen 4y ago

The print preview in a terminal is mind-blowing. Just learnt about Sixels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel). Quite a few terminal emulators support them: https://www.arewesixelyet.com/ https://www.arewesixelyet.com/ I wonder though which terminal with sixels Tavis used on Windows to produce the screenshots in README. Can't recognize the icon.

hestefisk 4y ago

Dream come true for me! Yet another reason to live on the terminal full time, without starting X. Does WP save to Doc easily? I remember using WP 5-something at school on PC-DOS. It was very cool.

gadders 4y ago

Someone did the same with Lotus 1-2-3. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31455968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31455968

TMWNN 4y ago
Same person, Tavis Ormandy.

creamyhorror 4y ago

Now to plug in LLM functionality into it to supercharge your retro word-processing with word-generating courtesy of GPT.

vrglvrglvrgl 4y ago

[dead]

boffinAudio 4y ago

Fine. Now do PC-Write, won't someone please ..

ToddWBurgess 4y ago

I was the high school student that used to teach the teachers how to use WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS back in the day. So many memories seeing it again

anthk 4y ago

Image support might be simulated with sixels, I guess. EDIT: it already does. For a libre alternative, I suggest wordgrinder. Or, much better, groff+mom, and entr+make to run groff -mom -step -k < file.groff > file.pdf Viewers like MUPDF will update the document on file changes I think. Help on Groff+Mom: https://www.schaffter.ca/mom/mom-01.html https://www.schaffter.ca/mom/mom-01.html