> While I'm on the subject of WordStar, I've heard a story that I haven't been able to verify. Looking around now, this may have come from Phillipe Khan and Sidekick. set, but preferred some other editor's way of doing things. That is, everyone in microcomputing in the 1980s knew and could use the ^KB, etc. The phrase I remember was that the WordStar key commands were no one's favorite commands, but everyone's second favorite. (In WordStar 7.0, you can even, in essence, have two marked blocks per window, toggling between them with the "mark previous block" command, ^KU.)" Madness! Yet that's what WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, and others would force you to do.
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That WordStar lets me have separate marked blocks in each of its editing windows multiplies that power substantially: imagine doing a cut and paste job between two versions of a paper document, but being told that you could only have one piece cut out at a time. That's clearly more powerful, more intuitive, and more flexible than any other method of text manipulation I've yet seen implemented in a word processor. And two hours later I can say, and this is where that block should go. What would you like to do next? Deal with the block? Continue writing? Use the thesaurus?Īfter another half hour of writing, I can say, ah hah!, this is where I want to end that block. This is a good spot to mark the beginning of a block? Fine. WordStar, with its long-hand-page metaphor, says, hey, do whatever you want whenever you want to. And, just as I used to juggle up to ten fingers inserted into various places in my paper manuscript, WordStar provides me with ten bookmarks, set with ^K0 through ^K9, and ten commands to jump to them, ^Q0 to ^Q9.
^QB will take me to the beginning of the marked block ^QK will take me to the end ^QV will take me to where the marked block was moved from ^QP will take me to my previous cursor position. That's because WordStar is constantly keeping track of where I've been and where I'm likely to want to go. WordStar's powerful suite of cursor commands lets me fly all over my manuscript, without ever getting lost. WordStar's ^Q (Quick cursor movement) and ^K (block) commands give me more of what I used to have when I wrote in longhand than any other product does. And you can mark a block, either by circling it with your pen, or by physically cutting it out, without necessarily having to do anything with it right away. You can annotate the manuscript for yourself with comments like "Fix this!" or "Don't forget to check these facts" without there being any possibility of you missing them when you next work on the document. You can put in bookmarks, either actual paper ones, or just fingers slipped into the middle of the manuscript stack. as a creative writer, I am convinced that the long-hand page is the better metaphor.Ĭonsider: On a long-hand page, you can jump back and forth in your document with ease. I've seen George RR Martin write that he likes how easy it is to move large sections of text around in WordStar. Or, you can block copy large sections of text and have the computer keep a reference to it without having to "copy and paste" it immediately. You can add notes to yourself like "fix this!" and deal with the edits later. Wordstar treats the text like a long-hand manuscript. (Not because it doesn't have spell check or isn't connected to the internet.) WordStar is popular with science fiction writers for more fundamental reasons.
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