3 Sep
2022
3 Sep
'22
7:24 p.m.
On Saturday 03 September 2022 11:39:18 dep wrote:
said Marvin Jones via tde-users:
| On Sat, 3 Sep 2022, dep wrote:
| >said dep:
| >| Frankly, I liked Star Office!
| >
| >And truth be known, ApplixWare was non-awful.
|
| I still have a working copy of WordStar 6.0 on my linux workstation.
I have the CDs, etc., for WordPerfect/Linux, which never didn't suck. OTOH,
I have installed on this very machine Word 6/DOS and Textra/DOS. (There is
a non-stunt reason: occasionally I happen upon old files written in those,
and I need to export 'em to RTF to make 'em readable. Though both of them
were excellent word crunchers. Wish there were a decent Linux text-based
word processor. And no, EMACS does not fit the bill. EMACS was developed
so basement dwellers could write love notes to the girlfriends they would
never have. Today's incels think they're something new. Ah. but I
digress . . .)
--
dep
I don't recall that WordPerfect was so terrible; but then, I wasn't running
Linux back then. I believe that was on a Commodore Amiga 64, and also on an
old Mac Classic II (with 80 mb hard drive!). But also, I was just using it as
a fancy typewriter, basic writing and editing, made easier by tools like cut
and copy-paste, etc.
My brief stint with M$ Windows got me acquainted with Word, and that's when I
learned that nowadays we can "buy" something (like a word processing program)
but not really "own" it, not like owning an actual book, but that I had in
fact purchased a five-year license to use that software. That, and other
similar experiences, led me to Linux.
Nowadays I do much more layout, to create print-ready pdfs; the idea being to
be able to turn my manuscript(s) directly into a book, or at least to provide
a sample of how I would like it to look. I could never do that kind of thing,
I imagine, with WordStar and those old programs, but I do miss the
simplicity. And if they were somehow brought more up-to-date with modern word
processors like LibreOffice, that sounds like a nice dream, but I doubt that
we'll see anything like it. I think reforming OpenOffice and/or LibreOffice
are probably more realistic and achievable; or at least we can hope for
another fork from one of them.
Bill