Posted by droidjj 13 hours ago
I always preferred WordStar to WordPerfect, largely because WordStar's keybindings were easy to learn and remember. WordPerfect, by contrast, seemed to require keyboard templates, a manual, a cheat sheet, and a certain amount of divine intervention.
You can read an insider's story of WordPerfect by Pete Peterson, one of the earliest WordPerfect employees. The PDF version is freely available on his website (https://wepeterson.com/almostperfect/).
My long-running quarrel with WordPerfect was always the keybindings. I can still tear through WordStar, and anything wearing WordStar's clothes, like Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, or Joe in jstar mode, like an overcaffeinated chipmunk that's made a series of questionable but deeply committed life choices about caffeine.
WordPerfect, though. WordPerfect and I never achieved détente. I never managed to internalize those key combinations. This is, on paper, a personal failing. In practice, I continue to hold WordPerfect entirely responsible.
I do recall WordPerfect masters being revered, if not more highly compensated, by the average duffer.
Each to their own, and of course finding an optimal writing environment is a very subjective thing -- but it's not like there aren't modern distraction-free writing interfaces that exist.
In retrospect the quality, quantity and look and feel of the documents I created remained exactly the same.
In the spirit of emacs-v-vim, I have to come down in favor of that other phosphor color of those days, amber. Better contrast !!!
GUIs were invented by the Xerox PARC team early 1970s, the IIc (I have one sitting on my desk :) was 1984. Totally beside your point so I apologize. I only mention it because PARC deserves a huge amount of credit.
Quite often solicitors have stuff on 3.5" or even 5.25" floppies that need read, converted from WordPerfect into something modern, and delivered as maybe a PDF or Word Doc.
Fortunately, solicitors tend not to be short of money (that they bill their client for) so they can often find "a guy who knows a guy" who can get that precious floppy onto a USB stick. Occasionally I am the guy who the guy knows, and it buys me the odd case of reasonably-priced wine.
Probably stuff to do with property ownership.
Last PC I saw in daily use with floppies in daily use was about five years ago.
Then again he's also about a decade late with the next book
If you want output, Stephen King has used many processors, he doesn't care aparently as long as he can focus. Brandon Sanderson uses Word. The tool doesn't seem to matter.
(Recall the literal warehouses of papers related to projects in Kelly's book and Rich's memoir)