My Brother-in-Law is writing a book using Word Star. He wants to send me some excerpts from it, but there is no way for me to read it in Word Star format. I told him to cut and paste it to note pad or just email it to me in text format. He cannot do it. Is there some way for him to send it to me so that I can open his text in MS Word or another media? Can Word Star documents be saved in another format that is compatible with MS Word?
He should be able to save it as a Text File or a Rich Text File (better) directly from Word Star. That can then be read by any wordprocessor.
What Shagnasty said re formats. Also, if he’s tech clueless and Wordstar centric, both WordPerfect and Word have format conversion filter modules that can add a large number of additional text format conversion filters to the limited default set that both come with. I mainly use WordPerfect and I have (among many other filters, 11 different Wordstar conversion filters just for different iterations of WordStar.
Too add this you need to get the Word/Wordperfect install CD and go into setup and use the “add addtional features” (however termed). There should be an option for adding conversion filters somewhere in the submenus.
Alternatively, he should be able to just copy and paste the relevant text into an email message as ascii text.
I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone using Word Star since about 1983. Is it still sold in Colombia, or is your Brother-in-Law just using it because he likes it better than Word/WordPerfect?
There are free converter programs floating around on the net that will convert wordstar to other formats. I know a couple of years ago I used one that converted them to rtf. I believe it was called ws2rtf or something like that.
I have to echo Fat Bald Guy that I haven’t heard of anyone actually using WordStar for decades. But then I ran a search, and found that there’s even a version of WordStar for windows as late as 1995, and then it lived on in various incarnations under the panoply of Corel, and such unlikely locations as Mattel (yes, the Barbie company) and Gores Technology (the makers of Gore-Tex).
(Here’s an interresting history.)
Anyway, what I was about to say was that in WordStar you cut and paste using the infamous [CTRL]-[K]-** to mark the start of a block [CTRL]-[K]-[K] at the end to cut, and then [CTRL]-[K]-[V] to paste in a new location. These conventions lived on for quite a while in other editors, such as the TurboC IDE etc.
Well, now, that same site with the timeline also has a page on how to convert from Wordstar to Word, (although apparently Word 2003 will not converst WordStar files at all).
I opened this thread just to make sure I read the title right.
WordStar…? Christ, that brings back memories.
Is it the classic Wordstar 3.3 or earlier or the “modernized” version 4 that Kaypro sold for a while in the late eighties? I don’t know about the windows version but the file format of the DOS versions was pretty simple, mostly ASCII with control and dot codes for formatting and an +128 bit on the last character of every wrapped line IIRC. There is something to be said for a word processor that doesn’t even require cursor or function keys. I still use vi on my PCs for the same reason.
Wow, that someone is still using that old thing warms the cockles of this old WordStar hand’s heart.
My Brother-in-Law lives in California a long way from me. He is an old die hard Wordstar user. I don’t understand why he cannot cut and paste to an .rtf or .txt format. That is all I need to see what he has written. He has MS Word XP on his computer, but doesn’t use it. Seems like it is easier to use than that old Wordstar 5.5. Anyway, I will pass on to him all the relevant ideas that all of you have given and maybe he will work it out. Many thanks to all of you for your ideas.
I found the ultimate solution. I re-installed my Word Perfect 8 and configured it to convert Wordstar 5.5 files. I haven’t done a conversion yet, but I am sure that it will work. Now, I just need to wait until he sends me a copy of his book. Again, thanks to all of you for your input.