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- Hacker News
- I believe George R. R. Martin uses wordstar to write his books. I still hold a little hope that he will finish A Song of Ice and Fire series.
- I think he is busy making sure AI doesn't finish it first. Can't have AIs trample in his fantasy land.by visarga
- Maybe he hasn't finished it because he can't run WordStar anymore.by EFreethought
- I have picked up from random interviews and other things the belief that GRRM finished the series but is considering publishing it posthumously to just not have to deal with fans picking it apart, especially because of reactions to the ending of the HBO Show.by WorldMaker
- Robert J. Sawyer is pretty responsive to emails and seeing how it’s been 30 years since he wrote that, I wonder if his views and toolset have changed since then and he might be amenable to sharing more.
One of my favorite sci fi authors btw - perennial Hugo nominee in the 90s/2ks, his lone Hugo win is for the amazing Hominids but he has many other great books. I’ve bought/read all but 2 - something I should go and correct before his newest is published and I’m 3 behind!
- > I wonder if his views and toolset have changed since then and he might be amenable to sharing more.
No. He uses WordStar 7 for DOS and made his own installable bundle of it and shared it.
https://www.sfwriter.com/ws7.htm
I incorporated it into my bootable DOS USB key:
https://github.com/lproven/usb-dos
He likes this and thanked me. :-)
by lproven - WordStar was great once you had the keycombos memorized.
WordPerfect was great for doing lots of formatting it was so easy to make a signature for printing a booklet or zine.
I've been using Scrivener as my creating space. It is great at taking down words and organizing research. It just does RTF which is completely fine for my needs, but it is not a word processor or page layout program but that is not what it needs to do.
I'd rather use Word (ugh) or InDesign for layout. Separating the data from the display keeps things focused on what's important at the time.
- I've long considered getting a netbook, slapping freedos on it and running WordStar or WordPerfect as a writing deck.
I'm not sure how I would get my files I create off the device since USB support isn't really a thing.
by jszymborski - Something like the Pocket 386 but with a regular size keyboard could be the perfect device for this purpose.by jwrallie
- Apparently the right combination of BIOS and FreeDOS gives you somewhat easy USB support: https://superuser.com/questions/740474/how-to-access-a-usb-s...by WorldMaker
- It should run fine under dosemu with a minimal console only Linux.
- I've had similar thoughts and ended up going with FreeBSD and no network connection for my use case. It's been great. It gives you some of the expected terminal ergonomics (and USB support) without the distractions.by kqr
- I thought freedos could use usb? Get something with built in ethernet or serial and you can transfer that way pretty easy too.
Or just run joe as jstar and close enough, maybe? I use joe for mostly everything, but I never used WordStar (well, I ran into it once)
by toast0 - https://github.com/lproven/usb-dos
"To get your work off the key, just insert the key into a computer that's already running any more modern OS than DOS."
by UncleSlacky - If you use a machine with an ISA slot, you can get a card with a chip called CH375 or CH376, which deploys a USB flash drive like a normal hard disc with either a loadable driver or option BIOS ROM. You can just pull out the entire drive and mount it on a normal Windows or Linux box.
I think the below-mentioned Pocket 376 might have one soldered-on already.
by hakfoo - Hyperbola GNU/Linux and Wordgrinder or jstar (from the Joe package) and Markdown, or even Groff as the basic syntax can be easy enough. Then you run
And you can now enjoy a formated book in the spot.groff file.troff -step -k > file.pdfIf any, check Groff with Mom macros, with does what you need with ease:
Online manual:
https://www.schaffter.ca/mom/momdoc/toc.html
For a quick command:
In order to get the last version:pdfmom -step -k yourfile.troff > output.pdf- Install groff in Hyperbola GNU/Linux (or any other) if is not installed. It's mandatory in a 99% of distros but not Hyperbola.
