WordStar is a legendary name among word processors. It was featured in our Retrosoftware section last year, and some high-profile authors have declared it their favorite. Time and the appearance of new tools displaced WordStar completely, but if you want to try it today, the WordTsar project offers a very good reproduction that runs natively, without virtual environments or modifications.
The IBM PC had more than one killer app. Flight Simulator revealed its potential as a gaming platform, VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3 brought spreadsheets to our screens, and when it came to writing, there was WordStar. The best anecdote about WordStar belongs to George R. R. Martin, who declared WordStar 4.0 his “secret weapon” for writing novels without distractions. Anne Rice also dedicated some lines to it, with the difference that she used it on the Osborne 1 (the word processor came included with the hardware).
Years passed, Microsoft conquered the universe and the Office suite became the de facto standard, but WordStar never completely disappeared. In fact, both veterans of that processor and retro software enthusiasts can experience it on modern systems thanks to the WordTsar project, which gives us a fairly faithful clone, ready to use.
WordTsar: The Best Modern WordStar Clone
As its official page indicates, WordTsar is a clone of the “document mode” of WordStar 7.0D. The original versions offered a free mode that was very useful for writing code, but WordTsar focuses on document creation. The most important commands appear in the edit menu, and one of its goals is to minimize the use of cursor arrows. For example, the combination 'ESXD' works like a 'WASD' as long as you hold down the Ctrl key. Similarly, Ctrl+W and Ctrl+Z handle scrolling, while Ctrl+R and Ctrl+C turn whole pages.
The Style menu holds the formatting commands. Unlike modern processors, the key is to enclose words and paragraphs with those commands. In the case of bold, we must enter Ctrl+PB to open bold, type the text, and close bold with Ctrl+PB again. The same technique extends to italic and underlined text, but other formats are still absent (e.g., doublestrike).
Finally, WordTsar includes a modern menu that allows us to modify the appearance of its interface, especially regarding colors. The software is in pre-alpha stage and its development is slow, but if the plan is to write with the same tools used by the pioneers of the '80s, WordTsar works very well.
Official site and download: Click here
