WordStar for DOS 7.0 Archive
by Rob - July 30th, 2024.Filed under: Uncategorized.
As you all know, I continue to use WordStar for DOS 7.0 as my word-processing program. It was last updated in December 1992, and the company that made it has been defunct for decades; the program is abandonware.
There was no proper archive of WordStar for DOS 7.0 available online, so I decided to create one. I’ve put weeks of work into this. Included are not only full installs of the program (as well as images of the installation disks), but also plug-and-play solutions for running WordStar for DOS 7.0 under Windows, and also complete full-text-searchable PDF versions of all seven manuals that came with WordStar — over a thousand pages of documentation.
I’ve also included lots of my own explanations on how to use and customize WordStar, many WordStar-related utility programs, and numerous other goodies.
Carolyn Clink kindly did the scanning of the manuals. When she was done, I said to her, “Countless WordStar users will thank you.” She replied, “Oh, I think I can count them.” ;)
And it’s true that the WordStar die-hard community is pretty small these days (George R.R. Martin still uses the even-older WordStar 4.0). But the program has been a big part of my career — not only did I write all 25 of my novels and almost all of my short stories with it (a few date back to the typewriter era), I also in my earlier freelance days wrote hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles with WordStar.
I wanted there to be a monument to this, the finest word-processing program ever created. As Anne Rice said, “WordStar was magnificent. I loved it. It was logical, beautiful, perfect. Compared to it, Microsoft Word is pure madness.”
And, I suppose I’m thinking a bit about my legacy, too. Once I’m gone, my literary estate will need to deal with my electronic manuscripts, and my executor should be able to work with them on her own computer rather than just mine. Also, there are countless other writers who are no longer with us who wrote with WordStar, including Arthur C. Clarke; I hope this archive I’ve created will be of use to scholars.
Anyone can have WordStar for DOS 7.0 up and running on a Windows computer in a matter of minutes using this archive; with just a little bit more work, WordStar for DOS 7.0 also runs just fine under Linux and Mac OS.
Here’s the link to the full 680-megabyte archive:
July 30th, 2024 at 6:40 pm
I was someone who used Wordstar back in the day, but have you looked at Vim? With a few plugins it works very well, and very keyboard oriented.
It’s now my go to for writing, along with Obsidian.
July 30th, 2024 at 7:20 pm
Vim certainly is a fine text editor, but as it says right on the Vim website, “Vim isn’t a word processor. Although it can display text with various forms of highlighting and formatting, it isn’t there to provide WYSIWYG editing of typeset documents.”
August 1st, 2024 at 10:06 am
Thank you for this monumental effort!
I know it isn’t exactly WS7, but WordTsar is a cross -platform clone that’s getting better all the time: http://wordtsar.ca/
August 1st, 2024 at 11:04 am
Yes, indeed! WordTsar‘s author, Gerald Brandt, is a dear friend of mine, as well as being a fellow science-fiction writer. I mention WordTsar in my WordStar 7.0 archive’s -README file and provide a link to it: http://wordtsar.ca/
August 1st, 2024 at 2:35 pm
WS 7.0D still in use here! (Used it in 1970 to create the book I wrote (later doctoral dissertation) noted on my website. Everything on my site also created in Wordstar, though for heavy graphics I put the WS text into Quark as my DTP program.
I’ve saved the code from the 3.5″ floppies on all my PCs, but the manuals will be handy to have in digital form. Thanks for that! I still have the hard copies.
I discovered after years of using WS that my Harvard classmate Rob Barnaby was the coder, in assembly language which is one reason it is so fast.
Lately I brought up a Win7 64 bit machine which will not run WS so I tried WordTsar but It fails to load with error message
The procedure entrypoint CreateDXGIFactory2 could not be located
in the dynamic link library dxgi.dll.
Gerald has suggested loading a different WT version. Before I begin floundering around deeper with his suggestion, I’d welcome any thoughts from other WS and WT fans.
Last year I also met a coder at an OS/2 conference who also uses WS.
August 1st, 2024 at 3:52 pm
I envy you for having met Rob Barnaby! I’ve met Seymour Rubinstein, but never Rob. (And I was friends with Peter Mierau, who wrote the NewStar codebase that was purchased by WSI to become WordStar 4.)
