Re: OT: In Praise of Dos-Based Word Processors

  • From: Kari Eveli <lexitec@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: xywrite@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 15 May 2014 09:56:35 +0300

I have never used WordStar. I started with MS-Word version 2 which had mouse and printer support that was way better than most of the other programs of the day. I still think that Word 5 was the greatest business DOS word processor. Version 5 is crippled with the W2K problem, versions 3 (old-style menus) and 5.5 (Windows-alike menus) work ok. And if you switch your clock back to the '80s, you can use version 5. I still occasionally do. It has some editing features that are not found elsewhere and that come very handy.


For efficient DOS word processing nothing beats the Xy family of programs. I like NB3 best (nicest old-style menus different from Xy4, simple formatting codes that are easy to convert to XML or whatever).
Xy4 is perhaps more powerful, but not as comfy!

For modern environments there are plenty of excellent programs, currently I use EditPad Lite and Notepad++.

Good 16-bit modern editors for Windows 3.1 are scarce. Textpad 3.2.5 is very good. It is shareware, but fully functional as is (with a nag screen).
Download: http://www.filewatcher.com/m/txp16325.zip.1116314-0.html

Programmer's File Editor is another 3.1 program what I have used for a long time.
http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/~steveb/cpaap/pfe/pfefiles.htm

Best regards,

Kari Eveli
LEXITEC Book Publishing (Finland)
lexitec@xxxxxxxxxx

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14.5.2014 23:03, Bill Troop wrote:
Wordstar on DOS? I thought the CP/M version was better. I don't suppose
anyone has done a CP/M emulator ? ? Not that I would ever go back - -
XyWrite is a million times better. Oh, those awful italics in early
Wordstar, where you always missed the turn-off code!

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