Talk:WordStar/Archives/2015

WordStar wasn't the first word processor with WYSIWYG

I question the following statement in the article: From Section 1.2 Early Success: "WordStar was the first microcomputer word processor to offer mail merge and WYSIWYG."

But WYSIWYG#History says: "Bravo, a document preparation program for the Alto produced at Xerox PARC by Butler Lampson, Charles Simonyi and colleagues in 1974, is generally considered the first program to incorporate WYSIWYG technology, displaying text with formatting (e.g. with justification, fonts, and proportional spacing of characters). "

From the Features section, it looks like Wordstar didn't get WYSIWYG until WordStar 5: "WordStar 5 introduced a document-mode "print preview" feature, allowing the user to inspect a WYSIWYG version of text, complete with inserted graphics, as it would appear on the printed page." Frappyjohn (talk) 02:13, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Bravo only ran on the Xerox Alto, which was never sold commercially, so software written for it cannot be said to offer or have introduced anything.

Re: Keyboard shortcuts

I'm not a citation, but I am a witness. At the product launch for Wordstar 2000 at Comdex in Las Vegas, a company representative lamented that customers could not see past the Wordstar brand to see that Wordstar 2000 was an entirely new product with a new interface. She demonstrated the Ctrl-B, Ctrl-U, and Ctrl-I commands, which were not standard at the time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Toweyb (talk • contribs) 18:44, 24 October 2015 (UTC)