[HN Gopher] WordPerfect for DOS Updated
___________________________________________________________________
WordPerfect for DOS Updated
Author : elvis70
Score : 299 points
Date : 2020-11-01 12:45 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.columbia.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.columbia.edu)
| zzzeek wrote:
| My start in the world of urban work environments was an office
| temp. Oddly enough I got pretty good at using Word Perfect and
| was given free training for more features and stuff by one of the
| top temp agencies at the time, and then I got to work the
| "lobster" shift at lawfirms and banks.
|
| Word Perfect for DOS has a _ton_ of features that folks normally
| wouldn 't know about like redlining and all kinds of fancy image
| rendering things (sorry it was > 25 years ago and I can't
| recollect specifics), law firms had an entire version-control
| system integrated with it.
|
| Word Perfect was also how I ended up being an actual programmer
| for money in NYC. I started automating my work at some of these
| firms with macros and later with some C and Perl code and some of
| the gigs I had I could just walk in and spend all day on IRC
| while I'd get paid $20 an hour (which was a lot) for my scripts
| to run through all the docs they thought I was re-formatting by
| hand.
| EricE wrote:
| Reveal Codes was the single greatest feature of WordPerfect -
| I'm convinced Microsoft continues to refuse to provide the
| equivalent out of spite for WP.
|
| Does anyone else remember calling into WP tech support during
| its heyday? They had a hold queue disk jokey that would
| interact with people on hold. It was a nice touch.
| boudewijnrempt wrote:
| The reason reveal codes isn't available in Word isn't some
| kind of petty spite. Word just doesn't intersperse formatting
| codes in the stream like WordPerfect did (or html does, to
| some extent). It puts all formatting information in a binary
| block at the end of each paragraph. That's both more
| flexible, and more fragile.
|
| As an aside, me and my wife, we translated WordPerfect 6 for
| DOS into Latin for the Vatican, as freelance translators.
| localhost wrote:
| ALT+F3! That works a lot better on the original Model F
| keyboards where the function keys were in two columns on the
| left side of the keyboard. I would love to have a modern
| version with 12 function keys on the left ...
| Arainach wrote:
| The Kinesis Freestyle Edge has 12 such keys in that
| position. The mechanical gaming version (RGB) allows them
| all to be arbitrarily mapped, and function keys are one
| good use of them.
| localhost wrote:
| Thanks - both your suggestion and @davewongillies are
| close ... but my ideal keyboard is still the "87 key"
| layout with the inverted T, but with 12 function keys on
| the left. On modern PCs it's hard to live without the F11
| and F12 keys.
|
| I'd even settle for a 12 key keypad on the left as well -
| that might be more doable. Looks like I might have to
| build this myself from scratch ...
| will_pseudonym wrote:
| What do the F11 and F12 keys do for you on a modern PC? I
| don't know of their uses offhand.
| ornornor wrote:
| Full screen and dev tools respectively for web
| developers.
| opan wrote:
| F11 is often fullscreen, and F12 is sometimes a
| screenshot button in some games.
| davewongillies wrote:
| They exist but are expensive and tend to only be on sale
| for short periods of time in group guys, for example the
| Rama Zenith
|
| https://ramaworks.store/products/zenith-keyboard
| ornornor wrote:
| > They had a hold queue disk jokey that would interact with
| people on hold. It was a nice touch.
|
| That sounds pretty cool. Can you tell us more? How did the DJ
| interact? Could you choose your music style and get different
| music like some phone systems offer these days? Was there a
| live DJ like you'd find in a club for the whole time they
| were taking calls?
| spolsky wrote:
| I don't know why everybody thinks Microsoft Word doesn't have
| Reveal Codes. They have it; it's called Reveal Formatting; it
| has mostly been there since version 1.0 which I remember
| installing from 100 floppy disks in college in 1989.
| gadders wrote:
| I think the DJ role rotated amongst the support staff. At
| least that's what I told happened in the UK (Source: worked
| for Lotus Support, nearly worked at WP).
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I wish reveal codes would be implemented in other word
| processing systems. Since docx is zipped xml it would seem
| like it could be done by someone.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| Thanks for bringing up the DJ. I remember that but what
| company had it. You could also have convinced me I dreamed
| it.
|
| edit: googled it and found an article from 1991 on what looks
| like a local news site.
| https://www.deseret.com/1991/7/17/18931236/don-t-hang-up-
| dee...
| irrational wrote:
| Reveal codes really is the number one thing I miss in every
| word processing software since WordPerfect. Fortunately I
| rarely have to do word processing anymore, but I'd hate to do
| it as a full time job without reveal codes.
| paultopia wrote:
| Lawyers of a certain generation all mourn the loss of
| WordPerfect terribly, mostly because of reveal codes. I
| remember using it in law practice as late as 2006.
| artsr wrote:
| I still miss Reveal Codes. It was such a fast route to fixing
| layout problems..
| itwy wrote:
| Nostalgia.
| foobar1962 wrote:
| Getting WP to run on a modern computer is relatively easy
| compared to being able to use it without the rectangular cheat-
| sheet that went over your keyboard function keys to tell you what
| key-combinations to press. <smile>
| floatingatoll wrote:
| I enjoyed that the site takes a lot of care around providing
| instructions to technical people, and a lot of those summarize as
| "start over; follow the instructions as written".
| wdb wrote:
| Maybe my memory plays tricks on me but didn't WP 6 be graphical
| on DOS?
| EricE wrote:
| They tried - it was a slow, ungainly disaster. Yes, it took
| more to master WP5.1 in character mode, but once you did
| nothing was faster.
| boudewijnrempt wrote:
| You could also use it in text mode, which was better. But...
| 5.1 was still so much more stable.
| Rizz wrote:
| Not too long ago I was asked to do some maintenance programming
| on a logistics program (the program did amongst others: fill the
| various operated trucks to not more than capacity from orders,
| add new orders at any time, plan the route to drive so it doesn't
| take more than a workday), all written in WordPerfect 5.1 macros.
| That program can do a lot more than most people know about. And
| apparently it's still used in production.
| unixhero wrote:
| Why is everyone equating vi to WordPerfect. Vi and WP are miles
| apart.
| alerighi wrote:
| Because it highlights the same thing: failure of modern
| graphical UIs.
