4 ms·

I do not plan to try this but I do wonder how well the terminal version of WordPerfect would work in this. Also, if sixel support were added, it could support

by ryao 1y ago

I do not plan to try this but I do wonder how well the terminal version of WordPerfect would work in this. Also, if sixel support were added, it could support graphics. See: https://github.com/taviso/wpunix/wiki/Terminals https://github.com/taviso/wpunix/wiki/Terminals If sixels somehow are already supported, then it does support graphics.

mxuribe 1y ago
Well, i remember a time when MS Word was run within DOS, yes, DOS as in the old operating system....so while i never used WordPerfect, i would not be surprized if such a thing existed. This DE looks quite a bit like DOS - or at least the UI seen via apps within DOS. I didn't care much for DOS back in the day...but now, i like it...of course it might be simple rose-colored nostalgia. :-)
- snozolli 1y ago
  This DE looks quite a bit like DOS - or at least the UI seen via apps within DOS. I'm definitely getting Turbo Pascal 5 vibes. Not 6, though, because that added ASCII drop-shadows.
  - lelanthran 1y ago
    > Not 6, though, because that added ASCII drop-shadows. I see a drop shadow on a button; not sure if that specific console application had the button or if the button is part of the DE.
- technothrasher 1y ago
  > so while i never used WordPerfect, i would not be surprized if such a thing existed. WordPerfect competed heavily with Microsoft Word back in the DOS days. I made money in high school with side jobs teaching people to use WordPefect for DOS, and making utilities to convert and process WordPerfect files for small businesses. I wrote all of my high school papers on WordPerfect for the Amiga, which was basically just a straight port of the text-only DOS version.
  - mxuribe 1y ago
    Good on you that you made money that way in high school!
  - Cthulhu_ 1y ago
    WP was still used for typing practice back in uuhh... 1998/1999, I think they intentionally used that instead of their Windows counterparts to minimize distractability.
  - lproven 1y ago
    > WordPerfect competed heavily with Microsoft Word back in the DOS days. Ha! I'd say it was more accurate to say that MS Word tried to compete with WordPerfect. It was only with the rise of Windows that Word became a contender, and WordPerfect was relegated to trying to compete. > a straight port of the text-only DOS version. Just out of interest: WP was a Data General app. The DOS version was a port, as was the Amiga version, SCO Xenix, classic MacOS, all the others. The native app was a DG minicomputer program. Part of its competitiveness in the pre-GUI era was that WordPerfect was very portable and the company ported it to almost every OS going, complete with its massive suite of state-of-the-art printer drivers. If you were not using a DG Nova minicomputer then you were running a port. But as GUIs became standard, they almost all included printing subsystems, using soft fonts rendered by the same code that rendered stuff on screen. Printers' own built-in fonts became irrelevant: GUIs just dumped bitmaps to the printer. So WordPerfect's best-in-the-industry printer drivers, which supported every printer in the world and could make it do backflips, became irrelevant.
  - lelanthran 1y ago
    > WordPerfect competed heavily with Microsoft Word back in the DOS days. In my part of the world, on MSDOS, MS Word was not even in competition with WordPerfect. It was only with the advent of Windows (more specifically, Win95) that MS Word started seeing non-fractional percentage of usage compared to WordPerfect 5.1
    - mxuribe 1y ago
      Yeah, i had heard that WordPerfect was by far the preferred or better software in those days, though i never used. (To clarify: i was too young to know better, and simply used what was available to me at the time...which was only MS Word.)
- Scoundreller 1y ago
  WP5 was basically 40x60 (or whatever) in DOS. I still remember the royal blue background. WP6 also ran in DOS but had a full fledged GUI. Ran a bit slow on the 486 but wow!
  - Narishma 1y ago
    This is not correct. WP6 ran just fine even on a 286 and was still a text mode application.
- lproven 1y ago
  > i remember a time when MS Word was run within DOS The penultimate DOS version of MS Word is freeware. MS released Word 5.5 as freeware as a Y2K fix for all previous versions. It's quite usable. I've written articles using it. You can run it under Linux or macOS easily using DOSemu, on 64-bit Windows with VDOS+. I wrote about how, with a pic of it working: https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/28/friday_foss_fest_running_dos/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/28/friday_foss_fest_runn... Sadly, the last ever version, 6.0, is much better, with more keystrokes in common with Word 6 for Windows and Mac, and that's not freeware.
  - nunobrito 1y ago
    edit.com was a fantastic text editor. So easy, so intuitive. Never understood why nano wasn't able to compete. Anyways, I'm nowadays a user of "micro" on linux for text editing.
    - lproven 1y ago
      I totally agree. I use Tilde myself, which is very close. https://github.com/gphalkes/tilde https://github.com/gphalkes/tilde I have written about it: "Tilde, a text editor that doesn't work like it's 1976" https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/17/tilde_text_editor/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/17/tilde_text_editor/ Nobody got the gag in the title. 1976 was when Vi first appeared.
      - nunobrito 1y ago
        Hey, thanks. I've installed and tried out. The opening menu explained the key settings and it was just Edit from MSDOS. Very good, they even improved to exit the editor using ^Q. I really don't know why so many people are against having a bar with menus and using the arrows to navigate. It is intuitive and easy, that editor really hit the spot. Thank you for the tip.
  - mxuribe 1y ago
    Oh wow, that's so cool! And dig that blue background! Thanks for sharing!
LeoPanthera 1y ago
Wordgrinder is a modern text-mode word processor. (Distinct from a text editor.) https://github.com/davidgiven/wordgrinder https://github.com/davidgiven/wordgrinder
hliyan 1y ago
This discussion is bringing back some memories. Particularly my first time using Wordstar 2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar
chiffre01 1y ago
I want to live in a world where all the vintage Curses like apps work on modern systems. Just like Lotus 123 https://github.com/taviso/123elf https://github.com/taviso/123elf