August 6th, 2024 at 8:29 am
The screenshot on El Reg of the old WordStar interface brings back memories. There’s too much GUI in everything nowadays, so I use TextEdit (yes, yes, I know) but I’m tempted to fire up WordStar 7 and WordPerfect 5.0 just to recapture that distraction-free, responsive mode of working. Thank you for making this available!
August 6th, 2024 at 9:53 am
I was fascinated to read Sawyer’s article on why he loves Wordstar rather than its DOS rivals. He makes a fine case for Wordstar as the leading DOS word processor.
But Windows (and MacOS and Linux) give us point and click. The P & C approach is so much more flexible than touch-typing, and has obvious advantages for the thump and dump typist (me).
August 6th, 2024 at 10:04 am
Thank you! I appreciate the kind words.
But the point, Michael, is that WordStar has all of that — complete mouse point-and-click support — in addition to its wonderful touch-typist’s interface. It is 100% fully CUA-compliant (with fully mousable pulldown menus and dialog boxes following industry-standard guidelines). In fact, since Microsoft and others have drifted away from actually adhering to industry standards (God save us from the Ribbon!), WordStar for DOS is the most CUA-compliant wordprocessor you will find:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access
August 6th, 2024 at 11:43 am
Back in the day, I used WordStar on a DOS PC and used a solaris workstation for cad work. Fast forward to today. I have a Linux laptop way more powerful than that sparcstation and it can still run WordStar via QEMU. Result!
August 6th, 2024 at 2:36 pm
Well done that man.
August 6th, 2024 at 6:12 pm
Thank you for taking this effort Rob. WordStar was one of the first programs I was taught at a computer institute when I was about 15 years old. I was really put off by the sheer number of shortcuts I had to learn. Didn’t actually ever use that application after that course. Microsoft Office took over the world couple of years later. I also remember playing the game Dangerous Dave at that time. And got the taste of my first computer virus through that game. Life was simple, just had to delete the virus file.
I’ve downloaded a copy just to relive that summer vacation in the early 90s.
Was wondering if this can be run via docker, but perhaps the old ways are the best.
BTW, Rob Barnaby is on LinkedIn.
August 7th, 2024 at 2:15 am
Great! I do not use WS any more, but I miss it! I write in Word by now like most people do, but some things were definitely better in WS. Like opening a new file and then dragging an old file in with ^K^R. Can’t do that in Word, have to open the old file and save it under a new name or use .dotx which is much less flexible. Half the time you forget to save under the new name and thus owerwrite your text. Sure use Word (Winword) for 25 years now and still can’t get along with this missing function.
August 7th, 2024 at 4:24 am
Well done! I’ve enjoyed your Quintaglio Ascension novels – at least the two I’ve managed to find. A friend of mine back in 1991 swore by WordStar, but I never got my head around it. I was using WP 5.2 on MS-DOS at the time, and didn’t want to spend time learning a new set of commands. (Mind you, I did – later, 1998-ish, running Slackware – write an entire novel in emacs, so I’d been lazy.)
August 7th, 2024 at 7:57 am
This is a truly outstanding thing you have done, Rob! I was a huge fan and user of WordStar in the early 1980s, using it on a Kaypro portable running CP/M. When PCs and DOS came along, I moved on to WordStar there. I forget the versions now, but I probably used all of them in the 1980s into the early 90s!
Very much looking forward to travelling some major memory lanes with your download; thank you!
August 7th, 2024 at 9:12 am
Thank you, Wesley! My Quintaglio Ascnsion novels are available in hardcover, trade paperback, and ebook:
https://sfwriter.com/buylinks.htm#qa
August 7th, 2024 at 11:58 am
Thank you too much Robert, old Wordstar fan here – been using Joe / jstar for decades on Linux :) I used to program COBOL in Wordstar for DOS back in the day and always liked the ease of use of the Wordstar key combos
August 8th, 2024 at 4:09 pm
@DL2MCD, you can insert a file in Word very easily. It’s on the “Insert” tab with the “Object” button. You can just type it into the command bar also.
