Re: Copy/Paste

Den 04/08/11 17.51, John Jones skrev:

Probably right. I used WordStar back then and now, closing in on 30 years
later, it could still do something that modern word processors can't:
Select/copy/paste a rectangle of text. A feature I found strangely
convenient back then.

I read once that WordStar was really great for a writer. The reason was that the "mark start of block" and "mark end of block" commands could be issued in any order before the actual copy/move/cut command instead of the "move cursor to start of block, mark all the way to end of block, do command while text is marked".

Having written quite a bit in WordStar in its day, I believe it.

WordStar needed no arrow keys, though they were supported. IIRC you used
Control-I/J/K/M for up/left/right/down. Any keyboard would do; the only
non-QWERTY key it needed was Control. You didn't even need Enter/Return
since Control-M would work.

No, WordStar used the Ctrl-diamond. Ctrl-E up, Ctrl-X down, Ctrl-D right, Ctrl-S left (if I recall correctly). The surrounding characters did logical things extended from that diamond. Was very useful under CP/M-80. With a suitable display driver it was very fast too.