by ryao 1y ago

mxuribe 1y ago

Well, i remember a time when MS Word was run within DOS, yes, DOS as in the old operating system....so while i never used WordPerfect, i would not be surprized if such a thing existed. This DE looks quite a bit like DOS - or at least the UI seen via apps within DOS. I didn't care much for DOS back in the day...but now, i like it...of course it might be simple rose-colored nostalgia. :-)

snozolli 1y ago
This DE looks quite a bit like DOS - or at least the UI seen via apps within DOS. I'm definitely getting Turbo Pascal 5 vibes. Not 6, though, because that added ASCII drop-shadows.
- lelanthran 1y ago
  > Not 6, though, because that added ASCII drop-shadows. I see a drop shadow on a button; not sure if that specific console application had the button or if the button is part of the DE.
technothrasher 1y ago
> so while i never used WordPerfect, i would not be surprized if such a thing existed. WordPerfect competed heavily with Microsoft Word back in the DOS days. I made money in high school with side jobs teaching people to use WordPefect for DOS, and making utilities to convert and process WordPerfect files for small businesses. I wrote all of my high school papers on WordPerfect for the Amiga, which was basically just a straight port of the text-only DOS version.
- mxuribe 1y ago
  Good on you that you made money that way in high school!
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  WP was still used for typing practice back in uuhh... 1998/1999, I think they intentionally used that instead of their Windows counterparts to minimize distractability.
- lproven 1y ago
  > WordPerfect competed heavily with Microsoft Word back in the DOS days. Ha! I'd say it was more accurate to say that MS Word tried to compete with WordPerfect. It was only with the rise of Windows that Word became a contender, and WordPerfect was relegated to trying to compete. > a straight port of the text-only DOS version. Just out of interest: WP was a Data General app. The DOS version was a port, as was the Amiga version, SCO Xenix, classic MacOS, all the others. The native app was a DG minicomputer program. Part of its competitiveness in the pre-GUI era was that WordPerfect was very portable and the company ported it to almost every OS going, complete with its massive suite of state-of-the-art printer drivers. If you were not using a DG Nova minicomputer then you were running a port. But as GUIs became standard, they almost all included printing subsystems, using soft fonts rendered by the same code that rendered stuff on screen. Printers' own built-in fonts became irrelevant: GUIs just dumped bitmaps to the printer. So WordPerfect's best-in-the-industry printer drivers, which supported every printer in the world and could make it do backflips, became irrelevant.
- lelanthran 1y ago
  > WordPerfect competed heavily with Microsoft Word back in the DOS days. In my part of the world, on MSDOS, MS Word was not even in competition with WordPerfect. It was only with the advent of Windows (more specifically, Win95) that MS Word started seeing non-fractional percentage of usage compared to WordPerfect 5.1
  - mxuribe 1y ago
    Yeah, i had heard that WordPerfect was by far the preferred or better software in those days, though i never used. (To clarify: i was too young to know better, and simply used what was available to me at the time...which was only MS Word.)
Scoundreller 1y ago
WP5 was basically 40x60 (or whatever) in DOS. I still remember the royal blue background. WP6 also ran in DOS but had a full fledged GUI. Ran a bit slow on the 486 but wow!
- Narishma 1y ago
  This is not correct. WP6 ran just fine even on a 286 and was still a text mode application.
lproven 1y ago
> i remember a time when MS Word was run within DOS The penultimate DOS version of MS Word is freeware. MS released Word 5.5 as freeware as a Y2K fix for all previous versions. It's quite usable. I've written articles using it. You can run it under Linux or macOS easily using DOSemu, on 64-bit Windows with VDOS+. I wrote about how, with a pic of it working: https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/28/friday_foss_fest_running_dos/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/28/friday_foss_fest_runn... Sadly, the last ever version, 6.0, is much better, with more keystrokes in common with Word 6 for Windows and Mac, and that's not freeware.
- nunobrito 1y ago
  edit.com was a fantastic text editor. So easy, so intuitive. Never understood why nano wasn't able to compete. Anyways, I'm nowadays a user of "micro" on linux for text editing.
  - lproven 1y ago
    I totally agree. I use Tilde myself, which is very close. https://github.com/gphalkes/tilde https://github.com/gphalkes/tilde I have written about it: "Tilde, a text editor that doesn't work like it's 1976" https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/17/tilde_text_editor/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/17/tilde_text_editor/ Nobody got the gag in the title. 1976 was when Vi first appeared.
    - nunobrito 1y ago
      Hey, thanks. I've installed and tried out. The opening menu explained the key settings and it was just Edit from MSDOS. Very good, they even improved to exit the editor using ^Q. I really don't know why so many people are against having a bar with menus and using the arrows to navigate. It is intuitive and easy, that editor really hit the spot. Thank you for the tip.
- mxuribe 1y ago
  Oh wow, that's so cool! And dig that blue background! Thanks for sharing!

LeoPanthera 1y ago

Wordgrinder is a modern text-mode word processor. (Distinct from a text editor.) https://github.com/davidgiven/wordgrinder https://github.com/davidgiven/wordgrinder

hliyan 1y ago

This discussion is bringing back some memories. Particularly my first time using Wordstar 2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar

chiffre01 1y ago

I want to live in a world where all the vintage Curses like apps work on modern systems. Just like Lotus 123 https://github.com/taviso/123elf https://github.com/taviso/123elf