August 8th, 2024 at 10:16 pm
I also remember the days of using Wordstar from when I started learning COBOL. I even get a stint teaching it to the admin people at a lawyers company.
August 9th, 2024 at 5:49 am
Oh, magnificent!
I’m that guy who’s been talking about WS forever. I have 3.3 boxed and 4.0 on a DOSBox on the Mac.
I’m off to grab the goodness before it disappears.
Thank you!
August 9th, 2024 at 12:28 pm
This is awesome! I’ve downloaded a copy. I started in college with WordStar 6 and eventually upgraded it to this same 7.0d version. More details here: https://www.richardsezov.com/history/2021/05/20/writing-2.html
My first house had a basement with a dirt floor, and naive me decided to store my old copies of WordStar (among other things) there, where the moisture destroyed them. What a blast it is to see those old manuals again! Thank you so much for preserving this! I had no problems running the programs in this archive in Doxbox-X on Linux.
I would love to have a detailed look at your workflow. I just submitted a short story to a magazine; of course they want a Microsoft Word file. I’m a Linux guy now; I write in Markdown on my work-in-progress Neovim distribution (https://github.com/sez11a/vimstar), and then I use Pandoc (https://pandoc.org) to convert Markdown to .odt, use LibreOffice to format that, and then export to .docx.
From the tools you provided, it looks like you use WordStar -> convert.exe -> Word, which I guess means you have to have a copy of Word? Do your editors ever send back edits, which you then have to manage in Word? Or do you have WordStar side by side with Word and make the edits in the original file?
Appreciated your novel, *The Terminal Experiment*. Thanks for all you do.
August 9th, 2024 at 2:55 pm
Thank you for the kind words! I use my own WordStar macros to convert WordStar files to .rtf (which is all plain ASCII text) and that open the .rtf file in Word (but yuou can do the same thing in LibreOffice; it — and all — modern wordprocessors can open .rtf files) then save it as .docx; I don’t use Star Exchange (CONVERT.EXE) myself, although it does certainly do the job.
When I have to deal with track-changes manuscripts, yes, I do it in Word, but I’ve remapped Word’s keyboard interface to let me use WordStar keystrokes. Word allows that because it allows two-key shortcuts (such as ^KS), whereas LibreOffice only allows one-key ones (^S is possible, ^KS is not).
I very much enjoyed your three-part history of your experiences with wordprocessing software!
August 9th, 2024 at 3:56 pm
I don’t know if anyone remembers DAK, a mail order outfit that used to sell (among many other electronics and software packages) an inexpensive but licensed version of WordStar. A co-worker bought WordStar 5 from them — didn’t really like it, and “gave” it to me. I learned how to use it and showed him some of the features — and he decided he wanted it back. So I went to DAK to buy my own copy. By then they were selling WordStar 5.5 instead. (I guess it had more features, but I liked the looks of 5.0 at that time, so it took a little while to get used to the change.) At any rate I ended up buying WordStar 7.0d later and using it for years, until I moved to Linux (in about 2007).
In Linux I’ve used JOE (Joe’s Own Editor) with its Jstar “flavor” for since about 2008. For what I do — I’m not really a writer — it works very well. But I do have WS 5, 5.5 and 7 under DOSBox-X and they run well. When I still want to use WordStar I just use the Convert utility to a text file and use Jstar to change the line endings to Linux (UNIX) instead of DOS format. It works pretty well. I know this isn’t the “real” way to use WordStar, but it works for my purposes. If I need to “prettify” my document, I can import the text file into TextMaker and create a PDF there.
At any rate, thanks for making this archive available. The WordStar keystrokes are hard wired into my fingers. I’ll let others know about this archive.
August 9th, 2024 at 4:30 pm
My absolute pleasue!
August 9th, 2024 at 8:00 pm
I loved Wordstar, and could not believe the clunky MS Word was slowly replacing it. Word was not nearly as intuitive as Wordstar. You are not alone.
Thank you thank you!
August 10th, 2024 at 3:31 am
Thank you for the effort!
