#Wordstar is now freely distributable and Robert J. Sawyer has worked hard to create a .zip with both WS and DOSBox-X already configured for running after unzipping.
It comes configured for a Windows system with local C:/ drive. You need to put the WS folder in the Zip in your local C:/ root path, and then DB-X will auto-mount and run WS automatically.
Mac and Linux users will need their own DB-X and to edit the .conf for mounting to Unixy paths.
@ellabellafull why not regular dosbox? At least that’s in Debian…
@ellabellafull I can't seem to find any announcement where Mattel (current owner of the successor companies of MicroPro) would have relinquished the rights to WordStar.. so "freely distributable" doesn't really seem true. And Mattel is one of the companies that is sadly well known for their rather aggressive lawyers.
Also wtf did Sawyer do to that program to make it 700MB? I recall WordStar to fit on a handful of floppy disks..
@WooShell His .zip comes with DOSBox-X, pre-configured for a Windows portable application execution, and 1000~ pages of scans from the WS manuals. I imagine that inflated it quite a bit. :)
@ellabellafull @WooShell Yup, half the file size is from poorly compressed PDFs. (They should be much smaller, given they're mostly black-and-white. [Not greyscale!])
There's also lots of other vaguely related stuff in there. Unfortunately, picking that out is a pain because it's all dumped into the WordStar directory with no obvious organisation.
@ellabellafull @WooShell
I downloaded this instead: https://winworldpc.com/product/wordstar/7 (6 MB)
It has the added benefit of letting you do a biblically accurate install from 19 floppies. (For some reason the installer didn't ask for disk 7, even though I selected all the features.) If you wanna skip that step, here's the C drive resulting from that install: http://ybshare.com/download/7hn42z8szb
@WooShell Ooooh you're right about the raised eyebrow about "freely distributable". I hadn't noticed Sawyer's self declaration before. I might be wrong then: https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/06/wordstar_7_the_last_ever/
@ellabellafull I haven't tried it yet with WordStar 7, but in general, I recommend Boxer https://boxer.thec0de.com/ for running Dos software on MacOS. It's Dosbox with a very nice and easy UI.
Why WordStar: https://sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm