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WordStar, the first mainstream PC word processor, was just re-released for free.
Its been almost half a century since its launch.
Those decades come with a strange history and a user base which includes Arthur C. Clark and George R.R.
Canadian sci-fi author Robert J. Sawyer put the WordStar bundle together and released it on hiswebsite.
According to the writer, no complete archive for WordStar exists on the internet.
you’ve got the option to try the original word processor on your machine with this re-release bundle.
Itll take some technical know-how to get WordStar up and running though.
The original word processor offers a deceptively simple but powerful interface that heavily relies on the keyboard.
Sawyer says it lets me interact with my computer more efficiently than any other interface I’ve yet seen.
Everything is done through keystrokes, which means fewer distractions once you start typing.
WordStar looks nothing like the word processors we have today, but it remains functional to this day.
So much so that there are authors who regularly use it to write.
Sawyer swears by it.
Martin, James Gunn, Paul Levinson, and many others still use it.
Anne Rice believes the modern Microsoft Word is pure madness" compared to WordStar.
Even Arthur C. Clark favored WordStar.
Towards the end of its life, WordStar was also released for Windows.
Ever since late 1992, there have been no official updates released for WordStar.
Many rewrites andclonespopped up.
Source:Robert J. SawyerviaThe Register
