Re: New WiFi adapter

On 6/5/25 7:15 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 2025-06-05 10:49, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 04/06/2025 23:58, c186282 wrote:

On 6/4/25 4:21 PM, rbowman wrote:

On Wed, 4 Jun 2025 20:47:08 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>

  04/06/2025 20:37, rbowman wrote:

On Wed, 4 Jun 2025 01:14:15 -0400, c186282 wrote:
>

     Remember all the great IBM-PC/BIOS routines ?
     Made it EASY to write full-screen editors. You had to have the
     "Technical Reference Manual" to know all that stuff, however I did
     have that ....

>
And everyone felt compelled to write an editor...

>
Fuck that. Wordstar had been available on CP/M for ages, and was better
than vi.
So when it turned up on DOS everyone grabbed a pirate copy. 'joe'
emulates it these days for Linux
>

>
Definitely. WordStar was bundled on the Osborne 1 CP/M I bought in '81 and
hat is what I used. When I moved to DOS I used Brief which was designed to
be a programming editor.
>
The 'write an editor' think could be traced to the programming books of
the day. They tended to use string handling in their examples and it
followed 'Oh, I can write an editor'.
>
I wrote cross-assemblers when they weren't available or expensive but I
was happy with available editors. I did not use vi. Vim (vi improved) is a
hell of an improvement but that was more than 10 years in the future.
>
vi in most Linux distros is a symlink to Vim so many who claim to use vi
aren't using the original Bill Joy version.

>
   Umm ... are we talking WordSTAR or WordPERFECT here ?
>

WordStar produced plain text files It was an editor.

 It had a method to indicate underline, bold, double size... I don't remember how. Hidden codes like ".XY"?
 But then it had trouble calculating the page size. I believe I had to force page jump earlier.
 

>
Word produced its own format -  it  was a primitive word processor
>
>

   I've used both - indeed even WS on a Kaypro CP/M box -
   but WordPerfect was much better. The old boss still
   used it for everything until he retired a few years
   ago. Fortunately LibreOffice could at least READ WP
   files (not sure if ever became able to write them).
>
>

Word Perfect was in many ways Perfect...Just enough features to be useful to write letters and short documents on with an easy interface.

 Indeed it was perfect. I could have complicated pages and it still got the page size correct.

   WS was "early". However it was GOOD for the times.
   Whatever it was, you could probably get it done.
   Note noisy dot-matrix printers were standard then.
   The OkiData's were especially noisy - but ROBUST.
   I think you can still buy those. Super-good for
   multi-page invoice forms.
   Ah ...
 https://www.amazon.com/Oki-Microline-Turbo-Matrix-Printer/dp/B00URXQ4CS/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.IRyH_adsgkhI601GWEqLxCmEFaYx1xK-dN2voW12sY5aofc9tg-lT8SRlEeRVB41Ggw0hsEbjSceyyeSjckPSooGsQmDD1rENTtyCDFfJQHoWEsP0o_gt8uxsMKEgJLSFQenQW1URQAkE2YypGsx2YOFd_zQZrFMhSXi205HiPTFP8OFXLa5vQsscz6rTOOobEoIRrIUxmJc-K1W-DgQn7VqKzf66odlsaoczGgXsYs.dBQx-NVsrUXuQYJ4hqCNS9qjK1Z_7_NqBATrDFItg28&dib_tag=se&keywords=okidata+printer&qid=1749185017&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1

Word suffered from 'creeping feauturism' and couldn't decide whether it was a desktop publishing suite or a thing to write letters and manuals with.
>
Well had to use it because everyone else sent is Word files, etc etc.

 That was in the late 90's. With Windows.

   Word started kind of OK ... but over the past ten
   years or so got progressively more STUPID and just
   ANNOYING.
   WordPerfect can still be bought, and it's GOOD.
   NOT anywhere near free however - and there's no
   REAL Linux/Unix version beyond a DOS text-based
   implementation (was STILL pretty good).
   During my tenure ... we went from ultra-basic
   text editors to WordStar to Final Word to
   WordPerfect. The new boyz ... all M$ online
   alas. Just WAITING for Xi to push the button ...
   But, you see, the disaster won't be THEIR fault ...