Before MS-DOS there was CP/M, and before the IBM PC, users depended on a wide variety of platforms. The software market was essentially the Wild West, and portability was not exactly a priority for developers, but in 1978 an exception to the rule appeared: WordStar. This word processor was not the first of its kind, but its approach led to very similar versions that simplified the jump from one system to the next.
The history books tell us that the first word processing software was Electric Pencil, created by Michael Shrayer in 1976 for the Altair 8800. Electric Pencil required 8 kilobytes of RAM and ran on both the Zilog Z80 and the Intel 8080, but Shrayer found himself preparing dozens of special editions requested by his customers, and tired of the process, he hired more programmers to handle the load (available information indicates that 78 different versions existed).
Electric Pencil confirmed beyond any doubt that creating digital documents was viable. Faced with such demand, the supply did not take long to arrive, and in 1978 one of the first "imitators" of Electric Pencil appeared, called WordStar. Developed by John Robbins Barnaby for the company MicroPro International of Seymour I. Rubinstein, this word processor became one of the most used programs on the planet (its distribution with the Osborne 1 helped a lot in that regard... as did piracy), and its transition to MS-DOS only multiplied its popularity.
WordStar: A Supernova Among Word Processors
Now, WordStar was far from being an ideal piece of software. Its first manuals were terrible, the performance of the ports left much to be desired, and the complexity of the interface did not escape the media of the time, but despite those difficulties, it was the number one on the market. Its WYSIWYG profile (What You See Is What You Get) and the "non-document" mode of opening files (highly favored by programmers) placed it on a different level from the rest.
I decided to try to write at least part of this article using WordStar 4.0, and while the experience was not exactly pleasant (I'm a "beginner" born after the original build), it was not catastrophic either. Naturally, built-in tutorials are conspicuously absent, and any question or query forces you to load the "Readme" file, or alternatively, go back to its manuals.
The official text for WordStar 4.0 is close to 400 pages, and more than a "manual", it is a true training guide. One of the first things I learned in this environment is that "Ctrl+B is your friend": Any secondary modification or change can ruin the document's alignment, and with Ctrl+B, we ask WordStar to fix it.
I must confess that it took me a lot of work to understand text justification. In its default configuration, WordStar 4.0 has it enabled, but I needed a couple of extra minutes to find the option that leaves the text aligned to the left of the document. I also admit that I lacked the courage to explore the situation of rules and margins, but the bottom of the interface is relatively intuitive, and behaves similarly to Norton Commander, with function keys associated with specific commands (bold, underline, etc.). In short, WordStar is 100 percent an '80s program: difficult on the surface, but it can be mastered by brute force.
"What if I want it on Windows?"
Honestly, I think you'll be much more comfortable with a modern processor, but WordStar has had some very high-profile users. In August 2015, Anne Rice shared her appreciation for WordStar on her Facebook profile, and no one will easily forget George R. R. Martin's interview on Conan O'Brien's show, where he admitted that WordStar 4.0 is his "secret weapon".
Anyway... if you're looking for an experience similar to the original WordStar, I can recommend WordTsar, which basically works as a clone of version 7.0D. In fact, it was very useful to me when loading the document I wrote in 4.0, saving it in RTF format, and importing its content here. Have fun!