My first computer was an East-German (GDR) KC85/3 which I got (as a child) in 1989/90, after the fall of the Berlin wall. Later I even got one of the rare floppy disk drives for this computer – and with that it was able to run an East-German clone of CP/M 2.2 – and with that a word processing software called “TPKC” (TextProgramm for KC85).
TPKC was sold officially in the GDR, but later I learned that TPKC was simply a renamed and patched copy of WordStar 3! Other than the German UI, it was 100% WordStar 3.
I used TPKC quite a while for writing little short stories (nothing fancy), before I got a “real” computer later and had to learn MS Word in school. But I still remember it and thus also the keyboard commands of WordStar.
So everything WordStar makes me feel nostalgic, but it’s also interesting from a history point of view.
Your archive works fine and I hope it can stay online for a long time.
August 11th, 2024 at 9:10 am
I too cut my teeth on WordStar. Had subscription to Star dot Star, the templates, and truly respected it’s power.
It would be beyond wonderful if you could make archival copies of the diskettes
using a tool/utility such as WinImage. Preserving WordStar and other heroes of the early visionaries will be more important to those that come after us, once time has put distance between our experiences and the new present era.
Thank you for this efoort,
cjs
August 11th, 2024 at 11:48 am
Thank you for this – it has brought back so many memories! My first experience of it was about 1984 on CPM when I was programming data transfer systems on nuclear instrumentation. Not quite as easy for me as I can’t touch-type (I’m lacking some fingers due to a childhood firework mishap). I then changed department where they were using Wordstar 2000 – a customised variant that was soooo easy to learn: ^c were cursor commands ^cu cursor up, ^cd cursor down, ^cl cursor left, ^cp3 cursor to page 3 etc , ^qe quit and exit, ^qs quit and save …
I feel very sorry for beginners, parked in front of a screen with their first experience being of choices like share, cast and dozens of others that I’ve never used.
August 11th, 2024 at 12:56 pm
Yes, WordStar 2000, a separate product with a completely different codebase, was a remarkable program, too. Whereas WordStar for DOS used positional mnemonics for its commands, so that they were clustered logically on the keyboard, WordStar 2000 used for alphabetic mnemonics. The former approach prizes ease of use; the latter, ease of learning. WordStar 2000 was pretty much of a dog until WordStar 2000 Release 3.5 (the final one), which was, at the time, the fastest full-featured wordprocessor on the market.
Thank you for the kind words!
August 11th, 2024 at 2:30 pm
This is awesome, thanks so much for doing this. I started using it in the early 1980’s, and in my day job as a programmer I use the TSE Editor with WordStar key mappings, so I’ve been using the WordStar short-cuts daily for over 40 years. I don’t see any reason to switch, it’s so efficient. I always feel bad watching other programmers program in Visual Studio. A nice debugger, but definitely not a programmer’s editor.
I remember my dad following directions in Byte magazine to edit the WordStar binary using hex values to enable proportional space printing. He was using the whole suite of their software in his business, like DataStar, etc. It’s so nice to see WordStar is still alive and kicking. It really is a fantastic editor.
August 12th, 2024 at 10:57 am
This is very cool! ICYMI, your WordStar 7 re-release was covered by tech industry publication The Register: https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/wordstar_7_the_last_ever/
August 12th, 2024 at 11:21 am
Oh, believe me, I did not miss that — not when downloads from my website suddenly when up to 1.4 terabytes in a single day after The Register did their article. My WordStar archive has now also been featured in The Verge, Slashdot, Tom’s Hardware, Gizmodo, TechSpot, How-To Geek, and Boing Boing, among others. :)
August 12th, 2024 at 12:34 pm
Excellent suggestion, John! I’ve updated the archive. This new version is 1.5, dated August 12, 2024. The new version has the file size of the PDF manuals reduced (which cuts the archive size from 680MB to 460MB), adds — as you suggested — disk images of the original 5.25-inch WordStar 7.0 Rev. D diskettes, and provides additional instructions and clarifications in the various -README files.
