StarWord is a faithful re-creation of WordStar 7.0's editing experience — the same control-key commands, pull-down menus, dot commands, and blue screen — rebuilt as a modern, cross-platform terminal application. If you knew WordStar, you already know StarWord. This page lists what's new, what's different, and the few WordStar features that were intentionally left in 1992.
Brand-new in StarWord
Cross-platform
One program runs on Windows, Linux and macOS. On Windows it can relaunch itself inside Windows Terminal at a configurable startup size.
Unicode documents
Full UTF-8 editing. Files saved with the .WSu extension are Unicode; word, character
and cursor handling are rune-accurate.
Opens real WordStar files
Genuine WordStar 3/4 documents (.WS/.DOC) — with their 8th-bit soft
spaces, soft returns and ^Z padding — are auto-detected and decoded to clean text,
with bold/underline markers preserved. Forty-year-old files just open.
OS clipboard
Alongside WordStar's internal blocks, Ctrl+Shift+X / C / V cut, copy and paste through
your system clipboard, and bracketed paste from the terminal is supported.
Mouse support
Click and hover the pull-down menus, click to place the cursor, double-click to select a word, drag to select, and drag-and-drop a selection to move it. The wheel scrolls.
Open dictionaries
Spell-check uses Hunspell .dic/.aff files (with affix expansion); the
thesaurus uses MyThes data. Either may be a local file or an http(s) URL that StarWord downloads and caches.
Redo + safer exit
An undo and redo history, plus a confirmation dialog whenever you try to leave with unsaved changes (keyboard and mouse friendly).
Soft / hard returns & reflow
StarWord distinguishes wrap (soft) breaks from Enter (hard) breaks. Switching to soft word wrap reflows each paragraph to the margin (joining soft-broken lines, keeping your hard breaks and blank lines); switching back re-wraps. It's reversible (Edit › Undo) with a one-time confirm.
Resizable screen
Unlike WordStar's fixed 80×25 display, StarWord flows to fit any window. Drag the terminal to any size and the text re-wraps and re-paginates live — a small popup shows the new dimensions as you resize. You can also set a preferred startup width and height in the configuration screen.
This help system
HTML Help and this What's-New page open in your browser from the Help menu, plus an About box.
Classic WordStar features, faithfully kept
- The control diamond (
^E ^X ^S ^D) and the^K/^Q/^O/^P/^Jcommand menus. - WordStar 7 pull-down menu bar with the original Alt-key bindings.
- Block operations, place markers 0–9, find & replace with options.
- Dot commands and real pagination (
.pa .pl .mt .mb .he .fo .pn .po .ls .cp). - Footnotes, index and table-of-contents entries.
- MailMerge (
.df/.rv/&variable&). - Column (rectangular) block mode and block math.
- On-screen calculator and keystroke macros.
- Document vs non-document modes, and the WSCHANGE-style configuration screen.
- Print preview and print-to-printer.
Things that work a little differently
| Area | WordStar 7 | StarWord |
|---|---|---|
| Help | In-program help screens | The Help menu opens HTML help in your browser (the classic ^J on-screen help is still there too) |
| Clipboard | Internal blocks only | Internal blocks plus the OS clipboard via Ctrl+Shift+X/C/V |
| Files | 8.3 DOS names, CP437 | Long file names and UTF-8 (.WSu) |
| Print styles | Driven by printer-specific codes | Bold/italic/underline etc. are kept as on-screen markers and rendered logically when printing |
WordStar features intentionally left behind
These were tied to 1990s dot-matrix and daisy-wheel printers and have no modern equivalent, so they are deliberately not implemented:
- Printer pitch changes and raw printer escape sequences.
- Double-strike, overprint and “phantom” character mechanics.
- Micro-justification for fixed-pitch printers.
- Paper-bin / sheet-feeder selection.
Modern printing
Printing is built on modern foundations, not 1990s printer codes:
- Windows print dialog — available now. File › Print opens the standard Windows print dialog to choose the printer, orientation, paper size and copies, then prints in a monospaced font. (On Linux/macOS it prints to the default printer.)
- PDF export — available now. File / Layout › Print to PDF writes a paginated, print-ready PDF named after your document (Unicode-faithful, embedded monospaced font) and opens it.
Still on the roadmap:
- Rich style rendering — bold, italic, underline, super/subscript and headings rendered with real fonts instead of fixed-pitch markers.
- Page setup — paper sizes (Letter/A4/…), margins and orientation from a simple settings screen.
- HTML / plain-text export — hand your document off to other modern tools.
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