|
| The programmers that prefer VIM (or Emacs) to more modern fully
| features graphical IDEs are basically the same as the writer
| who prefers an old DOS program.
|
| It means that old software was more usable and reliable to the
| point that a lot of people is more productive with it than
| modern programs. It is a big fail of the modern way of
| realizing applications.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Or you know different people like different things and there
| are 7 billion people in the world to maintain and upkeep all
| of them.
| chongli wrote:
| The triumph of modern GUIs lies with the discoverability that
| the mouse/trackpad/touchscreen bring to the table. This is
| absolutely critical for onboarding beginners. In the modern
| day, computers are so ubiquitous that the vast majority of
| users are either beginners or dabblers (basically an eternal
| beginner).
|
| Text-based interfaces have always been way faster at what
| they do (anything non-graphical). You simply cannot beat the
| efficiency of a power user who knows all of the keyboard
| shortcuts for their favourite text editor. I don't think
| that's an indictment of the GUI, however. The GUI ushered in
| ubiquitous computing akin to the personal automobile. Text-
| based interfaces remain a powerful, highly specialized tool
| for those who have the time and the need to learn them.
| 205guy wrote:
| Yes in the general case, but not for text editing software.
| Discoverability is great in modern GUIs, for example a
| photos app on a mobile device. There are lots of options
| and they're all mostly independent and needed in different
| cases. So it's great you can just get started, click around
| at icons that look familiar and get results.
|
| I would argue that this doesn't apply specifically to text
| editors. 95% of all text documents are paragraphs with
| headings and inline formatting. With styles and display
| codes, WordPerfect lived up to its name. You could get the
| document looking perfect, exactly the way you wanted it.
| WYSIWYG editors look nice and could get you started
| quickly, but anything more than a letter turned into a
| mishmash of styles and fonts and spacing. The now-infamous
| ribbon in Word lets you discover and apply all sorts of
| formatting, but what you really want are consistent
| paragraph styles. Word perfect guided you into using those
| styles because the UI was restricted in just the right way.
| opan wrote:
| Emacs' built in help is pretty good, I think. If you teach
| someone C-h f for function help, C-h k for keybind help,
| etc. I think they can get pretty far. The which-key package
| is great for discoverability as well. You can start
| pressings keys and then see a map of which next key presses
| do which action. I used vim for years, but always used a
| search engine to figure stuff out. I think Emacs got it
| right here. There's also the graphical menu system in
| Emacs, but I've always hidden it and avoided it.
| aflag wrote:
| While they are built for different purposes, they are still 40+
| year old editors that are still in use today. Although vi, or
| should I say vim, is still seeing more active development than
| wordperfect for dos, it's still true to its original ui and
| design. So, if you don't find weird that many of us are using
| vi on a daily basis, maybe we shouldn't find it weird that
| wordperfect for dos is still in use today.
| DanielleMolloy wrote:
| Necessary pointer: George R R Martin still writes on WordStar 4.0
| on DOS. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27407502 Conan clip
| this refers to: https://youtu.be/X5REM-3nWHg
|
| As I need to write for work I recently got into this topic - this
| blog post makes some interesting points about how distraction
| free writing used to be the norm:
| https://vascsurg.me/2019/11/17/distraction-free-writing-used...
|
| The AlphaSmart Neo devices became tremendously popular among
| writers recently, apparently many of them can't stand modern
| software anymore because it has become too visually distracting
| for them: https://orcutt.net/weblog/2018/03/17/my-prodigiously-
| convolu...
|
| Distractions certainly are too blame here, but my pet theory is
| that the added visual input blocks top down imagery in the visual
| system.
| codazoda wrote:
| I used and loved an Alphasmart. I created a web app to mimick
| it. ponder.joeldare.com
| dharmab wrote:
| To be fair, DOS was new and exciting when A Game of Thrones was
| first published, and I don't think anyone wants to have to
| reformat the extensive notes for ASOIAF every five to seven
| years.
|
| When I need to write distraction free I open a fullscreen Vim
| terminal window. I copy the pages into a more shareable format
| after I draft them in plain text.
| wenc wrote:
| I think the timeline is a little different as I remember it.
|
| DOS was dominant between 1981-1990. I lived through those
| days and remember them fondly.
|
| In 1990, Windows 3.0 happened, and the world changed.
| stan_rogers wrote:
| For the worse, if you were doing heavy-duty word
| processing. It's not that there were no usable WYSIWYG word
| processors, but even the star of the show (AmiPro) was
| rather limited in its feature set compared to WordPerfect,
| and they were really competitors to LetterPerfect and the
| like: great for simple text editing, but templating,
| macros, and so forth were toys at best - and you really
| needed to pay close attention to the maxim "the computer
| you want costs $5000 and will be obsolete when delivered"
| if you didn't want to type too far ahead of the screen.
| boudewijnrempt wrote:
| AmiPro was _not_ a good wordprocessor. It had fatal
| flaws, like visible redrawing the entire paragraph when
| changing a single character or adding a single character.
| And the more text you wrote, the slower it would become,
| because it would format everything from start; even after
| a page or two, the delay would be noticeable.
| dangoor wrote:
| "A Game of Thrones" was published in August 1996[1]. Windows
| 95 was new an exciting then. OS/2 Warp was new an exciting
| then. DOS was already old, and I'm assuming GRRM used it just
| because that was what he was used to.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Game_of_Thrones
| EricE wrote:
| Or maybe he's a writer and not a technology nerd?
|
| Maybe a word processor is just a tool and if it's useful
| and gets the job done, no matter how "outdated" everyone
| else things it is, why bother to change?
|
| I would argue that perhaps he wants to focus on writing and
| not perpetually learning new tech but lately writing seems
| to be lower on his priorities. Glad I never got sucked up
| into the books - as good as they are; it's pretty apparent
| he really doesn't want to finish them which is a shame.
| [deleted]
| dharmab wrote:
| I should have said "written", then. (GRRM is an infamously
| slow writer.)
| cbozeman wrote:
| He's not a writer.
|
| That's the distinction with which everyone is being
| bogged down.
|
| George R. R. Martin is a _storyteller_. There 's a
| difference. Stephen King is a writer. Michael Crichton
| was a writer.
