From my memory: ^Y delete line / ^KB & ^KK block begin & end / ^KC & ^KY block copy & delete / "c^PH," for the "ç" character / etc.
I started using these keys on WordStar 3.3 and TurboPascal 3. I probably haven't used these keys for decades, but it's funny how they're engraved in my brain.
I have been stubbornly avoiding 'vi' and have been using 'joe' as my main *nix editor for the past 30 years. Because I cut my computing teeth on Wordstar and Turbo Pascal, and those key sequences are hardwired in my brain.
Wordstar was the dominant word processor because it was designed from the ground up to be as portable as possible, which made it available on a wide variety of 80s home computers, particularly those running CP/M.
Eventually that portability came to hurt it, because eventually everyone was running DOS, and Wordstar couldn't take advantage of DOS's unique environment, and so WordPerfect came along and ate its lunch.
> couldn't take advantage of DOS's unique environment
In what sense? I came from a CP/M environment, and Wordstar transferred just fine to DOS.
Funnily enough, I tried Word Perfect and Word for DOS at about the same time. Word's way of doing things just made sense to me, while Word Perfect was always 'that weird word processor'. At the time, I was in the minority, but I guess I've been vindicated by history.
"DOS WordStar was not explicitly designed for IBM PCs, but rather for any x86 machine (as there were a number of non-IBM-compatible PCs that used 8086 or 80186 CPUs). As such, it used only DOS's API calls and avoided any BIOS usage or direct hardware access. This carried with it an unfortunate performance penalty as everything had to be "double" processed (meaning that the DOS API functions would handle screen or keyboard I/O first and then pass them to the BIOS)."
"The first DOS version of WordStar, demoed by Jim Fox and executed by a team of Irish programmers in April 1982, was a port of the CP/M-86 version of WordStar, which in turn had been ported from the CP/M-80 version in September 1981. This had been started by Diane Hajicek and was completed by an Irish team of programmers under ISIS-II, probably using Intel's source-to-source translator CONV86. Thus the main program executable was a .COM file which could only access 64 kB of memory. Users quickly learned they could make WordStar run dramatically faster by installing a RAM disk board, and copying the WordStar program files into it. WordStar would still access the "disk" repeatedly, but the far faster access of the RAM drive compared to a floppy disk yielded a substantial speed improvement. However, edited versions of a document were "saved" only to this RAM disk, and had to be copied to physical media before rebooting."
"At that time, the evolution from CP/M to MS-DOS, with an "Alt" key, had taken place. WordStar had until then never successfully exploited the MS-DOS keyboard, and that is one explanation for its demise."
i like how macos does it with separating the ctrl key from most actions with command key. so we can use ctrl in gnu readline style freely on all text areas natively.
for example to find in document, you press cmd-f and you can use ctrl-f to move cursor forward in text (or ctrl-option-f to jump to the next word etc.)
> Wordstar cursor control keys are the answer. They let you move your cursor all around your file using intuitive motion keys that are activated simply by holding down capslock while you press them.
They aren't a good answer, we can do better
Capslock is a bad prefix, it's a lateral pinky key, why not use a thumb key like right alt?
> ^Q acts as a prefix,
That's another pinky bad one
> ^E/^X moves up/down
But JK exist and are on the home row! Or use inverted T, that's still be better as for 3 cursor keys out of 4 you wouldn't need to shift fingers
> ^KY yank (i.e. cut) block
Parenthesesized explanation suggests little benefit from this unclear naming mnemonic, so better to either use the more widespread X to rely on muscle memory or a better located key vs a diagonal one (which X also accidentaly is)
Colemak folks have been using similar things and beyond for years. They are so sophisticated in the endless search for the perfect layout, it’s sad to see people unaware of existing solutions.
* Is Extend "just another layer"?
Extend, at its core, is a way of bringing navigation/editing to the home position. To do that really well you have to be able to chord modifiers and nav/edit keys easily from the home position. If you can do that with a layer, I'll consider it an Extend-type layer. Many laptop Fn layers, for instance, have only nav/edit and not accessible modifiers so they fail to meet my definition.
I also have multimedia, system and mousing keys in my basic Extend layer. There may be other layers too, such as a NumPad layer and string/symbol/command layers.
An Extend key is a layer modifier that lets you select these layers. You may have both Hold-Extend where you hold the Ext key like a Shift key, and Tap-Extend where you tap it like a dead key. Tap-Extend is best for one-shot stuff like strings/symbols, whereas Hold-Extend is brilliant for nav/edit and NumPad layers.
…
* ... Why?
> Living without Extend at this point would seem like some kind of perverse hell imposed as punishment for terrible crimes committed in numerous past lives.
~ SteveP, creator of the Colemak-DH mod
…
The Joe editor has a jstar binary/setup to run it with Wordstar key set.
Jmacs from Joe it's a must too if you are used to Emacs keybindings but you don't want the slight slowness of Emacs, even with "emacs -nw -q". Or basically you can't sand the Vi keyset.
Wow - wordstar makes a mention on HN. During the college days mid 90s some of the admins in our lab used Wordstar. For us kids it was Framemaker or Word. We couldn't convince the admins to move to a Windows 3.1 based hot modern UI :-)
In theory you might be able to remap things in software using ex. keyd, though I haven't played with it enough to comment with confidence. Though I do agree that programmable keyboard firmware would be better.
As a Vim user, I use hjkl as left/down/up/right. HL is beginning of line/end of line. ^H moves the cursor to a buffer to the left, ^L moves the cursor to a buffer to the right.
I guess when vi and emacs mode are just too mainstream, you have no choice but to try reviving some other keyboard navigation scheme as a niche and convince other people to use it.
I believe that "^" in this context signifies Caps Lock as its own modifier, distinct from Control. If you've already remapped Caps Lock to Control (or Esc if that's your thing), this scheme won't work without some modification.
Would be nice if you could send universal text editing commands like "go to line" to any app instead of trying to guess which keybinding it has mapped to it
You can do hjkl -> arrows, and some other stuff. But it's extremely arcane.
You can see it here[1], it works together with us-internationl layout which I happen to use, and it has some other stuff crammed in too (ctrl+j/k -> ctrl+pageup/pagedown, and some specific symbols).
I started using these keys on WordStar 3.3 and TurboPascal 3. I probably haven't used these keys for decades, but it's funny how they're engraved in my brain.