I've been exploring WordStar today. I'm wondering whether it will provide a better writing environment than I get from Vim. But let me begin by explaining why WordStar interests me. Over the last few years, paper has become my default medium. I find it easier to read from and keep track of.
I'd previously favoured writing Markdown or plain text files in Vim. Mostly so that I can grep my file system by subject, and because the file format is non-proprietary. In theory it should have worked really well, but in truth, I'm too disorganised to properly file my documents, and too forgetful to use them when I have.
Similarly, I've also found physical index cards filed to a drawer to be more practical than files on my computer. Maybe because the act of searching serves as a reminder of what the archive contains. The process of editing a fact down to its bare essentials so that it even fits on a 3x5" index card probably also helps reinforce the memory of what the archive contains. I'm curious whether WordStar is a better tool than Vim for preparing both index cards and documents for printing.
I haven't regularly written longer documents such as this one for many years. I was involved in the Gemini community during the COVID lock downs. I had a good tool chain for publishing documents, and a nice community to share them with. I don't really have either of those right now. I could easily set up a Blog again but I've been reluctant. I feel that the response from communities like Hacker News is a little too hostile. I'd rather not participate. I have been enjoying handwriting in
exercise books but that hasn't been conducive to long form writing. I write fleeting thoughts as they pass through my mind. There's rarely much depth to them. I want a record of my deeper thoughts -- those which I've spent time actually considering. Perhaps filing my essays away for personal use is reason enough to write again. I do wish for a portfolio of thoughts to revisit in later years.
So if paper is my default medium, then the primary requirement of a word processor is that it prints to paper. I've been putting that to the test and so far I'm impressed. It handles margins and line spacing really well. It tracks page length. It supports font faces, sizes, and decorations like bold, italics, superscript and subscript, underline, and strike through. It's far more powerful than anything I can manage with plain text with white space padding, and it's far more convenient than troff.
Slowly, I'm learning that printing documents isn't simply instructing the printer to place a bitmap onto a piece of paper. No, it's far more powerful than that. A word processor instructs the printer to switch between its built in typefaces, to handle placement and margins, and more. Vim can't do any of that without a lot of hand-holding but WordStar can.
Vim does wrangle troff documents very well, because its markup language more closely resembles code than it does the printed document it represents. I very much like troff and adore the quality of the documents that it produces, but I'm now thinking of it as typesetting software that prepares a finished document for printing, not as a tool for writing. WordStar is looking like a better tool than Vim for either writing or printing draft-quality documents. If more quality is required, I can always typeset the document in troff after it is written.
I'm rediscovering that the 8.3 filename limit of DOS is annoyingly short. I'd forgotten that there just isn't room for any context like the date, or the project, or both. I can imagine that the limit might not have been so restrictive when the files were written to floppy disks. The disk itself served the same purpose as an index card; you write the required context on the disk's label before sticking it to the disk. Then you flip through the disks reading the labels as you go. Filenames only had to differentiate between the handful of files contained on the disk. If the namespace became too cluttered, files could be spread across directories or copied to other disks with their own labels filled with their own context.
Initially, I attempted to replicate the key bindings of Readline. They're pretty well baked into my brain. I use them all day long on the command line, and also in Vim's insert mode. I figured that if I could mould WordStar to be more like Readline, then I'd become productive faster. I got a long way to that end but the further I got, the more I began noticing subtle incompatibilities. It was becoming clear that it would never be perfect, and that perhaps rather than trying to force WordStar to be Vim, maybe I was better off just learning WordStar. I have no trouble switching between Vim, Readline, tmux and MacOS bindings depending on context. I don't even think about it. I can throw another set of bindings in - I'm sure.
As I'm getting used to it, I'm finding that it shares many of the virtues I love about Vim. I can manipulate the document without giving the tools much thought. It's automatic. It's like you don't give the car much thought when you drive. I can definitely understand why some people love WordStar. I also suspect those same people would love Vim. I see myself falling in love with WordStar.
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