|
| Crichton summed up what it is to be a writer in the most
| simplistic and eloquent-in-its-brevity language I think
| I've ever heard: "If you're going to be a writer, then
| you have to write. You have to wake up every day and sit
| down and write. Can you imagine if a pilot woke up one
| morning and said, 'I don't feel like flying the plane
| today.'"
| spurgu wrote:
| Meh, I was still using DOS (w/ 4DOS) back then because I
| vastly preferred it (BBS and cli apps in general) over
| Windows 3.x. My use of GUI didn't really start until
| Windows 95 and was solidified with Winamp.
| codazoda wrote:
| I used and loved an Alphasmart. I created a web app to mimick
| it. You can try it out over at https://ponder.joeldare.com
| mrob wrote:
| LibreOffice has a full-screen mode. If you enable it and also
| disable Rulers and Text Boundaries then you see only the pages,
| the text, and a scroll bar at the edge of the screen (unless
| your GUI toolkit has vanishing scrollbars enabled, which is IMO
| more distracting). Run it on a laptop without Internet access
| and nothing else installed for minimal distraction.
| Pxtl wrote:
| My biggest problem with things like that is there's still all
| the mental overhead of styling clutter. You copy and paste
| something from a webpage and it's all mangled.
|
| I think half the success of markdown is identifying a useful
| subset of html/document languages and saying "this is your
| whole featureset, everything else is out of scope for
| composition".
| krastanov wrote:
| Ctrl+shift+P is "unstyled paste" on many systems. It is
| what I use when copying between documents/webpages/etc.
| spurgu wrote:
| Ctrl+Shift+V (or Cmd+Shift+V on Mac) usually does the
| trick.
| krastanov wrote:
| Well, that was a stupid typo of mine, of course it is V,
| not P. Too late to edit that post.
| jsilence wrote:
| Like a X200 Where you remove or disable the Wifi card. Sturdy
| machines with a decent keyboard.
|
| Wondering how long it will take for someone to take up the
| task of configuring a veeery simplistic 'JustWriteOS' that
| optimized on distraction free writing. Should be possible to
| build this upon Alpine or NixOS with a tiling window manager
| preconfigured to only start the text editor full screen in
| distraction free mode.
|
| Decent sleep mode configuration would be nice tho
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Maybe once https://github.com/nix-windows is working
| better, make a distro just for WordPerfect for DOS itself!
| tomjen3 wrote:
| MS Word has something similar, if not exactly the same if you
| go to View->Focus.
| jyriand wrote:
| I have few laptops lying around. I wonder if there is some kind
| of Linux distribution or some other way to transform laptop
| into a digital typewriter. No internet, no applications, only a
| decent text editor (Emacs perhaps).
| Shared404 wrote:
| You could set up a script for something like Void/Alpine to
| just launch vim/emacs as soon as you boot, those are both
| pretty minimalist ootb, you'd just have to remove internet
| drivers.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Emacs+LateX for anything complicated and Markdown for simple
| notes and what not :) . At least it works for me
| Jaruzel wrote:
| I have been toying with this concept as custom distro for a
| while now... I held off because I didn't think there was any
| interest in it other than as my own vanity project.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| A distro that booted into open office only would be nice !
| sJ646U9k6c6gME9 wrote:
| One can of course boot more or less directly to Vim:
| https://raymii.org/s/blog/Vim_as_PID_1_Boot_to_Vim.html
|
| You asked for a decent editor, not a kitchen sink, so I'll
| stop here without touching on Emacs.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Pretty much all of them can do this.
|
| Set up your init system to not start a GUI. It will give you
| a text mode login prompt. Configure it to have the typeface
| and size that you like. Run your editor of choice -- emacs
| and vim certainly don't need net access. Remember to mount a
| USB stick to save backup copies every so often.
| sildur wrote:
| So that's why George R R Martin is taking five years to write
| his last book. He's out of diskettes.
| alexilliamson wrote:
| The popular theory on reddit is that he Winds of Winter
| almost finished around season 5 of the show, but found plot
| holes (specifically in Mereen) and basically rewrote the
| whole thing.
|
| That's my hope anyway.
| jki275 wrote:
| five? ADWD was published in 2011. We're coming quickly up on
| ten years for the next to last book, no one holds out any
| hope the last one will ever be written.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| not just last one, last two
| fastball wrote:
| "next to last"
| tmpz22 wrote:
| There was a pet theory he wasn't backing up his work and a
| system failure caused him to repeat it from memory
| sarahmike wrote:
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|
| Www.todayearner.com
| nmg wrote:
| _Windows 3.1 is coming_
| noir_lord wrote:
| https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/ is great if you want to get
| something that just stays out the way while you write.
| reaperducer wrote:
| See also: Tom Hanks.
|
| He's become so disillusioned with modern word processing that
| he uses a typewriter.
|
| It made him such a fan of typewriters that he has an app called
| Hanx Writer to simulate various typewriters on iOS devices.
|
| At this point, Microsoft Word is so geared toward writing
| inter-office memos that I feel bad for anyone who wants to do
| any serious writing on it.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Big companies are only capable of sustaining what they do.
|
| That's why Outlook and Excel are almost operating systems and
| Word meanders around with no real focus. It is not an
| opinionated app.
|
| Changes in Word are driven by awful end user communities like
| attorneys. Attorneys are smart people, but the influential
| ones have doctor egos, get set in their ways, and spend their
| day interacting with fossilized bureaucracies, as
| demonstrated by the fact that people are still screwing
| around with WordPerfect 5 for DOS in 2020.
|
| The excuses given (ie "Federal court filings are finicky")
| are 100% bullshit. The reality is the chief poobah of counsel
| likes WordPerfect because he's the chief poohbah, and his
| minions get to suck it up and learn how to use an application
| released when they were in diapers.
| stevewillows wrote:
| I started typing letters to people once this pandemic got
| going. I'm on a Selectric II and have a bunch of different
| typefaces.
|
| The Selectric II is such a joy to type on. Unlike Hanks, I
| use corrective tape, though. He mashes 'x' through any typos.
