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Game of Thrones Author George R R Martin Writes with WordStar on DOS
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: "Ryan Reed reports that when most Game of Thrones fans imagine George R.R. Martin writing his epic fantasy novels, they probably picture the author working on a futuristic desktop (or possibly carving his words onto massive stones like the Ten Commandments). But the truth is that Martin works on an outdated DOS machine using '80s word processor WordStar 4.0, as he revealed during an interview on Conan. 'I actually like it,' says Martin. 'It does everything I want a word processing program to do, and it doesn't do anything else. I don't want any help. I hate some of these modern systems where you type a lower case letter and it becomes a capital letter. I don't want a capital. If I wanted a capital, I would have typed a capital. I know how to work the shift key.' 'I actually have two computers,' Martin continued. 'I have a computer I browse the Internet with and I get my email on, and I do my taxes on. And then I have my writing computer, which is a DOS machine, not connected to the Internet.'"
'It does everything I want a word processing program to do, and it doesn't do anything else. I don't want any help. I hate some of these modern systems where you type a lower case letter and it becomes a capital letter. I don't want a capital. If I wanted a capital, I would have typed a capital. I know how to work the shift key.'
Amen, brother, Amen!
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Why do people still pay money for software performing most basic tasks like Word 365? Nowadays, they have millions of alternatives.
I still remember WordPerfect 5.1 running on DOS, once you had all the shortcut keys memorized, was lightning fast and did just what it was supposed to. I get so pissed off clicking on the little blue lightning bolt every 5 seconds to undo something Microsoft thought it was helping me "fix."
What does "obsolete" mean? If his writing instrument does what he needs it to do and he's happy using it, then more power to him. Who's to tell him he can't use it, or an IBM Selectric, or even a quill pen and vellum? Nothing is obsolete if it still works for your needs.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
640k is enough if the processor loads in only part. I remember scrolling in documents of that age in DOS. It was painful. It'd have to read the parts of the document you tried to scroll to. There's no reason you need 640k of RAM to read a 2M file. You just can't have all of it in RAM at the same time. That's how it used to be. The idea of ramdriving every program by loading 100% of every program you are running and 100% of every file used by every one of those programs is silly, but it's the new norm. You don't read what you want, you read it all, even if you don't need it.
Shit like that is one of the many reasons someone might like the "old" way. It was faster/better. He's writing, not doing a global search and replace (which would be painful on something like that),
I have no idea of that's how wordstar did it, but I used some that did, I just don't remember which, as most didn't survive the transition to Windows, so they are gone. No need to indicate experience with Write when nobody has heard of it and will assume I made an error.
Learn to love Alaska
I hope he has 50 kaypros or whatever stored in nitrogen somewhere... that can't go on forever.
I don't see why not. DOS runs fine on modern machines. At some point he may have to switch to emulation, but IA32 emulators should be around for a very very long time.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
"WordStar is notably lacking in support for extended characters of any sort."
Like Slashdot 25 years later?
George Martin said it, but I feel like screaming this about a dozen times a day. Don't change my words, my punctuation, or my URL. Don't suggest sites I might want to visit, items I might find interesting, or settings more befitting someone my age. Don't give me the ability to change all things *trivial* (e.g. appearance) but nothing that matters. If you're going to help, help me fix real *problems* and not just appearances. ("Ohhh, Microsoft helped me fix my network problem!" - said No one, ever).
In short, BUZZ OFF (And get off my lawn).
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Compatibility: we want our documents to look same if we hand them to somebody else. It's not easy to match MS-Word's layout engine bug-for-bug in another product.
Table-ized A.I.
All you need to do is intercept a shipment of a VGA cable
RAGEMASTER: (see image above, right) A concealed $30 device that taps the video signal from a target's computer's VGA signal output so the NSA can see what is on a targeted desktop monitor. It is powered by a remote radar and responds by modulating the VGA red signal (which is also sent out most DVI ports) into the RF signal it re-radiates; this method of transmission is codenamed VAGRANT. RAGEMASTER is usually installed/concealed in the ferrite choke of the target cable
Catelyn is alive too. Well, let's say her body is moving. Whose in control we really don't know for sure.
Just because you have money doesn't mean you need to throw it away on someone who does little more than primary school level maths.
The math is the easy part. But understanding the tax code: now that's a bitch.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Some authors just keep using what they started with and refuse to progress over a sense of self-superiority. Nothing he is complaining about can't be disabled in Word. Plus he would have features that would greatly aid his writing. He's purposely creating risk unless he prints out his work on paper daily of losing what he wrote. He causes publishers headaches as they have to take his files convert them to something useable. He makes them millions so they allow his 'quirks' but he's probably one of a very very few authors with that kind of pull.