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from the they-never-make-them-like-they-used-to dept.
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 But the truth is that Martin works on an outdated DOS machine using '80s word processor WordStar 4.0, as he revealed during an interview on Conan.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.'
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Sir Garlon on Thursday May 15 2014, @02:29PM
That was my first thought: crazy like a fox.
My second thought was, OMG, I hope he knows how to back up the data on that decrepit old beast because the next power surge could let all the magic smoke [wikipedia.org] out of it. Though really, data backups are perhaps only part of the concern here: good luck finding a replacement machine and installing Word Star 4.0 on it. (No doubt you or I could do it: I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader. The question is whether George R.R. Martin could do it, or find someone who could help him and not bug the new machine.)
And my third thought is, this is a great example of sensible user behavior that most techies can't relate to. He found something that works, long ago, and has bent over backward to stay with it. He has specialist needs that are not well served by mass-market features like Auto"Correct". Rather than work hard to turn off all the "conveniences" of modern software, he just sticks with the old stuff, from back when a developer could say with a straight face that he expects the user to know when and when not to use capital letters. (Sir Garlon waxes nostalgic for the time before the Internet when "regular people" were afraid of computers.)
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by metamonkey on Thursday May 15 2014, @02:41PM
Particularly in Martin's case, autocorrect would be terrible. He'd be constantly having to either add words to the dictionary or undo "helpful" corrections, as I don't think there's a Dothraki dictionary for Word.
I, too, miss the days of yore, getting on the IBM clones at my high school and remapping the keyboard via the ANSI files. My favorite was changing the backspace key to now print "DELETION DENIED!" whenever it was pressed.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 4, Funny) by buswolley on Thursday May 15 2014, @04:46PM
How about this. Without Internet, one can get a lot of work done.
subicular junctures
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday May 15 2014, @06:55PM
True, but any word processor that doesn't let you fine tune or even shut autocorrect off is a poor word processor indeed.
I had some trouble with autocorrect myself a few weeks ago; Oo got weird and started putting strange, wrong quotation marks instead of the expected smart quotes. I finally had to start a new document, write a paragraph, and copy the original document to its beginning. That stretch of the book still does that if I make any changes there. I never saw any of the old DOS word processors do that (and we had quite a few different ones at work).
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 15 2014, @03:20PM
good luck finding a replacement machine and installing Word Star 4.0 on it.
You don't need to do any of that. Just get a copy of WS4.0 (you can probably download it somewhere, if you don't already have a copy from your old machine), and load it up on a DOS emulator like DOSbox. It'd be pretty trivial to do, especially in Linux. Then you could use a modern machine with the old word processor, and do proper backups too.
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Thursday May 15 2014, @06:18PM
At least up until UEFI came around, it was pretty easy to just install DOS on the bare metal on a "new" machine.
I haven't looked at it much since then (haven't had a need).
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 15 2014, @07:15PM
Yes, but why on earth would you want to install DOS natively? You have to set up a separate partition, then you can't do anything else while you're in DOS, since it's a single-tasking environment. What a PITA. Plus running DOS on a modern 24" widescreen monitor would be painful with the fonts all stretched-out.
If you use DOSBOX, you don't have this problem. DOS runs in a little window, and you can still do all your other stuff in the background, like checking email, looking up things on the internet, etc.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Thursday May 15 2014, @07:58PM
What's this partition thing you're talking about?
You just run DOS off the floppy in A:, and run Wordstar from B:.
If WordStar 4.0 is fancy enough to require two disk drives, no problem, you can just pop out the DOS disk once you get the command prompt.
(Yep, that was my parents' first PC - 720k & no harddisk. Never found out if those 80ks extra were usable.)
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Friday May 16 2014, @03:42AM
From TFS, it sounds like that's what he's doing already, running DOS natively.
Personally, I wouldn't consider it unless I was keeping the Model M and the 8514 monitor, but...
If the air gap is an important design consideration, then a native DOS install is a reasonable thing to do. If I had to guess, money for hardware isn't really a problem, and he can buy whatever he feels will help him do his work, without trying to shoehorn two or three applications onto the same system.
(Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Friday May 16 2014, @03:46AM
Eh, not really. DR DOS (or one of the various brandings it went through, Novell, Caldera, and back to DR) 6.0 and newer had task switching (to the user, it works something like virtual consoles on *n*x, but with an implicit SIGSTOP/SIGCONT when switching from/to a console), and 7.0 and newer (which includes every version of DOS anyone in their right mind would consider installing these days) have full time-slice multitasking used in the same manner (you switch consoles, stuff on the other consoles keeps running).
Eh, 132x50 or 132x60 into 16:9 gives a character aspect ratio of 1:1.48 or 1:1.24 -- IMO 1:1.24 is about right, but I hate the ~1:2 aspect ratio of 80x25 on a 4:3 screen, so ymmv... Now 24" might leave you with silly big letters (or not, depending how old one's eyes are), but there's plenty of smaller monitors out there.