|
| I forgot how nice it is to get mail that isn't a bill or an
| ad.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Microsoft word is fine if you're not doing anything too
| complicated and don't get fancy. Lots of people don't
| properly use the styles feature of Word (aka don't learn the
| tool basics) and then scream and yell at it. I've cranked out
| some rather long docs with it without hardly any issues at
| all. Just like people who rule out emacs or vim, 95% of them
| don't take time to properly learn the tool that they are
| using. That said I still prefer TeX/LateX for my own stuff
| and when I get a choice (I using don't get the chance because
| it's using collaborating on a Microsoft document online these
| days).
| simias wrote:
| I like the idea for a low-tech, no-distraction solution for
| writing but man, this AlphaSmart device looks really crap. I
| hate chiclet keyboards, but I know that not everybody agrees.
| On the other hand, I can't imagine that anybody finds these
| 1990's style low-contrast LCD matrix displays pleasant to read.
| I'd sooner use an actual old-school typewriter.
|
| There appear to be some e-paper solutions but they're
| expensive.
|
| Honestly I think I'd rather go the George R R Martin route:
| take an old laptop with decent screen and keyboard then install
| a barebones environment. It could be as simple as booting
| straight to a full-screen vim/nano with no distraction
| installed.
|
| I wish I could do something like that for coding, unfortunately
| when I program I usually need a browser and internet access to
| browse docs so I can't remove that. Maybe I should see if I can
| survive with only elinks or some low-featured web browser.
| qz2 wrote:
| This can be done with modern tech. A lot of the time I use a
| Debian box for my personal stuff with keyboard and cheap
| 1080p display. It _does not_ run X at all. It 's literally
| just framebuffer console, tmux and terminals. I don't use a
| web browser on it either.
|
| A neat side effect of this is the machine I use is a fanless
| N3010 celeron based Lenovo M600 which feels positively
| lightning quick if you never go near the www on it. Perhaps
| 90% of the reason a PC feels like a sluggish POS these days
| is because there's some chunk of browser stack in there
| somewhere.
|
| Edit: picture of the set up here: https://imgur.com/yjPMYaX
| throwanem wrote:
| Cheap Chromebooks work well for this, as long as they're
| among the models that can be jailbroken and take a proper
| Linux install. Ample power to run a text editor and a
| textmode browser (Emacs and eww, or any other, lesser,
| choice you may prefer), but not enough for graphical
| browsing and other distractions. Too, since they're specced
| to run Chrome for a couple hours, you can easily get 8 to
| 10 hours of battery life running something less absurd.
|
| The keyboards aren't what you call great, but they serve
| well enough. I like a mechanical keyboard as much as the
| next dork, but I've never really felt the lack when using
| the Chromebook for writing.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Cheap Chromebooks work well for this, as long as
| they're among the models that can be jailbroken and take
| a proper Linux install.
|
| Jailbreaking Chromebooks is a huge hassle, though. Much
| easier to install Linux on a standard box from the past
| 10 to 15 years. You can also buy cheap low-end hardware
| with Chromebooks-like specs that will run Linux out of
| the box.
| anthk wrote:
| That's literally my setup in slackware, but you can watch
| movies in framebuffer, and I surf too (lynx/links/sacc).
| #!/bin/sh clear setterm -cursor off
| echo -en "\e]P0000000" mplayer -really-quiet
| -vo fbdev2 -vf scale=1280:-2 -cache 2048 "$@"
| setterm -cursor on echo -en "\e]P01d2229"
| clear
|
| Games?
|
| - IF. Lots of them.
|
| - Slashem.
|
| - MUDs.
|
| - Mednafen through framebuffer. Even gamepads work.
| anthk wrote:
| Also, if you get used to edbrowse, you can even use some JS
| ridden sites. Youtube? mpsyt + youtube-dl. Telegram?
| Bitlbee+IRSSI.
|
| But when you use gopher (gopher://magical.fish and
| gopher://floodgap.org as a start) everything is
| instantaneous.
|
| Oh, and, for music the Soma cli tool from slackware.
| Amazing.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Is that an actual LCD matrix display? One would think that a
| small-form-factor e-paper display (the format that's
| sometimes used for shelf labels and the like) could replace
| monochrome LCD pretty much everywhere these days.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I always get this terminology confused. My Pebble 2
| supposedly has an "e-paper" display, but based on looks I'm
| pretty sure it's the same type of screen as what's in my
| graphing calculator _and_ my AlphaSmart Dana, although the
| latter two definitely have less contrast than the Pebble, I
| assume because they're older and /or of lower quality.
| mypalmike wrote:
| The pebble 2 is e-paper. The underlying tech is quite
| different from lcd.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Are you sure? I know Pebble always referred to it as
| "e-paper", but I recall seeing a lot of people say it's
| actually a type of LCD screen.
|
| From a quick Google:
| https://hackaday.com/2014/02/16/fixing-the-unfixable-
| pebble-...
|
| > The actual screen used in the Pebble is a Sharp Memory
| LCD.
|
| It's definitely not e-ink btw, which I know is indeed
| different. It doesn't look anything like e-ink.
| mypalmike wrote:
| Two things:
|
| The latency of e-paper doesn't provide a great typing
| experience.
|
| "These days" isn't really applicable - the Alphasmart
| devices haven't been made since 2013.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Disclaimer that may invalidate the rest of my post: I tend to
| prefer scizzor-switch keyboards. For example, I _adore_ the
| Apple Keyboards that shipped with iMacs up until ~2016,
| although I strongly dislike their newer "Magic Keyboard"
| (never mind the Butterfly Keyboard) which IMO has too little
| travel.
|
| But now that you know my biases, let me say that I think the
| Alpasmart has a _damn good_ keyboard! The keys are large,
| have more travel than most modern laptops, and feel quite
| satisfying to press. If you're used to a mechanical keyboard
| and really set on that experience, you may be disappointed,
| but there's still a lot to like.
| kickingvegas wrote:
| I too thought the key travel was fine with my AlphaSmart
| 3000, but found them too loud when typing in a conference
| room. That 500 (no typo) hour battery life with 3 AA
| batteries though. Brilliant device.
| Lammy wrote:
| They feel really great; very similar to a PowerBook keyboard
| of the era. There's a different model (AlphaSmart Dana) that
| runs Palm OS 4 if that type of display is more your thing.
| mypalmike wrote:
| The Alphasmart Neo keyboard has a decent tactile feel for a
| membrane keyboard.
|
| The LCD displays aren't great on the eyes but they are OK,
| and they have the benefit of excellent battery life using
| just standard AAs and much lower latency compared to e-paper.
| paleogizmo wrote:
| Not sure about the older Alphasmarts, but the Neos have
| pretty standard laptop keys. The display contrast isn't
| great, but it's not terrible like the late 80s/early 90s
| graphic LCDs. The small footprint compared to a current
| laptop is nice.
|
| I'm also building something like what you are thinking about
| with an old intel NUC mounted on an even older LCD monitor
| and running Xmonad. It's a surprisingly fun project. My notes
| on the build are here:
| https://hackaday.io/project/174680-distraction-free-linux-
| ba...
