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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 But the truth is that Martin works on an outdated DOS machine using '80s word processor WordStar 4.0, as he revealed during an interview on Conan.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
In one of his books, he also gives credit to the guy that keeps that outdated system running.
Why do people still pay money for software performing most basic tasks like Word 365? Nowadays, they have millions of alternatives.
..it takes him 5 years to write a novel. Now we know why.
You can't fit even the shortest of his books into 640K of RAM. AGoT clocks in at 298k words, which is going to take up considerably more than 640k.
I suspect he's probably got each chapter in a separate file. And if I remember correctly the CP/M version of Wordstar had an overlay feature that was a kind of primitive virtual memory. So yeah, I believe it's possible, and there's a lot to be said for Just A Plain Glorified Typewriter. (I got to review the draft of a book by one of the Mac's original designers; it was done in double-spaced Courier with crude hand-drawn illustrations. The formatting was to be done by those who did formatting.)
I'm increasingly using Google Docs for my work because I like the fact that it doesn't allow, and thus doesn't require, much formatting. Less time fiddling is more time working.
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."
'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.
And for the ultimate in security, he also uses 8" floppies.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
. . . but curiosity got the better of those eager NSA employee fans, who have bugged the computer to know what will happen before the rest of the world . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
For creative writing I use focuswriter, for the simple reason I can focus(!) better on the creative proces. All you see is your text. It's awesome. I can't do without internet, but I'm sure if I had the balls to disconnect my laptop I would become a whole lot more productive.
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?"
If it's working for him, then this makes sense.
What a non-story!
P.S. I assume that no words or names in his fantasy world have any accents or any characters not in the basic ASCII set. DOS WordStar is notably lacking in support for extended characters of any sort. (In fact DOS WordStar uses the high bits of characters for its own purposes, so it cannot ever work with anything beyond 7-bit ASCII.)
http://justsolve.archiveteam.org/wiki/WordStar
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
"It looks like you're trying to write a newsletter about incestuous elves. Would you like assistance?"
Every time someone complains about how long he takes to write a book he kills another Stark!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
You're right, software doesn't age, but attackers will eventually find security holes in that software. You can continue to run Windows XP if you wish, but don't expect that software to get patched or have any other support. Do you think Mr. Martin could possible get support for WordStar?
Douglas Adams typed on an Apple IIe. Many authors bring typewriters or other dummy typing devices with them somewhere so they can remove external influences and distractions during their writing time
When asked for advice on "how to become a writer" - most professional writers will come back with some form of "write something, then write something else, then write some more." A big part of the writing process is figuring out when, where, and how you are able to write. i.e. The tools you use to write shouldn't get in the way of your writing (the second most popular tip is "when you aren't writing - read")
if Mark Zuckerberg were to come out and say that he is using a Commodore 64 or TRS-80 to work on Facebook - that would be unusual...
Mr. Martin's writing process has the benefit of being almost 100% secure (maybe Quentin Tarantino needs a downgrade)
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
Although one can turn off Microsoft Word's annoying "auto-guess" and "smart replace" features, I've found you have to do it in two different places, do it to each replacement character or sequence, and finding those two places is not intuitive.
Ideally, Microsoft would make a single button for "turn off ALL auto-guess and auto-replacement features". But that's not the Microsoft way: they want you to become dependent on auto-guess such that you'll miss it on competitor products and come running back to Mother Microsoft.
Their stupid "smart quotes" with the forward and backward lean are probably the biggest pet-peeve auto-shit feature of MS. If you paste such text into different products, it often renders them all wrong. MS's solution: "Only use MS products with MS text and everything will be just fine".
MS's behavior often demonstrates the stupid side of capitalism: naive customer manipulation, standards-rigging, monopolies, long-term dependency, bait-and-switch, FUD PR, etc. (I'm not saying there are no upsides to capitalism, but MS sure does a bang-up job of reminding one about the down-sides; if they bother to look around.)
Table-ized A.I.
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.
When Smaug came to the Lonely Mountain, he Terminated and stayed resident.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
You don't stay rich by doing you own taxes, either.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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
This is because, as a developer, you're a user who understands and knows what you want. Microsoft is writing software for the kind of people who'd type google into the google search bar to get to google.
You know, typing a domain name into search is not a terrible thing to do. It is a valid strategy to avoid domain name typos that may land you on a malware site.
I was just thinking this would be something a Raspberry Pi would be perfect for.
In fact, if Wordperfect was still around in a reasonable condition, they could just sell the complete package in a box (just add keyboard and monitor). Or they could just sell the SD card.
So mainframes are resurrected via the cloud and now dedicated word processors will be resurrected via pis. The 1970s are returning. :-)
The publishers I've dealt with won't accept a written manuscript. You must submit it electronically.
The rules are different for you and I and GRRM. If he showed up at a publisher with a 1,000 trailer trucks filled with clay tablets for book 6 they would sign a deal and cut him a check.
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.
