Science Fiction Writer Robert J. Sawyer: WordStar: A Writer's Word Processor

Science Fiction Writer

ROBERT J. SAWYER

Hugo and Nebula Winner

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A Writer's Word Processor

by Robert J. Sawyer

Copyright 1990 and 1996 by Robert J. Sawyer .

To download the full final version of WordStar — WordStar for DOS 7.0 Rev. D —<br>along with plug-and-play MS-DOS emulator packages for running it under Windows , see:

WordStar 7.0 Archives

And for why I continue to use and love WordStar well into the 21st century, see below.

"Sawyer's long post [below] about WordStar is extremely insightful."<br>—Matthew Kirschenbaum , author of<br>Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing

"A fine word processing program called WordStar. It never crashed,<br>and it never failed, and I loved it immoderately."<br>—Michael Chabon , author of<br>The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

"As testimony to how good WordStar is, even I became proficient at it<br>and wrote a dozen novels and hundreds of short stories on it. A great system,<br>especially compared to MS Word."<br>—Edo van Belkom , author of Scream Queen

"I am happy to greet the geniuses [Rob Barnaby and Seymour Rubinstein,<br>the creators of WordStar] who made me a born-again writer. Having announced my<br>retirement in 1978, I now have six books in the works and two [probables],<br>all through WordStar."<br>—Arthur C. Clarke , author of 2001: A Space Odyssey

"I have a secret weapon: I use WordStar. It does everything I want a<br>word-processing program to do."<br>—George R.R. Martin , author of A Game of Thrones

"WordStar was magnificent. I loved it. It was logical, beautiful,<br>perfect. Compared to it, Microsoft Word is pure madness."<br>—Anne Rice , author of Interview with the Vampire

Many science-fiction writers — including myself,<br>Roger MacBride Allen,<br>Gerald Brandt,<br>Jeffrey A. Carver,<br>Arthur C. Clarke,<br>David Gerrold,<br>Terence M. Green,<br>James Gunn,<br>Matthew Hughes,<br>Donald Kingsbury,<br>Eric Kotani,<br>Paul Levinson,<br>George R. R. Martin,<br>Vonda McIntyre,<br>Kit Reed,<br>Jennifer Roberson, and<br>Edo van Belkom — continue to use WordStar<br>for DOS as our writing tool of choice.

Still, most of us have endured years of mindless criticism of our<br>decision, usually from WordPerfect users, and especially from<br>WordPerfect users who have never tried anything but that<br>program. I've used WordStar, WordPerfect, Word, MultiMate,<br>Sprint, XyWrite, and just about every other MS-DOS and Windows<br>word-processing package, and WordStar is by far my<br>favorite choice for creative composition at the keyboard.

That's the key point: aiding creative composition. To<br>understand how WordStar does that better than other programs, let<br>me start with a little history.

AN INTERFACE DESIGNED FOR TOUCH TYPISTS

WordStar was first released in 1978, before there was any<br>standardization in computer keyboards. At that time, many<br>keyboards lacked arrow keys for cursor movement and special<br>function keys for issuing commands. Some even lacked such keys<br>as Tab, Insert, Delete, Backspace, and Enter.

About all you could count on was having a standard QWERTY<br>typewriter layout of alphanumeric keys and a Control key. The<br>Control key is a specialized shift key. When depressed<br>simultaneously with an alphabetic key, it causes the keyboard to<br>generate a specific command instruction, rather than the letter.<br>The control codes are named Ctrl-A through Ctrl-Z (there are<br>a few punctuation keys that can generate control codes, too).<br>Control codes are frequently indicated in text by preceding the<br>letter with a caret, like so: ^A.

WordStar's original designers, Seymour Rubinstein and Rob<br>Barnaby, selected five control codes to be prefixes for bringing<br>up additional menus of functions: ^O for On-screen functions; ^Q<br>for Quick cursor functions; ^P for Print functions; ^K for block<br>and file functions; and ^J for help.

Now, the first three of these are alphabetically mnemonic. The<br>last two, ^K and ^J, might at first glance seem to be arbitrary<br>choices. They aren't. Look at a typewriter keyboard. You'll<br>see that for a touch typist, the two strongest fingers of the<br>right hand rest over ^J and ^K on the home typing row. WordStar<br>recognizes that the most-often-used functions should be the<br>easiest to physically execute.

To serve as arrow keys for moving the cursor up, left, right, or<br>down, WordStar adopted ^E, ^S, ^D, and ^X. Again, looking at a<br>typewriter keyboard makes the logic of this plain. These four<br>keys are arranged in a diamond under the left hand:

S D

Such positional, as opposed to alphabetic, mnemonics form a large<br>part of the WordStar interface. Additional cursor-movement<br>commands are clustered around the E/S/D/X diamond:

W E R

A S D F

Z X C

^A and ^F, on the home typing row, move the cursor left and right<br>by words. ^W and ^Z, to the left of the cursor-up and<br>cursor-down commands, scroll the screen up and down by single<br>lines. ^R and ^C, to the right of the cursor-up and...