Talk:WordStar/Archives/2020

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WordStar and the Alt key

[Quote] At that time, the evolution from CP/M to MS-DOS, with an "Alt" key, had taken place. WordStar had until then never successfully exploited the MS-DOS keyboard, and that is one explanation for its demise. [End quote]

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar

This shows such confusion as to be unfixable. I recommend deleting it.

MS-DOS is software. A keyboard is hardware. Many operating systems have been adapted to work with the IBM Personal Computer series and its keyboards. There is no "MS-DOS keyboard."

The Alt key first appeared on the IBM Datamaster, which came out before the IBM Personal Computer and did not run MS-DOS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/23_Datamaster

The Alt key was not used by MS-DOS (see Table 3.2):

https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=131120&seqNum=5

At least one Ctrl and one Alt key can be found on any IBM PC keyboard. Like the other keys, each produces IBM-defined scan codes. Scan codes indicate key location and pressed/released state and nothing else. Whatever one piece of software does in response to one key, another can do in response to the other.

WordStar successfully exploited the IBM Personal Computer keyboards. Those keyboards' function, cursor, paging and editing keys all worked in WordStar:

https://www.pcjs.org/software/pcx86/app/other/wordstar/3.30/

As the editing screen shows, the same functions were available through Ctrl and the letter keys, making the dedicated keys unnecessary -- but they worked. The Alt key was not used, because (1) it was outside the typing zone (Ctrl was in that zone until 1986), (2) it was system-specific (WordStar also ran on other hardware), and (3) one command-generating modifier key was more than enough (customizing WordPerfect 5.1 to use Ctrl and the letter keys for all command functions, you found you had letter keys to spare).

WordPerfect, MS Word for DOS, Samna, MultiMate, DisplayWrite, and Windows 1.01-2.xx made little or no use of combinations of Ctrl and the letter keys. As the keyboard, the BIOS, and all PC operating systems were designed to allow use of those keystrokes, THAT is failing to fully exploit the IBM PC keyboard.

Meanwhile, programming tools from Microsoft supported WordStar keystrokes, and a text editor used internally at the company responded to all combinations of Ctrl and the letter keys:

http://www.os2museum.com/files/docs/msc51/msed-uguide-1988.pdf

https://github.com/fwmechanic/k_edit/blob/master/historical_scans_fair_use/1986.08.04-Z.TXT

It should not be hard to guess which company decreed that mass-market software should ignore combinations of Ctrl and the letter keys and why it so decreed. (Hint: it also moved Ctrl out of the typing zone, and Windows got the Ctrl+X/C/V suite only after Microsoft and that company had a falling out.)

2001:B011:700E:3EEB:219:B9FF:FE73:70ED (talk) 16:48, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

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Microsoft’s Word converter is probably the best (only?) way to read historic wordstar files today. Microsoft does not offer it any more – if it ever had in the near past – but I found a valid legal copy and mentioned that in my blog “blogabissl”. This is not self advertizing. I try to help the community. – Fritz Jörn (talk) 06:25, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
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