- get https://www.schaffter.ca/mom/mom-2.6_d.tar.gz
- uncompress it
- copy om.tmac to /usr/share/groff/current/tmac/om.tmac
- cd to examples/ directory and do some tests:
WIth jstar+groff+mom you can get something basically perfect. "-step -k" it's just "-s -t -e -p -k", a bunch of options to enforce UTF-8, some proper handing and whatnot.pdfmom -step -k mom-pdf.mom > mom-pdf.pdfby anthk - Interesting that the guy who wrote the article is an award-winning science fiction writer and also the author of FlashForward. They even made a TV series based on it.by llagerlof
- I started getting into typewriters. I could've repurposed an old X230 and disable/remove the network card physically. But I also wanted to stop staring at a screen when writing, so I gave the typewriter a try.
It's still early and I'm struggling to write more than a few lines at a time. Not surprising from how I've been commenting "witty" one-liners in comment threads for over a decade. I expect being able to write long-form with no backspacing will need a lot of time to learn.
But I want to take back my attention. If there's one thing I've learned in the last decade, is that one's attention is a precious resource and it's time to be more deliberate in how I spend it.
by ares623 - Attention is like a limited amount, you start the day with 100 tokens, scrolling tick-tock for an hour? 25 tokens, deep working for an hour? 25 tokens - what do you have left to do and how many tokens does it take?
I’m trying more and more to not spend tokens on things that don’t help (social media), etc.
- Reaching back decades, I used to do a first draft longhand on file paper, cross bits out, rewrite bits. Then bang it out on a typewriter. Then once over with a red pen the next day, and a complete re-type.
I'm not sure that I could work that way now, but it was more deliberate. Less 'drive by' thought.
"Our Writing Tools Are Also Working on Our Thoughts"
(I'm talking essays for University here not deathless prose).
by 2b3a51 - I got back to writing longer texts by mentally separating writing and editing. When writing, just write. Even when you think the paragraph could be better, keep on writing.
Only start editing when a substantial piece is ready. Clean up some wording, rewrite a paragraph or two.
Even then, don't overdo it. There is always something to improve, you'll never be done that way. Good enough is good enough, hit publish and go on write the next thing.
by Rotundo - I grew up using WordStar on the Apple ][. It was great when all you had was an 80 column card, a green phosphor screen and a keyboard, but I was never sad to leave it behind when GUIs were invented. I have nostalgia for the time, sure, but not for that interface and the multi-key-stroke commands you had to learn by rote.
Each to their own, and of course finding an optimal writing environment is a very subjective thing -- but it's not like there aren't modern distraction-free writing interfaces that exist.
by epihelix - > a green phosphor screen
In the spirit of emacs-v-vim, I have to come down in favor of that other phosphor color of those days, amber. Better contrast !!!
by euroderf - > I grew up using WordStar on the Apple ][.
I don't think you did. AFAIK it never ran directly on 6502.
Perhaps under CP/M using the Microsoft add-on card that DOS creator Tim Paterson designed for them?
by lproven - > leave it behind when GUIs were invented
GUIs were invented by the Xerox PARC team early 1970s, the IIc (I have one sitting on my desk :) was 1984. Totally beside your point so I apologize. I only mention it because PARC deserves a huge amount of credit.
by user3939382 - I remember being quite excited at moving from a DOS based word processor (Word Perfect) to a GUI based one (Word). It looked like a step up.
In retrospect the quality, quantity and look and feel of the documents I created remained exactly the same.
- AFAIK, WordStar never ran directly on the Apple II. You must've had a CP/M card, probably the Microsoft Z-80 SoftCard. And I'll bet that 80 column card was a Videx. I eventually switched from WordStar to AppleWorks. Somehow, I never used Apple Writer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-80_SoftCard
https://www.wiseowl.com/articles/a2fpga-videx-01-the-card-th...
by js2 - In the same way as WordStar, there's a community of DOS WordPerfect 6.0 users who claim with some validity that it's still the best for writing proseby nylonstrung
- That would be 5.1. The 6.0 graphic mode just gets in the way.by nottorp
- In the UK at least it crops up a lot in legal circles.
Quite often solicitors have stuff on 3.5" or even 5.25" floppies that need read, converted from WordPerfect into something modern, and delivered as maybe a PDF or Word Doc.
Fortunately, solicitors tend not to be short of money (that they bill their client for) so they can often find "a guy who knows a guy" who can get that precious floppy onto a USB stick. Occasionally I am the guy who the guy knows, and it buys me the odd case of reasonably-priced wine.