Science Fiction Writer Robert J. Sawyer: WordStar 7 Archive

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ROBERT J. SAWYER

Hugo and Nebula Winner

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Complete WordStar 7.0 Archive

by Robert J. Sawyer

VERSION 1.5

Monday, August 12, 2024

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

My name is Robert J. Sawyer . I'm a Hugo and Nebula<br>Award-winning Canadian science-fiction writer. All twenty-five of my novels were<br>written with WordStar , the best word-processing program<br>the world has ever known.

WordStar was first introduced in 1978 and the final release —<br>WordStar for DOS 7.0 Rev. D — came out in December 1992. The program<br>has never been updated since, and the company that made it has been defunct for<br>decades; the program is abandonware.

But I still use it, and George R.R. Martin uses an earlier version.<br>There has never — until now — been a complete online archive<br>of the final version of the program along with all its manuals.<br>Here it is:

Click to download the<br>--><br>Click to download the<br>--><br>Click to download the

complete WordStar 7.0 archive

I spent weeks putting all this together. The archive contains not just the WordStar<br>program but also extensive resources on how to use it, in addition to fully text-searchable<br>PDFs of the original manuals, totaling over 1,000 pages, scanned from my own copies.

Since MS-DOS programs, such as WordStar, can't run under modern operating systems without<br>using an MS-DOS emulator, I've provided two complete plug-and-play packages for running<br>WordStar under Windows, one using DOSBox-X , an emulator that's still actively developed<br>and maintained, and another using vDosPlus , which still works wonderfully but is no<br>longer maintained.

Download the archive, and install it so that its topmost directory is located at C:\WS<br>(WordStar expects this file location &#151 but you can change both the drive and the<br>directory later, if you want; I've provided instructions).

See the file -README.TXT in the archive; you'll have<br>WordStar running on your Windows computer in a matter of minutes (note the hyphen at<br>the beginning of the filename; there's a separate README.TXT ,<br>which is the original README that came with the program).

WordStar will also run just fine under Linux or Mac OS if you use the appropriate<br>versions of DOSBox-X that you can get here .

I've also included many utilities that would otherwise have been lost to history, including<br>the contents of the libraries at the CompuServe WordStar Forum; I was one of the sysops of<br>that forum.

Although WordStar is a lean-and-mean program, written entirely in assembly language,<br>this comprehensive archive weighs in at 460 megabytes and contains over 3,600 files.<br>It is as complete — and is as easy to use — as I can make it.

For all the reasons I, and other writers, love WordStar, see my essay<br>WordStar: A Writer's Word Processor .

The full 5,100-word -README.TXT file that<br>I've included in the WordStar 7 archive is below.

—Robert J. Sawyer

Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

August 2024

The -README File Included in the WordStar 7 Archive:

Using and Customizing WordStar for DOS

by Robert J. Sawyer

sawyer@sfwriter.com

August 2024

This document is provided in both a

plain-text version as -README.TXT and as

a WordStar document named -README.WS .

Note on PDF files: There are thirteen files with the extension .PDF<br>in C:\WS , the topmost folder of this archive (including ASCII.PDF ,<br>DRAFT.PDF , LASERJET.PDF , and WS4.PDF ).

These are not Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format files.<br>Rather, they are WordStar's Printer Definition Files ; WordStar<br>started using the file extension .PDF before Adobe did.

The full set of WordStar manuals as Adobe PDF Portable Document<br>Format files is in the separate folder C:\WS\MANUALS .

Viewing This File

When viewing this (or any) WordStar document, you can toggle the display of<br>print controls and command tags on and off using the command ^OD —<br>hold down Ctrl , hit the letter O , then hit the letter D .<br>As with all two-letter WordStar commands, you can continue to hold down the Ctrl key when<br>issuing the second letter, but you don't have to.

(If you're viewing -README.TXT instead of<br>-README.WS , there are no control codes or command tags to display.)

WordStar in the Twenty-First Century

WordStar for DOS is abandonware. The company that made it is long<br>defunct, and the software hasn't been updated since December 1992. The version<br>provided here — WordStar for DOS 7.0 Rev. D — is the final one<br>ever produced.

Why might you want to use such old software? See my essay<br>WordStar: A Writer's Word Processor<br>in the file WORDSTAR.WS , or read the online version here:

https://sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm

Also, please see the interview with me about why I still use WordStar contained in the<br>file INTERVU.WS or...