Long before Microsoft Word's talking paper clip started bending users out of shape, there was a feature-rich but trusty word processor: WordStar. According to telecommunications columnist John Dvorak, Rob Barnaby programmed the first version, released in 1979, in assembly language in four months, a feat that some at IBM later estimated was equal to 42 years of effort by a normal programmer. WordStar was the first word processor to compute page breaks on the fly. It introduced a new way of moving up, left, right or down in a document, by pressing control-E, S, D or X. Variants of this "WordStar diamond" (named for the arrangement of those keys) are still used in some programmers' text editors today. WordStar also offered handy letter-transposing key commands and a view of the document that looked much like the final printout.
By 1984, WordStar International was the country's largest software company, but WordStar2000, released in 1985, fared poorly against rival WordPerfect, and the company fell from its lead position. Still, WordStar laid the groundwork for today's WYSIWYG, or "what you see is what you get," systems. Perhaps its simplicity relative to today's word processors is a virtue rather than a defect: A present-day WordStar Users Group testifies that the influential early application is still in use.
December 22, 2000