You can get the new version here:
https://sfwriter.com/ws7.htm
August 13th, 2024 at 5:14 pm
There is now an approved DOS emulator in the iOS App Store. I have no skills in the realm of emulators and loading old software but does this mean one could run Wordstar on an iPad? I have a mechanical keyboard that feels pretty close to the keyboards in the late 80s computer lab where I first encountered Wordstar and Wordperfect and the issues I was having due to my illegible handwriting and school assignments died a slow death under my fascination with flickering and beeping gadgety business.
August 13th, 2024 at 5:18 pm
Yes, WordStar for DOS will run under any DOS emulator. I recommend DOSBox-X plus, included in the archive I put together, for use under Windows, macOS, or Linux, but the iOS emulator will indeed run it on an iPad, I belive.
August 14th, 2024 at 1:31 pm
@Plimpton Thanks, did not know that one.Bit more complicated, but works
Still a new document is always opened as “document1.docx” in Word. Wordstar just asked you for a filename first, so you could not forget it later. My family saves important letters mostly as “document1”, if at all, and never finds them again…in Wordstar you just could not open a horse pardon text with no name. Much smarter
August 26th, 2024 at 10:56 am
I’ve been using WS since version 0.78, when it was raw and incomplete. Over time I have followed its erratic development via the likes of NewWord. (Even tried WS for Windows — ghod, what a dog!) I still use WD for fiction but am struggling to make my faithful, much-ported WS-7c installation run properly under ArcaNoae-5.1 (current OS/2, still being polished by the developers). Finding your Gift To Posterity has been a joy, which I look forward to testing. Many thanks for your hard work.
August 26th, 2024 at 11:31 am
My absolute pleasure, Andrew! Thank you so much for your kind words!
September 9th, 2024 at 8:33 am
I started using WS in the early 80s on my CP/M 2.2 Toshiba T-100 with v2. I remember writing my senior term paper with v3. The topic… “How Computer’s Will Change Our Lives.”
I actually got the idea after reading “Word Processor of the Gods” by SK. I fell in love with WS and used it through college until my wife made me switch to WordPerfect and then MS-Word. BTW, my teacher couldn’t believe the “lack of errors” and she bought her first computer!
Recently, I wanted to rediscover the old software I used to use. I had stopped av 5.5 and wasn’t impressed with WS for Windows or 2K. I found v7d and got everything up-and-running myself… and then I found your site. I learned your lessons myself.
Thanks for putting this together… especially the documentation!
September 9th, 2024 at 10:15 am
Thank you so much, David!
September 15th, 2024 at 5:52 am
I do have few questions: are you going to try to collect resources from other authors (GRRM, etc.) and incorporate them into your archive – future versions? I really like the version of WS that you have used before – some of your webpages contain (screengrabs) a version of WS that is not included in the archive – “Quantum Nigh” has slightly different UI that is not included in the Archive – I think there are two different versions here https://sfwriter.com/vdos-old.htm and here https://sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm. Are you going to include more high quality images, logos, posters in the next release? I am very impressed with this archive and I hope other writers will follow your lead and release their tools in a large archives (XyWrite, WP DOS, etc.). Thank you very much for all your hard work and for sharing this with the world.
September 15th, 2024 at 10:13 am
George uses a stock version of WordStar 4.0 running on an actual IBM PC under MS-DOS. I might add WordStar 4.0 to the archive at some point. And there are contributions from many dozens of other users in the folder “CompuServe WordStar Forum Library” in my WordStar archive.
I’ll add the version of WordStar I used for the screenshots to the next version of the archive, but for now you can get it here; simply rename the file from SCRNSHOT.OFF to SCRNSHOT.EXE after you download it and place it in your C:\WS folder:
https://sfwriter.com/scrnshot.off
Many thanks for the kind words.
September 24th, 2024 at 9:42 pm
@Plimpton: Actually I found an appropriate way by accident: Right-Click on a filename in Explorer and choose “New” and the existing Word-File will be opened under a new document name. So no overwriting danger any more.
Still miss my Wordstar…
October 1st, 2024 at 4:59 am
I enjoy using your wordstar resources and different wordstar versions, however, I do have few questions:
1. What font is depicted on a screenshot found on https://sfwriter.com/blog/?p=5742 webpage “Forty Years of Using WordStar”?