We've been developing text editors since we invented computers. I "only" have about 25 professional years of experience with them, but everything since wordperfect 4.2 or so hasn't helped us one bit to be more productive or less error prone in our writing. Sure, having a spell checker is nice, but the red squiggly lines under the text I'm editing there are all under words that *I* know are correct but the program doesn't. Current editors often do things to text I don't want. How I can undo that or turn off is often a mystery. With WP you had the option to look at the raw text with the markup in it so you could at least hack out the offending markup. Try opening a modern editor and finding a way to just hack around in the markup; none of them have it. I hate having to spend over ten minutes just trying to find out how to turn off some feature that some dude put in because he felt it would be helpful to me. *I* am the one typing and it's *my* document. Stop it, it's not helping my productivity, even if it's not guessing wrong any significant way. Did professional text editors get more productive the last 20 years? I don't think so, yet software makers have been adding features and whatnot to editors the last 20 years. Evidently, it's totally useless to do so, except for software companies. Editors haven't gotten any better, text producers haven't gotten more productive so essentially, it's a waste of time and effort for anyone but the persons making and selling the software.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I would be hesitant about classifying him as a 'grumpy old man.' As the interview pointed out, he does use more modern software for non-writing tasks. He simply chooses to use an older computer for his writing because it does what he needs and it doesn't interfere with his work.
The thing with new computers, as with any other technology, is that they have benefits and drawbacks. Writers commonly cite distractions as a problem. These include everything from the urge to edit or format their writing to early, to temptations like the Internet. (Heck, some readers prefer printed books and dedicated ereaders to avoid distractions.) In other cases, writers don't want to mess with their workflow once they have figured out something that works. None of this involves being a grumpy old man, anti-technology, or whatever else you choose to label it as.
The other thing is that we're talking about production machines here. Many people avoid upgrading production machines because there is a lot of overhead to deal with. For example, turning off all of those features is something that you may have to perform with each software upgrade and it is almost certainly something that you have to perform with each hardware upgrade. If you are in the middle of a project, or picking up on an old project, data must be transferred between machines (in the case of hardware upgrades) and there may be issues with the portability of your files between different versions of the software (in the case of software upgrades). While the latter probably isn't an issue for a novelist upgrading between versions of their word processor, it is certainly true for an author who is switching word processors (which Martin would have had to do at some point if he wanted to stay current) and it is true for people who create more complex documents.
Now if Martin was griping about his publisher being unable to handle WordStar documents while expressing a fear of modern computers, you may have a point. The thing is, he isn't. Something tells me that the people who are translating his writing into a book aren't complaining about this quirk either -- if for no other reason than Martin's success.
the Lannisters, the Starks, the Targaryens, the Tyrells, the Greyjoys all plain English names
It is a common fantasy translation convention for the viewpoint character's culture to have plain English names. For example, the other well-known RR fantasy author based halflings' names on English naming patterns: Proudfoot, Baggins, Gamgee (from Gammidge, from earlier Gamwich), Brandybuck, etc. (No, Elijah Wood isn't related to Zak Bagans.)
honestly it's a refreshing break from the high fantasy [Unicode fail]
Tolkien's elves spoke a language analogus to Romance, and Romance languages have diacritics.
Ironically one thing I like about Open/Libre office is that it behaves *very* similarly to Office of about 6-7 years ago in terms of UI which I think was a pretty damn optimal UI.
Well other than the lack of outline mode. Which , annoyingly apple's Pages dropped recently too.
And which I have *no idea* how to find on the new fangled ribbon interface thing in modern Office either :(
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
> It's not easy to match MS-Word's layout engine bug-for-bug in another product.
I saw proof of that a few weeks ago. My mother's new computer, with a.new version of Word, couldn't open her existing Word files. I had to open them in LibreOffice and save them using the newest version of the newest Word format using LibreOffice. Then Word could open them.
So yes, in my experience LibreOffice is more compatible with Word than Word is.
Actually I think people overestimate how often "Office" is used in office settings. A lot of whats used tends to be specialty and/or niche apps specific to a certain task. We have around 550 computer users in our organization. Maybe 15% of them use Word and/or Excel. The rest have a specific application (or set of apps) that pertains to their job function. Since we've already switched to Gmail for email we're considering just having the majority of the users utilize Google Docs for the occasional time they need to use an office app, and reserving the full copies of Office only for people who heavily use it.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
One can tell you have probably never written anything longer than a snarky comment comprising of a handfull of sentences on /.
If by this you infer that Martin is a 'Grumpy old man' then you have to be, at least mentally and intellectually, a 'Hasty immature child'.
Wordperfect on DOS was close to perfect for writing. WordStar was not far behind and, in fact, provided the virtually standard program editor keystrokes on microcomputers for many years. You could write as the muse took you, never needing to faff around with a mouse, or wave your hands against an increasingly greasy touch screen. The modern GUI type interfaces may work well for 'bears of very little brain' but real writers much prefer to get ideas from their heads into the computer with as little interruption and distraction as possible.
Why not go research a little more, before being disrespectful to someone who has likely been far more productive and successful than yourself, and subsequently shooting your mouth off.
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.
The epitome of word processing was achieved in 1985 with WriteNow. It did WYSIWG formatting, pagination, merge, had a dictionary and a thesaurus in something less than 400 kB. Nothing of substance has been added since.
but here's the thing:
I've not heard anyone describe functionality added to MS Office since Office 2000. Excel has it's uses, but what have they done to it since, except forced people to learn new places for buttons?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Not that I am in love with Microsoft, but Excel has added quite a few "minor" functions since 2000 that dramatically increase usability.
For example, Excel 2007 introduced filtering and sorting by colors. And formats. Coupled with the existing conditional formatting, it significantly improved the ability of the software to sort based on any criteria, without using extra columns.
Going back a bit further, a key feature introduced in Excel 2003 was the ability to import xml datasets, and to set up templates quite easily which automatically imported data from xml files into preset columns. This can be done using macros, sure, but it's a lot easier to use the built in functionality.
I think people overestimate how well their own office situation extrapolates to the entire world.