Word processing like it's 1993
I thought younger people may find it interesting to experience what older, very popular, word processors were like.
Here's WordPerfect 6.0, emulated in the browser: https://archive.org/details/msdos_wordperfect6
Here's a link to the instruction manual: https://archive.org/details/wordperfectversi00word/mode/2up
Here's a bit of history: DOSDays - WordPerfect $495 in 1983 is roughly $1500 today.
Here's the recommended specs (not the minimum specs)
Personal computer using 386 processor
520k free conventional memory
DOS 6.0 or memory management software
Hard disk with 16M disk space for complete installation
VGA graphics adapter and monitor
F1 is the default help key.
Page 409 of the manual talks about menus. This is version 6 so they give you a drop down menu. To get an idea of how version 5 and earlier would appear by default (without the menubar, just the blue screen), hit alt v, then p. T (To get the menu back hit alt =, then V, then P) People might find it weird but those drop down menus first appeared in 5.1, and were a bit deal: "On 6th November 1989 WordPerfect released what would be their most successful version - WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, selling for $495 in the U.S. This was the first version to support Macintosh-style text-based pull down menus to supplement the traditional function key shortcuts and mouse support."
I'd be interested to know how easy people find it to use. At the time I had the keyboard overlay (example for WP5) and the muscle memory, but that's all gone now.
For further reference, a 386 originally clocked in around 20 or 25 MHz, at about 4 clocks per instruction.
I recall writing several papers on this (on a 486, blazing fast), as well as moving up through the word processors.
Like, for the most part....they were feature-complete circa 2000. There's been refinements and improvements since then...but as far as core functionality the biggest hindrance has been terrible proprietary file formats.
Agree that they’ve been feature complete since around 2000. I’d have no trouble writing in say Word 2000 or AppleWorks 5/6 from the same era.
What I find confusing is why there are so few modern word processors (or office suites) that reproduce that circa-2000 experience with a few rough edges smoothed. To me that seems like such a natural set of features to target, and with a static featureset, once feature completeness has been achieved, development efforts can instead go toward stability, bug fixes, responsiveness, etc. if you pop open LibreOffice, the experience isn’t all that much more lightweight than its corporate counterpart (no shade, it’s a great project, but it isn’t lean).
The first MS Word I used came with a writing grade level scoring display, what they call the readability level
https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/office/get-your-document-s-readability-and-level-statistics-85b4969e-e80a-4777-8dd3-f7fc3c8b3fd2
How do they figure syllables per word, using the same dictionary as the spell checker?
Probably at the time they used a heuristic algorithm, many of which are more than accurate enough for these purposes. The number of edge cases wouldn’tt have any significant effect on the score. Just a guess though.
I used WordPerfect for a good decade and only switched to Word in college because that was what they had in the lab. I griped about it for years until I acclimated and then it seemed like every version was MS fumbling around with obnoxious UI changes because Office had essentially been feature complete for several years.
I have two Word Perfect stories.
My family had Word Perfect on our first computer, and I remember """""writing""""" """""""""""""""poetry"""""""""""""""" in it, where I'd just spam on the keyboard a bunch and then get my parents to waste tons of ink and paper printing my creation (was probably about 5 or 6 years old at the time). I really enjoyed typing lots of random keypsam made up of many letters and then follow that with just holding down 1 key for a long time so that there was a dichotomy between order and chaos (although I'm not sure I would've put it into quite those words at that age).
Despite having a computer relatively early, my parents are NOT early adopters, and so later on in grade school, several years into the existence of Microsoft Word, they tried to have me compose in WordPerfect instead since that's what they were still using. My teacher wanted a large font size for headings and I got so mad that when you increased the number that represents the size in WP the size went down, I think it was "letters per inch" or some such. Eventually they found that MSWord was installed too, and so I got to switch, although I was still sad that it was different from what we used in school (some Apple thing).
That's so fun!!
I looked at the pictures in your keyboard overlay link and thought, What are those holes? Read the blurb and thought, oh wow they gave you PLASTIC cards with the software? You'd be lucky to get a printable pdf these days. Buy the plastic for extra money, each sold separately, plastic part not included
And also, looked at my (non mechanical) keyboard and thought, huh how would they even sit over these flat keys.
Keyboard keys at the time were really tall!!
"at the time"... and here I am writing on my IBM Model F heh
I googled it! Are you serious? :D is it an original (vintage, I guess) or a reproduction/reprint? How do you like it? Is it like a mechanical keyboard or...my apologies, do mechanical keyboards just means Ye Olde Keyboardes?
I hate the tiny flat keys on the laptop but I've been using those cheap Logitech ones for so long they're just normal now.
You are on the edge of a very deep rabbit hole, my friend.
Here are the basics.
Why have you done this to me? Looks like I'm about to dive into the abyss.
Have fun!
I read a good bit of that but pulled back out before being spaghetti-zed. I can't afford a whole new hobby at this particular point even if it looks extremely interesting.
You can have an affordable mech keyboard, but it is a superfluous and dangerous hobby.
I settled with this one, but I really wanted an ergonomic. I just can't justify the price since I am not a heavy computer user anymore. I use it for like half an hour tops per day.
I know right! I will delve back into this when I finally start with my raspberry pi thing. I feel like this would go well together
Yes I am serious lol. I actually own three Model F's, one of which is a reproduction of the rare F77. I'm using the F77 now as I prefer the form factor and the fact that it uses USB and not an archaic connector that requires a converter. Mechanical keyboards means it uses an actual mechanical switch, not that it's just old. There are tons of mechanical keyboards available that aren't quite so, well, "old". You've probably seen them at stores and didn't think much of them as it is usually gaming keyboards that end up on display.
For those wanting to see what 5.1 would be like wordperfect 8 for linux is derived from 5.1, very little in the interface is changed. Runs on modern linux thanks to a crew of misfits an luddites lead by a googler
https://github.com/taviso/wpunix
This is my legit daily driver
of course the retrocomputing vibe is somewhat spoiled by using an ultramodern voice input system to control it. But i'm something of a Retrofuturist 👿
Oh man, the days of big ass paper manuals.
I will always remember the substantial SimCity 3000 manual in particular. EBay listing for context
Anyone else have a favourite big manual?
Carmen Sandiego - where the DRM was answering what word was on a particular page.
Monkey Island included a "wheel o pirates" - a disc with a spinner where you combined upper/lower pirate faces to get the key to run the game. Physical DRM was both great when themed like that but also a PITA, and lord help you if you lost the doohickey.
Any Sid Meier game. I still have the 200 page Alpha Centauri manual and I think the one for Civilization II was at least as big, but I sadly don't have that anymore. Kids these days probably won't know the joy of reading game manuals in bed at night :)
I grew up with some DOS version of WordPerfect and wrote my first school essays in that on the family's 386. I liked how it forced me to think of the layout conceptually by the use of layout codes rather than the WYSIWYG way. Sort of like how we use Markdown to today.
I used this for years when I was a kid. Computers were so uncommon in my small town that my teacher got complaints from other parents who thought that using spell check was cheating. I had to submit a "rough draft" of my typed paper with the mistakes still in and circle them with pen, to prove I had found them myself or something.
Also there were so many keyboard commands in early word perfect, we had this strip of paper you taped to the top of your keyboard to help you remember what they all were.
I never switched from WordStar to WordPerfect — the keyboard shortcuts are still burned into my brain some 35 years later though.
Bank street writer was the first word processor I can remember using. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Street_Writer