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| He does, but he's also a terrible pointer if we're trying to
| explain ancient tech is still relevant to writers. GRRM is such
| a celebrity that he's just riding out the "I'll write some more
| when I feel like it" money train, making him more of a hobbyist
| (with very good connections) compared to the vast majority of
| "there isn't enough time in a human life to write all the
| things I want to write" people in the fiction writing world.
|
| Having something with very few bells and whistles lets you
| focus on your writing. Whether that's a "only works in
| fullscreen, you don't get to multitask" markdown editor, or a
| 1992 486 running word perfect on DOS basically makes no
| difference.
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| He's written 13 novels and lots of shorter works. He's not
| someone who's written very little.
|
| I think his fundamental problem is that he's in a position
| that few writers end up in -- he became so popular that if he
| doesn't end the book well he will be hated and reviled by
| thousands of people on the internet. Most writers never end
| up in a position where if they let the public down, they will
| become hated figures.
| organsnyder wrote:
| I know a fairly well-known children's author that continues
| to write using a typewriter out in an outbuilding on his
| farm. I imagine it's a very effective way to focus (for me,
| I'd have to make sure I didn't have my phone).
| moonchild wrote:
| I have an electric typewriter I use occasionally. It makes
| for a very different feel than both typing on a computer
| and hand-writing. (The only reason I don't use it more
| often is that it has terrible ergonomics, even compared
| with today's flat keyboards.)
| Aloha wrote:
| Based on the speed of his previous output, I dont agree, I
| know a couple scifi authors, and he's not out of the norms
| for his genre.
| thom wrote:
| He's written a ton of words for money during this time. He's
| clearly a procrastinator of almost mythic proportions, but
| he's not lazy.
| URfejk wrote:
| Martin could upgrade to Wordtsar - Wordstar for the 21st
| Century: http://wordtsar.ca/
| paleogizmo wrote:
| I got a Neo2 a while back and found it nice for note taking. I
| put my notes in Pandoc Markdown and then convert to pdf on a
| pc. While the Neo2 has no GUI elements, I'm not convinced that
| it's any better for distraction compared to an airgapped pc
| running Word/OneNote. Curious if anyone has tried the
| latter(which I admit is getting harder to do as my newer
| computers don't have removable wireless adapter).
| DanielleMolloy wrote:
| Those that have written whole books on it typically mention
| the following advantages over a PC or notebook with some
| distraction free environment:
|
| * hundreds of hours of battery life on 3 AAA batteries
|
| * readable in bright sunlight
|
| * instant on and off (you are back to your text with a button
| press, no waiting for booting up)
|
| * portability and durability (great for traveling and
| writing..)
|
| I have a 40$ (incl. shipping to Europe) Neo 2 too and do
| appreciate all these details. The manufacturers got a lot
| right.
|
| I've tried distraction free terminal writing on an old x200
| and other old and virtually disconnected devices too before
| but it wasn't the same. E.g. in a library or cafe, searching
| for a free and calm spot with power supply and no sunlight on
| my screen is a problem I don't have with my little
| AlphaSmart.
| anthk wrote:
| A pity that isn't hackeable, it would made a nice z-machine
| portable gaming machine.
| unicornporn wrote:
| The fact that you can _only_ write is the exact reason
| that it is such a loved device. If want to get distracted
| by the lust of hacking the device instead of writing,
| there are thousands of other alternatives.
| classichasclass wrote:
| Get a Dana then. It's basically a Palm laptop but a full-
| fledged AlphaSmart otherwise.
| anthk wrote:
| Link? Price?
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Many NICs can be disabled in BIOS/UEFI. Laptops can disable
| the WiFi usually with a switch and/or keyboard shortcut.
| Barring that, the specific drivers can be uninstalled.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I'm not sure why more authors don't use Latex, it's superior to
| all of these other also ancient ways of putting things on
| paper. I did my first thesis (forced by my engineering advisor)
| on it and fucking hated it for the first few weeks and then
| something just clicked (or my brain broke) and I've been using
| it since for most of my word processing needs.
| enneff wrote:
| If you have fairly sophisticated formatting needs, like if
| you're writing technical papers with formulae, the latex is a
| help. For most authors, who are in the business of writing
| words (not formatting documents) latex offers nothing.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| In grad school (philosophy) I found Latex (via
| Markdown/pandoc) let me focus on writing words and do
| styling/layout of my papers (and keeping the bibliography
| consistent) as a separate task.
| xattt wrote:
| How does anyone do academic writing without a reference
| manager?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Back in my day when I did such things it was just Excel with
| some macros and filters. What this person is doing is very
| similar to what I did, but it was a subset as I use macros to
| pull up things easily and search the text of them. https://ww
| w.insidehighered.com/blogs/gradhacker/organizing-y...
| DanielleMolloy wrote:
| It's just for drafts, so you write \cite{somepaper} and fill
| in the actual keyword later. For those who use it for
| academic writing such devices remove another distraction from
| deep fluent writing.
|
| Optionally, markdown also has syntax for references.
| [deleted]
| zerr wrote:
| Didn't catch - who updated it and how?
| bobochan wrote:
| I used to produce absolutely enormous bibliographies of
| scientific publication for NSF reports from databases. We used to
| try and write complex macros to format the text properly (not
| sure if we didn't know about RTF, or whether it was supported?),
| but it was always slow and painful. Then we found that if we used
| Find/Replace to put something like a [BeginItalics][EndItalics]
| code at the end of the title, followed by a [BeginItalics] code
| at the beginning of the title WP 5.1 would ignore the second
| [BeginItalics] code and format everything properly. We
| immediately figured out that we just needed to add tokens in the
| text and then could format hundreds of pages of text in just a
| few seconds. Happiness ensued.
| jlgaddis wrote:
| I've still got my 3.5" WordPerfect floppies -- found 'em a while
| back when moving!