I'm not sure how flexible wordstar is in handling non-standard character counts (i.e. anything other than {80,132}x{25,30,43,50,60,86}, but I think you can set it for any mode, possibly with the help of a hex editor, in which case you can come within a few pixels of exactly matching your monitor's native res.
If it is restricted to the standard modes, I'd look for a monitor with 1280x800 native resolution, and set up a text mode of 1188x800 (132x50, 9x16 character cells) or 1188x780 (132x60, 9x13), or a 1280x720 screen with 1188x700 (132x50, 9x14) or 1188x720 (132x60, 9x12). Either way, add additional padding to match 1280x800 or 1280x720 timings, and you get pixel-for-pixel output (no LCD interpolation rubbish), a standard screen size, and only a reasonable wasted border. A 1280x1024 monitor is also a reasonable choice, with 1188x1020 (132x60, 9x17 -- a little tall character cell, IMO) or 1188x946 (132x86, 9x11 -- I'd accept it, but most people would find the character cell too short) being suitable. But like I said, I think wordstar supports arbitrary resolutions, so you can pick your preferred character cell, divide it into your LCD's native resolution, and make it work.
And yet, some people would consider that a disadvantage, and given that GRRM is, in 2014, using a dedicated DOS machine for writing, I suspect he's among them. Sure, it's best to choose to not get distracted just because the internet is there, but for those who fall short on internally-imposed discipline (most of us), externally-imposed discipline is better than no discipline at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 15 2014, @07:24PM
"It'd be pretty trivial to do, especially in Linux."
Exactly what makes it any more or less trivial in Linux than in Windows or OSX?
(Score: 5, Funny) by JeanCroix on Thursday May 15 2014, @03:34PM
And my third thought is, this is a great example of sensible user behavior that most techies can't relate to. He found something that works, long ago, and has bent over backward to stay with it.
Reminds me of my own seemingly schizophrenic behavior regarding some types of tech, which sometimes earns me a bit of razzing from other (and usually younger) so-called techies. Yes, I still wear my 1983 Casio digital watch ("alarm chronograph"), and yes, I still use my 1991 HP-48S as my primary calculator. Instead of a snowblower, I use an old steel snow shovel, which also makes a great implement for chasing people off my damn lawn.
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:45PM
ohhhh, lucky it's not a '91 or you'd be a terroristu se_in_terrorism [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F-91W#Claimed_
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Thursday May 15 2014, @11:19PM
(Score: 2) by efitton on Friday May 16 2014, @02:04AM
RPN for the win.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Friday May 16 2014, @03:48AM
As a musician I can relate because we REALLY don't believe in letting go of what works. I have a Washburn 4 from 83, a Fender 4 from 91, and a Korean Squire 5 from 96 (those that know Squires know why the Koreans from that period are sweet) along with my 92 Trace Elliot and while I may ADD basses to the mix and have no problem adding pedals I will never be replacing those for love nor money. Once you get a setup where you can count on the tone, day in and day out, no matter the weather or humidity? you do NOT ever let it go if you have a functioning brain!
So I can understand 100% why he has kept that setup, it works, he knows it like the back of his hand, and day in and day out he knows what he is gonna get from it...I can totally relate and respect his choice. Could I afford to get "nicer" gear? Sure but will the tone be consistent? Will its hardware be reliable? What about the wood, not only is the old woods practically impossible to get but they age well, how will the new instrument age? Its just too risky to get rid of something that works well for something that may or may not be "better" than what you have now.
Its funny though how many just don't appreciate that, hell even my own mom was shocked when she said "I bet you still don't have that bass i bought you for your 21st birthday" and the wife turned and said "which one is that?". the second i said "Blackie" she said "Oh yeah, he plays that one at least once a week, it sounds really nice" and mom's jaw dropped. You see to mom it was just a nice BDay prezzie, to me its a 1991 Fender JP90 with the poplar body that gives it great punch and a nice meaty tone for when I need to let my inner Getty come out and play...you just don't get rid of that for a new toy, no way.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday May 15 2014, @06:20PM
That was my first thought: crazy like a fox.
Well, his DOS machine is safe from hackers but I doubt that entered into it at all. It's partly using what you're comfortable with; I hate updating software because the so-called "designers" move stuff around, seldom offer any new features I'll actually use, and sometimes even remove features. Part of what's taking the next chapter of Mars, Ho! so long to post is upgrading Open Office. Time I have to spend learning software I already knew but no longer do is time I can't spend writing.
He may be a bit superstitious as well. If I'd written several popular and financially successful books on the old IBM-XT I used to have I'd hesitate to switch, too.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org