2. How do you make fonts/screen brighter in WordStar under DosBox-X? Under vDosPlus you recommended BTM files to make three levels of brightness; is there a similar way to do it under DosBox-X?
3. After opening screen, in vDosBox, Wordstar does not display full list of files and file directories, however, under DosBox-X it does. Why is that and how can I access / navigate all the files and sub-directories in Wordstar under vDosPlus – I would like to be able to navigate through directories or to select appropriate file for editing, etc?
4. Follow on question to number 1: how do you change colors of text within Wordstar like on the screen from bullet 1?
5. How do you organize your folders: N (Novels), M (manuscripts), D (drafts), O (Outline), etc. drives and how do you access them from within Wordstar?
6. How do you add additional drives / how do you map drives in vDosPlus’ autoexec.txt file under Windows and macOS and ultimately how do you access them from within Wordstar.
7. There are different versions of WS.EXE files with different UI colors; you have even shared your favorite one named SAWYER.EXE – which, by the way, is amazing. I was wondering, how do you start your work on a project: What do I mean by that?: do you just start typing or do you setup Wordstar for manuscript or draft in a certain way, margins, line spacing, etc? Do you split a book into individual chapters or scenes or do you type everything in one large file? Do you use a macro to help you setup writing space?
8. Is there a way to increase font size in Wordstar to display on the screen while typing or is it only used for when printing to PDF, etc?
I posted these here in case other people have similar questions but don’t know how to ask.
Thank you.
October 1st, 2024 at 10:18 am
1. What font is depicted on a screenshot found on https://sfwriter.com/blog/?p=5742 webpage “Forty Years of Using WordStar”?
Lucida Sans Typewriter
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/lucida-sans-typewriter
2. How do you make fonts/screen brighter in WordStar under DosBox-X? Under vDosPlus you recommended BTM files to make three levels of brightness; is there a similar way to do it under DosBox-X?
Yes, I use batch files BRIGHT.BTM and DIM.BTM to toggle between bright and dim colors under DOSBox-X. These are my own idiosyncratic choices:
BRIGHT.BTM:
setcolor 0 #000000 > nul
setcolor 1 #0000cc > nul
setcolor 2 #009900 > nul
setcolor 3 #00cccc > nul
setcolor 4 #cc0000 > nul
setcolor 5 #004444 > nul
setcolor 6 #cc7700 > nul
setcolor 7 #cccccc > nul
setcolor 8 #777777 > nul
setcolor 9 #7777ff > nul
setcolor 10 #ffff77 > nul
setcolor 11 #77ffff > nul
setcolor 12 #ff7777 > nul
setcolor 13 #ff77ff > nul
setcolor 14 #ffff77 > nul
setcolor 15 #ffffff > nul
DIM.BTM
setcolor 0 #000000 > nul
setcolor 1 #000080 > nul
setcolor 2 #007700 > nul
setcolor 3 #008080 > nul
setcolor 4 #800000 > nul
setcolor 5 #003333 > nul
setcolor 6 #804400 > nul
setcolor 7 #808080 > nul
setcolor 8 #444444 > nul
setcolor 9 #4444AA > nul
setcolor 10 #AAAA44 > nul
setcolor 11 #44AAAA > nul
setcolor 12 #AA4444 > nul
setcolor 13 #AA44AA > nul
setcolor 14 #AAAA44 > nul
setcolor 15 #AAAAAA > nul
3. After opening screen, in vDosPlus, WordStar does not display full list of files and file directories, however, under DosBox-X it does. Why is that and how can I access / navigate all the files and sub-directories in WordStar under vDosPlus – I would like to be able to navigate through directories or to select appropriate file for editing, etc?
What operating system are you using? vDosPlus shows an almost identical directory/file list on my Windows 11 Pro system as that shown by DOSBox-X (vDosPlus does suppress the redundant “..” listing for the current directory).
If it’s not showing any file list, it’s possible you accidentally turned off file display at WSCHANGE menu C (Computer), E (Directory display), A (Display file directory). Also, at help level 3 and below, issuing F from the opening menu toggles file/directory display on and off.