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Emacs?
| [deleted]
| tehabe wrote:
| I love how a small community is keeping a piece of software alive
| which is probably forgotten by most people. Adding the euro
| symbol or the ability to create PDF files.
| pseingatl wrote:
| Distraction-free alternatives:
|
| Writeroom (for Mac or its derivatives for other operating
| systems) --Pyroom for Linux --Darkroom for Windows --Also Q10 for
| Windows (which has typewriter sounds); GhostWriter, NisusWriter
| Pro; Ulysses. These are distraction-free writing programs. The
| purpose is to eliminate computer interruptions or temptations so
| that you can write.
|
| Scrivener: for editing and organization. Scrivener is a writing
| and organization program. It was originally developed by a
| novelist who was frustrated by how difficult it is to move back
| and forth in long Word documents. Word's Document Map doesn't
| work all that well. Originally Scrivener was supposed to be just
| a first draft production document but it has grown and can
| currently be used to create documents in just about any format a
| writer will need (it's a little weak on appellate briefs). It
| also has a full-screen distraction free mode. If you need to
| complete a long work quickly you need Scrivener.
|
| Also consider: Alphasmart, by Dana. This is a full-size keyboard
| attached to a Palm(pilot) operating system. It comes with a Word-
| compatible Word processor. You use SD cards to get your files off
| the computer. There is also an educational model which is cheaper
| and has less functionality. Battery life for these is very good:
| think weeks instead of hours.
| classichasclass wrote:
| Not just SD cards: the AlphaSmart series (Dana is the name of
| the unit, not the other way around) can emulate keyboards.
| Connect the Dana via USB to another computer and it will "type"
| your notes into it. My mother transferred her church notes this
| way. All AlphaSmarts do this but Dana is the most useful for
| modern systems because of its connectivity options and being
| Palm-based besides. It was really the closest thing to a Palm
| laptop.
| pseingatl wrote:
| There's also Poe for Windows.
| AstroAdam wrote:
| A modern distraction-free writing tool does exist. Check out the
| Freewrite product line at getfreewrite.com
| nickt wrote:
| I was inspired to do something similar after reading these two
| posts on using the Amiga version of WordPerfect for writing. [1],
| [2].
|
| It's distraction free, works well with a modern monitor and I
| always liked the Amiga keyboard. It's a huge context switch to
| swivel my chair from my modern Mac to the other desk and start
| writing on the Amiga.
|
| [1] https://www.amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?t=41 [2]
| https://www.amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=101
| dm319 wrote:
| These were a great read! I have made a headless linux laptop
| with vim as a fairly distraction free environment. I have also
| used a Psion 5MX to take notes while out and about, and my only
| caveat for those wanting to use retro devices for important
| things is to back up often! I'd forgotten how unreliable old
| filesystems and media were.
| nickt wrote:
| Sounds like we're thinking along the same lines! Love to try
| the Psion, it's been a while since I've been hands on with a
| Series 5.
| dm319 wrote:
| I think there's definitely a niche for a keyboard-driven
| PDA type device, ideally with some sort of e-ink display so
| it works nicely outside and doesn't require frequent
| charging. I think these days it would come with some sort
| of automatic cloud backup, and I wouldn't mind if it was
| text-based either. The gemini and cosmos come close, but I
| think I'd need a proper bit of time with them to see if
| they fill that niche or not.
| nickt wrote:
| Thanks for that - I'd not seen the Cosmos and Gemini [1]
|
| [1] https://planetcom.squarespace.com/device
| Arubis wrote:
| For a writer that isn't already familiar with WordPerfect, is
| there a compelling case to learn from scratch in this day and
| age? (Particularly if already familiar with another powerful
| editor.)
| gpapilion wrote:
| I remember having a discussion in the early 2000s about
| WordPerfect still staying around for various legal use-cases and
| medical transcriptions. I would have thought these folks would
| have moved on and something would have been able to fill it's
| niche.
| dctoedt wrote:
| Back in the day, my then-law firm was upgrading from DOS to
| Windows. There were some lawyers who said that _of course_ we
| should upgrade from WordPerfect for DOS to the Windows version
| because, after all, WordPerfect was the industry standard for
| law firms. But the techies among us successfully argued that we
| shouldn 't give a [hoot] what other law firms were using --
| what mattered was what _our clients_ were using, which our
| surveys showed was uniformly Microsoft Word for Windows. That
| proved prescient.
| donarb wrote:
| There was a technical reason that WP was used by law firms.
| When submitting briefs to a court, total word count in a
| brief is extremely important. WordPerfect counts words in
| footnotes as part of the document, MSWord did not. This led
| to one case where the lawyers were being considered for
| sanctions by submitting a document over the word count limit
| due to using Microsoft Word.
|
| https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-7th-circuit/1147966.html
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I remember my Dad making a function key template that went over
| the keyboard and included all of the modifiers. That made unusual
| commands findable and common commands quickly learnable.
|
| Menus are just slightly less-good at teaching shortcuts, because
| once you find the item, you click on it; you don't leave the menu
| and hit the shortcut
| duncans wrote:
| One that fitted the Model-M keyboard came in the box IIRC.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Pretty sure my dad didn't buy the software
| cpach wrote:
| Not such a bad idea. But perhaps less practical now that one
| use many many more applications than in the old days.
|
| Avid (video editing) had a similar thing, but took it even
| further: IIRC they sold their own keyboards, with color-coded
| keys and stuff.
| volaski wrote:
| In John wick, they use commodore computer and dial phones for
| security purposes, reminds me of that :)
| elvis70 wrote:
| See this article: https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1616454
| (Vintage electronics for trusted radiation measurements and
| verified dismantlement of nuclear weapons by Moritz Kutt and
| Alexander Glaser).
|
| They used an Apple IIe. Pictures available on this article in
| French: https://www.macg.co/materiel/2020/05/un-apple-iie-pour-
| contr...
