Thursday, October 29, 2020

Book of Jornada: Chapter 7 The Quest for WordStar 7.0D

WordStar was one of the first full-fledged word processors and a major player back in the 1980s. Many professional writers (including George R. R. Martin) swear by this archaic but effective program. There is no reason not to run it under PocketDOS on my Jornada 720

Champion, let's go!

The quest opened with the installation script (wssetup.com)


The fully guided installation journey began!


The first obstacle in this adventure was a puzzle. But with the knowledge of the Web, it didn't take long for the Champion to "figure out" the key. The gate was wide open!

Upon solving the puzzle, an empty road sign loomed over the Champion. He had to select the source disk and the destination disk. Even though everything was in emulation it just didn't feel any different from true DOS mode.

The next room stood a whole array of options and tools. The Champion simply grabbed them all. :) 

The dungeon consisted of a long series of disk-shaped areas. To overcome the challenges one by one, the Champion had to supply the right image (.IMG) to clear each area.

Summon the DOS Drive Letter Wizard.

Select the Drive Letter (in this case "B" was chosen) and the Drive Type ("Disk image file").

A window opened asking for a disk image.

Load the right one from the list of files.

At the end of the installation process, an extra line was added to the Autoexec.bat file.

Despite its age, Wordstar 7.0D offers support for a very wide range of printers, an essential feature for writers.

Display setting for the program was set to "IBM PC or Compatible" (the default choice).

Setup process was completed. The fight was finally over!

The installation exited and switched automatically to the installed directory (C:\ws). Simply run ws(.exe) to reap the sweet quest reward.

This is real stuff, folks! The Champion successfully captured a truly awesome word processor.  


To tame the beast, this WordStar Training Guide seems super useful: https://web.archive.org/web/20200727101209/http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/microPro/Wordstar_3.3/Wordstar_Training_Guide_2ed_Feb83.pdf 
 
In addition, the Hugo winner Robert J. Sawyer has written an excellent article summarizing the beautiful and user-friendly interface of WordStar (in comparision with WordPerfect): 

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