4. Follow on question to number 1: how do you change colors of text within WordStar like on the screen from bullet 1?
I set my italics to be orange so that I can better see if punctuation marks are italicized or not. I do that at WSCHANGE menu A (Console), B (Video attributes), A (Select colors individually). You can fiddle endlessly there to get the colors and mix of attributes you wish for each screen element and type of text.
5. How do you organize your folders: N (Novels), M (manuscripts), D (drafts), O (Outline), etc. drives and how do you access them from within WordStar?
My current novel is in a drive called N:, my current script is in a drive called S:, and so on. Once you solve your problem in your question 3 above, you just log on to these drives with WordStar’s L (from the main menu) or ^KL (while editing a document) commands, which bring up the “Change Drive\Directory” dialog box.
6. How do you add additional drives / how do you map drives in vDosPlus’ autoexec.txt file under Windows and macOS and ultimately how do you access them from within WordStar.
I know nothing about macOS, so can’t help you there. In Windows, I set all my vDos drives to exactly match the physical drives on my system; obviously, your own settings will be different, but my USE commands in vDosPlus’s AUTOEXEC.TXT looks like this (C:, D:, E:, G:, and U:, are separate physical drives or memory cards):
USE M: C:\Sync
USE M: D:\Sync
USE M: E:\Sync
USE C: C:\
USE D: D:\
USE E: E:\
USE G: G:\
USE U: U:\
USE B: C:\Sync\N\F\Shadowpa
USE F: M:\F
USE J: M:\F\Journals
USE H: C:\Sync\N\F\Shadowpa\Tour
USE K: M:\C
USE L: C:\Sync\Calibr~1\Calibr~2
USE N: M:\N
USE O: M:\F\Novels\Oppie
USE P: M:\PP
USE Q: M:\F\DU
USE R: M:\F\DU\-Res
USE S: C:\Sync\N\Sequel
USE T: M:\T
USE V: M:\vDosPlus
USE W: M:\WS
USE X: M:\F\Novels
USE Y: C:\Sync\F\Social\
USE Z: C:\Users\sawye\OneDrive\Desktop
I also have all the same drive-letter assignments set at the operating system level using Windows’s SUBST command so I can use those same drive letters in any application, but that’s not necessary for using WordStar.
7. There are different versions of WS.EXE files with different UI colors; you have even shared your favorite one named SAWYER.EXE – which, by the way, is amazing. I was wondering, how do you start your work on a project: What do I mean by that?: do you just start typing or do you setup Wordstar for manuscript or draft in a certain way, margins, line spacing, etc? Do you split a book into individual chapters or scenes or do you type everything in one large file? Do you use a macro to help you setup writing space?
I long ago set all my standard defaults in WSCHANGE at menu D (WordStar layout), A (Page layout), under options A (Page size and margins) and C (Tabs).
WordStar also has a default paragraph stylesheet, which I usually name “WordStar Defaults,” and I also set my defaults one time in that stylesheet (using ^OFD from within a document) and ticking the “Update Style Library” box at the lower right so that all new documents use the same settings. When I start a new document, it’s already set to my defaults and I just start typing.
8. Is there a way to increase font size in Wordstar to display on the screen while typing or is it only used for when printing to PDF, etc?
There is not, but, of course, the fewer lines and columns (the minimum allowed is 25 lines and 80 columns) you set, the more text you’ll get on screen. You set LINS and COLS values for vDosPlus in its CONFIG.TXT file.
As for posting here, that’s okay, but every single one of the many *.TXT and *.WS help documents I provided has an email address specified for asking me support questions.
October 3rd, 2024 at 12:10 pm
The WS archive is marvelous – thank you very much Rob, for this tremendous effort!
Maybe the following workaround is of interest to others trying to install WS/DOSBox-X in Linux environments:
On two different Linux machines (Ubuntu 24.04, DOSBox-X) I encountered a problem with HD access: except the very first write operation to an empty directory all subsequent write attempts result in a WS “File error message / disk may be full”.
After some trial-and-error modifications of the dosbox-x.conf file I found a workaround: in the DOS-section the line “file access tries” must be deleted or commented out. (Setting it to 0 or any arbitrary value doesn’t work, as well as changing the FILES=xxx in den config.syst, as recommended by the WS error message popup.)