| ourmandave wrote:
| From the article:
|
| _The reasons for this
|
| WordPerfect for DOS, in the opinion of many knowledgeable users,
| is still the greatest program ever written. Some of its features
| have not been matched even by the latest Windows software, and
| its interface remains unequaled for efficiency and elegance._
|
| tl;dr; We're vi and we know it.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| Running WPDOS in a web browser with a cloud storage (well,
| periodic memory snapshots) would be the best choice for who
| still wants it today. We already had multiple solutions for
| vi...
| flatiron wrote:
| I totally get using vi to write a book or something on an air
| gapped computer. No distractions. But not sure about
| WordPerfect. To each their own though.
| taviso wrote:
| Vi is a text editor, not a word processor.
|
| The important difference (for me) is that a word processor
| understands proportional font geometries and physical page
| dimensions, so I can layout the page interactively. For
| example, I have some text that I want to fit on a single page
| of A4 in Helvetica 12pt, and I'm willing to edit it until it
| fits.
|
| I think that's a really hard problem to solve in a text
| editor, but it's trivial in a word processor.
|
| I also use WordPerfect for DOS, because it's a full-featured
| word processor that you can use in a terminal (I think the
| author of this site uses it in graphical mode, but I prefer
| to use it in an xterm).
|
| Here's a screenshot, notice how WordPerfect knows where the
| text will wrap.
|
| https://twitter.com/taviso/status/1303841149421891584
| onychomys wrote:
| Does make one wonder just which features he's talking about
| here. It's been probably 30 years since I used WP for DOS, so I
| don't quite remember how it all worked, but I have trouble
| believing there's anything all that great about it.
| llarsson wrote:
| If you have decades worth of muscle memory invested in it,
| you bet it is one of the best programs out there... for
| _you_.
|
| This is how I feel about vim, at any rate.
| snomad wrote:
| Reveal codes.
|
| They had a box below main editor that everyone used to go in
| and edit codes for outlines, indentation, page breaks, etc.
| Super simple.
|
| https://images.pcworld.com/reviews/graphics/125257-2406p075-.
| ..
| boudewijnrempt wrote:
| Reveal codes was a crutch. There was nothing great about
| it, no matter how much it's wrapped in a nostalgic haze
| now. It's basically telling people "we cannot make this
| wordprocessor work reliably, please code up your text
| yourself once things go wrong".
|
| And yes, I've used WordPerfect from 4.0 to 7.something on
| Dos, Windows, various unices and Linux.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| It's a feature I miss every time I use Word.
|
| It's so simple, yet so effective.
| nothis wrote:
| Word literally has this. Certainly InDesign.
| EricE wrote:
| Word has nothing like it. Word has a filtered view of
| codes.
|
| WP laid it all bare. Every code and nuance was presented.
| Nothing was filtered or interpreted. I recovered many a
| screwed up document that you would just have to redo in
| Word if it ever got into such a state.
|
| I still miss a _real_ reveal codes in Word.
|
| There was a public outcry for it back in the day and a
| snotty response from a Microsoft PM - wish I could
| remember enough details to see if I could find it but I'm
| convinced MS never really delivered a true reveal codes
| purely out of spite.
| ghaff wrote:
| Word Perfect as I recall actually let you directly
| manipulate those codes though. Think of it a bit like
| toggling between an edit view and raw HTML.
|
| Personally, I never liked WordPerfect, nor did I use it
| much. I used a lot of different word processors but
| mostly ended up standardizing on Microsoft Word (well
| pre-Windows) for personal use.
| Tomte wrote:
| The usual suspects are:
|
| * reveal codes (a second mode, where you can see typographic
| and layout commands interspersed with the text itself, a bit
| like HTML tags)
|
| * templates for judicial submissions (many US courts enforce
| strict layout and typographic rules, and WP is said to cater
| to that)
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| > * reveal codes
|
| MS Word used to do this. Does it not now? (I don't use
| Word...)
|
| > ... many US courts enforce strict layout and typographic
| rules, and WP is said to cater to that
|
| Now _this_ is a good reason. No one wants to redo that work
| for another word processor every time a new version changes
| formatting rules.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Word will show formatting marks and the contents of
| fields.
|
| I don't know WordPerfect so I can't make a comparison.
| __s wrote:
| It doesn't compare:
| https://www.howtogeek.com/104940/reveal-formatting-in-
| word-2...
|
| https://www.wordperfect.com/en/pages/items/1500650.html
| unilynx wrote:
| > MS Word used to do this. Does it not now? (I don't use
| Word...)
|
| Are you sure about that? At least since Word 95, it used
| what you could call a two-dimensional markup system -
| paragraphs and character formatting was separated, and
| character formatting could span over paragraph starts and
| ends.
|
| for example, the formatting codes could say "from
| character position 5 in paragraph one to character
| position 2 in paragraph two, set bold to opposite setting
| of whatever was in the stylesheet of the paragraph". that
| would be very hard to present in a WP-like 'reveal codes'
| view (or in HTML, for that matter)
| Someone wrote:
| Indeed. The conceptual model of a WordPerfect document is
| a single stream of text, interspersed with formatting
| instructions.
|
| That meant, for example, that, after backspacing over a
| return, you could end up with a paragraph of text with,
| somewhere in the middle, a "set left margin to 3 cm"
| instruction, or with multiple conflicting instructions (I
| think neither was supposed to happen, but all software is
| buggy). I didn't use WP, so I wouldn't know what that
| meant for the paragraph being laid out. It might have
| been applied starting at entire paragraph that contained
| the instruction, at the next paragraph, or immediately.
|
| The 'raw view' didn't only allow you to see the
| (potential) mess of formatting instructions, but also to
| edit it.
|
| So, if you knew your way around there, you could fix any
| problem with documents.
|
| IMO, if WP were less buggy, it probably wouldn't have
| needed that mode. I also think its existence put less
| pressure on WP to fix bugs.
| lukasb wrote:
| "I also think its existence put less pressure on WP to
| fix bugs."
|
| IMO this is not a good reason to deny users an escape
| hatch to make fixing problems at least possible. To be
| fair it depends on what kind of users you care about - if
| you're building a tool for professionals, I think this
| should be considered table stakes.
