New post: WordStar: the pre-Microsoft Word days

WordStar was the hand I was dealt when I started working with computers back in the 1980s. It was also probably the cheapest word processor on the market, knowing my boss

https://md-handbook.com/blog/wordstar-pre-microsoft-word-days/

#WordStar #MSWord #wordprocessors #textonly #plaintext

Gen X-ers share the college experiences that 'couldn’t happen today' and people are feeling it

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.upworthy.com/gen-xers-share-college-stories

A Look Back at Three Decades of Word Processors - Byte Cellar

A few days ago I was running through twitter when I saw Peter Cohen (@flargh) link to a blog post he had written about distraction free writing and the focused simplicity of a 30 year old word processor. Reading the … Continue reading →

Byte Cellar
For anyone who reads scholarly texts frequently, as I do, footnotes are commonplace. Given a document received in Microsoft Word format, I sought to access the footnotes using several word processors and screen readers. Findings:

Microsoft Word for Windows (Print layout) - the footnotes appear at the bottom of each page and can be reached using ordinary cursor navigation. An option to move from the footnote text to the footnote mark in the body of the document is available in a context menu. However, I couldn't find a command to move from the footnote mark directly to the footnote text.

Microsoft Word for Mac - VoiceOver didn't read the footnote text at all - not good, obviously.

Apple Pages - each footnote mark was treated as a link, so I could navigate directly to the footnote text. However, there was no obvious way to move back from the footnote text to the footnote mark.

Google Docs - I haven't tested recently, but when I last tried it with multiple screen readers under different operating systems, the screen readers ignored the footnote marks in the document entirely, unless the cursor was placed directly on the footnote mark, which is unlikely to happen by accident.

LibreOffice Writer (Linux) - when last I tested, there wasn't a keyboard binding for the command to move to the footnote area. I reported this as a bug. It may have been fixed since then.

#accessibility #ScreenReaders #WordProcessors
Anything you write can and will be used against you. #Anti-Intelligence, #ai #wordprocessors #writingcommunity
Okay, my fellow #otaku and #weeb folks,
Where's my #anime and/or #manga about anthropomorphic #vintage #typewriters and #wordProcessors?
Some of these 80s and 90s #typewriters and #wordprocessors feel "weirdly advanced."
Like, they advanced far but on a branch that mostly or completely ended by now.

The first issue of #Compute had reviews of three "#WordProcessors."

One was from Commodore themselves, written in machine code ("ML" as it was often called then), and worked largely like you'd expect an early word processor to work: character-based, not WYSIWYG, but generally of use in manipulating text.

The other two were from small companies, written in BASIC, and were "line oriented" word processors. They stored documents as sequences of independent lines, which you would call up to look at, and would edit them individually.

Can you imagine working with a system like that now? What if that was how we had to enter text into the Mastodon posting form?

Robertus Cognoscens (@[email protected])

@[email protected] FocusWriter, by Graeme Gott. — https://gottcode.org/focuswriter — https://floss.social/@gottcode #FocusWriter #WordProcessor #LibreSoftware #FOSS

Writing Exchange

Honorable mention:

#Atari800 - because 40 columns are enough for everyone.

#RetroComputing #WordProcessors