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- VDE -- WORDSTAR 3.3 THE WAY IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN
-
- A Review
- by
- Dennis Fowler (DFOWLER2)
-
- Relax. This is NOT going to be a diatribe against WordStar. I
- am now, and always have been, a big fan of WordStar -- even sluggish
- old WordStar 3.3 on a two floppy 2.5 mHz CP/M Kaypro.
-
- I acquired my first computer, a Kaypro II, back in 1983. One of
- the reasons we chose the Kaypro was the software that came bundled
- with it. It made moving from an IBM Correcting Selectric into the
- "modern age" a lot easier. No big decision on what to get, because it
- was all there.
-
- I suppose there might be some people out there who don't know, or
- have forgotten what that old Kaypro came with. There was a package of
- "Perfect" software -- Perfect Writer, Perfect Filer and Perfect Calc
- -- none of which were -- perfect, that is. There was Profit Plan --
- even less perfect. And then there was WordStar (also not perfect),
- along with The Word+, probably the best spelling checker ever made for
- CP/M machines.
-
- Naturally, for me as a writer, there was a decision to be made
- between Perfect Writer and WordStar. Being accustomed to a nice neat
- pile of paper developing beside the typewriter, I went with WordStar
- because it showed page breaks and counted my pages for me -- a way to
- gauge the pace of the hack literature I was turning out at that time.
-
- WordStar was so far beyond what I was used to I thought I had
- died and gone to heaven. No longer would I have to stand over my wife
- with the whip, driving her on to finish the final typing on my latest
- epic. The fact that she felt she had been struck by technological
- unemployment I will not go into here. I will assure you, I didn't
- fire her, and we both retained our fringe benefits.
-
- Anyway, it wasn't until I discovered VDE, back in, I think, about
- 1987, that I really understood what heaven could be. If there's a
- medal for neat programming, I hereby nominate Eric Meyer for it. He
- took WordStar and turned it into the program it should have been.
-
- Oh, sure, okay, I admit it. VDE lacks some of the bells and
- whistles of WordStar 3.3. But believe me, what it lacks WordStar
- could probably have done without. I seriously believe that people
- have dozed off at the keyboard waiting for WordStar to load an
- overlay. Just deleting a line of text created more disk activity than
- the latest release by The New Kids on the Block. (Had to throw them
- in, just so you know I'm not mired in the paleolithic).
-
- VDE, now up to version 2.66, and probably holding there forever,
- is WordStar in racing trim. It's the greatest invention since canned
- orange juice, and bears some similarities to it. It has been
- condensed to the supreme essence of an editor. It is the perfect
- illustration of how the discipline imposed by a 64K limit on RAM and a
- 190 or 390 K floppy can result in elegant programming.
-
- VDE occupies all of about 14K of program code. It is so compact
- I think Eric must have tucked some of it into another dimension. I
- don't see how he could get it to do all it does in that space.
-
- In case you haven't caught on by now, VDE is an almost fully
- WordStar compatible editor. It obeys all of WordStar's really
- important commands for cursor movement, deleting, moving, searching,
- replacing, etc. The files it produces are readable by WordStar,
- printable by WordStar. A WordStar user can dive into VDE and frolic
- with unabashed comfort. The only adjustment that may have to be made
- is to substitute ESC for ^K in the classic ^KQ, ^KS, ^KD, ^KX, etc.,
- commands. That will depend on the machine you're using.
-
- In WordStar mode (more about the other modes in a minute) you can
- underline, boldface, double strike, etc., etc. You can double space
- either as you edit (sorry, can't go beyond double spacing, but I never
- have figured out what I'd do with a line spacing of 9 anyway) or edit
- single space and then print double space. It'll print running
- headers, footers, page numbers. It's got block move, copy and delete.
- It's got tabs, and margins, and word-wrap and all that good stuff. It
- has global search and search and replace, case sensitive or not, as
- you wish.
-
- So what? you say. My WordStar does all that, you say. Well,
- I'll tell you what. VDE does all this while it's got its entire
- little 14 K body tucked into RAM, along with the file it is working
- on, a file up to about 45K, along with your operating system, of
- course. And I know that adds up to more than 64K. VDE puts 8 pounds
- of mud in a five pound sack, but don't ask me how. Anyway, 45K,
- that's, oh, I don't know, 40 double spaced pages or so, I guess.
