12 Dec
2014
12 Dec
'14
11:34 a.m.
Obviously you just need to go whole-hog and implement TeX and let the user
just write with vi or emacs :D
--Joseph Lenox
On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 12:20 PM, B Degnan <billdeg at buzz1.com> wrote:
Hello group
I'm toying with the idea of writing a simple
word processing package
along
the lines of Wordstar for my Retrochallenge 2015/01 entry.
<snip> > So a little more than a text-editor but only enough to support
simple
formatting and styles (bold, italic, underline for example).
Ideally I'd like to implement a clean, logical design without many
'bells
and whistles' concentrating on the core functionality.
Mark,
As a programmer I used to use QEDIT most of the time because it made it
easy to edit by column as well as row, mark/move text, easy keystroke
commands. The copy I have is saved as q.exe. It was better than notepad
and I continued to use it well past it's era. Still hard to edit by column
when your parsing text without being forced to use a spreadsheet program.
Sounds like you're talking more of a word processor though. So, I'd put in
my vote for something like IBM Personal Editor (PEDIT) which gave a person
a lot of functionality with little RAM overhead. I never really liked
WordStar or Word Perfect myself, but I used what I had available.
As far as formatting to the printer goes, I suggest you include the
capacity to enter printer codes manually so that you can use most any type
of printer that accepts them. I remember inserting codes into programs
that were used for a specific printer that way. If you have the manual and
given you're talking simple print capabilities you would not need to supply
drivers.
Bill