| unilynx wrote:
| My question was whether MS Word indeed had something
| similar at some point
|
| As for WP, it's been a long time, but I don't remember
| having had such paragraph formatting issues needing the
| raw view. The raw view was mostly useful as WP wasn't
| really WYSIWYG (but there was some sort of print preview
| in DOS in 5.1) and there's only so much formatting you
| can show in text mode.
| Someone wrote:
| AFAIK Word (but I never used MS DOS Word, and mostly used
| Word for Mac) never had something similar. It could, and
| still can, show invisibles, but that's a very far cry
| from showing all formatting instructions.
|
| And as you said, its model is completely different. It
| doesn't do formatting instructions inline
| (WordPerfect:Word is a bit similar to html without any
| css and html with only css)
| EricE wrote:
| A place I was working at in the early 90's cleared out a storage
| room of old software boxes. I snagged together complete sets of
| WP 5.1 in both 3.5" disks and 5.25" disks. Grey box, manuals and
| all.
|
| If I had ever suspected such a thing like Ebay could have ever
| existed I would have carted the whole dumpster home. Oh well...
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Do not miss the first link on the page...
| cosarara wrote:
| Site map?
| Izkata wrote:
| Probably the first after the navigation - it's a link to
| XKCD.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I write in Word 97 inside a VM. Still faster than LibreOffice.
| dm319 wrote:
| Are you on linux? See here:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/winehq/comments/hgr6a9/which_versio...
| tomcam wrote:
| Pretty trippy. This requires a licensed copy of WordPerfect,
| which Corel no longer sells. They gave the rights to a woman who
| operates by email with the handle thewp51lady@att.net:
| http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/links.html#obtain
| jandrese wrote:
| After reading those paragraphs I'd be inclined to just pirate
| the damn thing. It's very confusing. I can't tell if you
| actually get a license if you order from that random lady or if
| it's just replacement disks. There's a long section afterward
| about how to obtain a license key and it's basically "scour the
| used market and pray that you don't get scammed".
| chongli wrote:
| You may have quite a challenge on your hands with that
| approach. WordPerfect for DOS is a very complicated piece of
| software that comes with a 600+ page paper manual. The
| program is absolutely chock-full of keyboard shortcuts and
| hidden functionality. It's not discoverable the way a modern
| GUI application would be.
|
| Buying it on eBay may be one of the only legal ways to get
| your hands on that manual. Though I suppose you could also
| look for a 3rd-party book, it may not cover every feature of
| the application.
| therealcamino wrote:
| Lots of people got 80% of the way there with one of those
| keyboard templates -- a plastic overlay that fits around
| your function keys and tells you what it does by itself,
| and when combined with Shift/Ctrl/Alt, and in the margins
| explains some other useful keys. But it's easier to learn
| by word of mouth -- when everyone around you is using it
| and you can ask the person next to you. Obviously that
| route doesn't work anymore! So people might actually read
| the manual.
| massysett wrote:
| WP had excellent documentation. It came with a "workbook"
| for step-by-step learning and with a separate full
| reference manual.
|
| MS Office's documentation is a travesty. Most appalling is
| how MS has given up on having help files. It used to come
| with good "online help" - back when that meant that it was
| on your system, not on the Internet. They've since just
| removed all help so that when you ask for help, the first
| thing you get is "searching Office Online."
|
| I had a pretty decent idea how Word worked 20 years ago.
| Now I just thrash about in there and click stuff and Google
| for random webpages for help.
| userbinator wrote:
| archive.org has a copy too, and it's probably one you can
| trust.
| elvis70 wrote:
| If you're feeling adventurous, try https://winworldpc.com/
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'm surprised it isn't translated to C, so it can run without a
| DOS emulator.
|
| I've done this to multiple large programs written in DOS
| assembler. It isn't that hard. You don't even have to know how
| the program works to translate it.
| sarahmike wrote:
| For all of dads and moms that love to stay home to take care of
| their loved ones, or rest of people on the search for an
| opportunity to pull in some extra income for their family month
| after month let me share a remarkable opportunity to explore.
| HERE www.todayearner.com
| Borlands wrote:
| Boxer works really well as a self-contained executable dosbox app
| on macos. It's source is available on github, but I'm not sure
| they've chosen a OSS license model
| varispeed wrote:
| This is neat! I wish we had more DOS-like applications instead of
| poor looking Windows and graphical ui that you have to spend ages
| to navigate with mouse instead of using a number of keyboard
| shortcuts.
| pizza234 wrote:
| I'm a keyboard-first user, and I don't find, generally
| speaking, applications to be keyboard-oblivious, although, the
| exceptions stick out like a sore thumb.
|
| Worst offender is certainly Gnome, which is nothing short than
| antagonistic. They went as far as disabling mnemonics by
| default. They removed the fast search in the file manager, in
| favour of the fancy (and broken) one; keyboard user must use
| the awkward, inline, one. The file manager also lost the "New
| folder" shortcut.
|
| Another notable entry is Sublime Text (which is not
| antagonistic, but somewhat oblivious). Very surprisingly, the
| file panel doesn't respond to keyboard events. For example, if
| the user wants to rename a file via keyboard, they're forced to
| copy the filename, then perform the operation via terminal.
| cambinoda wrote:
| > If your antivirus software tells you that any program
| downloaded from this site is infected with malware, this is the
| result of a "false positive."
|
| RED FLAG.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| This runs on what is essentially an emulator, and I expect it
| to use techniques that rewrites executable memory or does
| unusual system calls. Malware use similar techniques to hide
| themselves, and therefore, false positives are to be expected.
|
| These are also very common in size constrained demoscene
| productions. This especially funny to coders who work really
| hard to squeeze every single byte out of their production to
| suggest that they can fit a malware in there.
| cambinoda wrote:
| Making a blanket statement about no malware ever on our site
| is a recipe for future liability. Defending it is
| irresponsible.
| mechnesium wrote:
| I'm not sure how I feel about this, personally.
|
| On the one hand, this is awesome for people who might actually
| still use this archaic piece of software.
|
| On the other hand, it seems like a waste of resources that could
| be better spent on improving modern software.
| userbinator wrote:
| For some people, "modern software" is a lost cause.
| cbozeman wrote:
| That's sort of my feeling on this whole deal.
|
| You could design a word processor with all the features people
| loved in WP 5.1, that runs on modern software and hardware.
| [deleted]
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