-
- Not long enough for you, you say? Hey, if you're editing a file
- any longer than that with WordStar, you must be a glutton for
- punishment. Once you get beyond about 14 double spaced pages in
- WordStar you've reached the slog point where every page or two it's
- going to swap to disk, and make you wait while it does. And if
- something goes wrong and you loose that much work in one large chunk,
- I hope someone has locked all sharp objects away from you.
-
- I'll tell you what, though. Small file or big, VDE is faster
- than a speeding bullet. The first time I loaded a long file and then
- used ^QC to jump to the end of it I got whiplash. I was going to get
- up for a cup of tea (my usual WordStar routine) but didn't have a
- chance to leave the keyboard.
-
- "Holy Hotrods, Batman," I said to myself. "Let's see that
- again!" So I did a ^QR back to the top, but I missed seeing it because
- I blinked. This on my stock, 2.5mHz Kaypro II. The light barrier had
- been broken. A ^Y deleted a line in a wink, with the disk drive
- remaining blissfully at rest.
-
- Wowsers! After years of traveling under impulse power I'd jumped
- to warp 10.
-
- Now, as if that weren't enough, VDE offers a nifty little bunch
- of enhancements not available in CP/M's WordStar 3.3. It has, for
- example, fully programmable Macro keys. Working on an animal rights
- protest letter against the Gribbet and Gribbet Frog Leg Packing Co.
- of Old Muckbottom, Georgia, and tired of typing out that phrase? No
- problem! Create a macro, so a simple ESC number key combo does the
- sweaty work for you.
-
- If you're into the masochistic trade of television script
- writing, you can even acquire a preset file of macro keys to handle
- all the different formats demanded. Punch two keys and you'll
- instantly reset your tabs and margins for dialogue or action.
-
- I have found only one quirky incompatibility between VDE and
- WordStar, and that is the way VDE handles soft and hard carriage
- returns. I don't know what WordStar uses for a soft carriage return,
- but VDE reads a <space><carriage return> combination as a soft
- carriage return, while a <CR> preceded by anything else is a hard one.
- So, if you reformat a double-spaced VDE document with WordStar using
- ^B you can get some strange results between paragraphs.
-
- You say you've got a problem with WordStar files and all those
- quaint high bits? No problem. You can use VDE to create a no frills
- ASCII file. It's ideal for those times you want to swap sweet
- missives with a buddy who's (shudder) got Word Perfect. Don't worry,
- you get word wrap with VDE's ASCII mode, so you don't have to scroll
- sideways to read your immortal words.
-
- But! If you want Really Pure ASCII with no word-wrap, then use
- the non-document setting. That's ASCII without the right margin.
- Perfect for programmers.
-
- You say you're always bouncing around between .TXT files and .DAT
- files and .ASM files, and you want WordStar for the first, and ASCII
- for the second and non-document for the third? How to choose between
- 'em?
-
- No problem. Set VDE up so it automatically defaults to the mode
- you want, depending on the filename extension.
-
- But...what about help screens?
-
- It's got 'em. Nice ones.
-
- Uh... what about printer support?
-
- VDE comes with a neat-oh installation program that allows you to
- set up for your printer. It comes with some to choose from, or, if
- you can find the right codes in your printer manual you can roll your
- own printer definition file. The installation program also lets you
- set your default file types, tabs, line spacing, and a bunch of other
- options.
-
- And just how much would you expect to pay for this wondrous
- package? Five hundred dollars you say? Six?
-
- Well, have I got a deal for you! You can have this marvelous
- package of programs (there's VDO for Osborne users, and the
- installation program to customize VDE for your terminal, printer, and
- tastes, and some sample macro key definitions) for -- no, not $119.95.
- Not $19.95.
-
- You can have it for nothing but GEnie on-line time. It's free,
- on GEnie, in the CP/M library. Just do a search for VDE and find
- VDE266.LBR.
-
- And, if you want you can add SPELLM.ARK and you've got a spelling
- checker, too. All for the cost of a phone call to GEnie. It'd be
- cheap at ten times the price, believe me.
-
- Oh, one other thing for any MS-DOS users reading this -- what are
- you doing here?! No, no, just kidding. VDE is also available in your
- world. It's up to version 1.5 now (VDE150.LZH). It has all that the
- CP/M version does and then some. It has windows so you can work two
- files at once, and supports 43 line EGA display and colors, and ...
- well, you get the idea, in 16K of code. All at the same, low price.
-
- Thank you, Eric Meyer.
-