The Write Stuff

22k space for text. That's between four to six pages of single-spaced, normal-sized characters. Double the page count for double-spaced text.

Microsoft Word 2000

By comparison, an empty Microsoft word document takes up 19k of disk space. On the other hand, these days Windows machines tend to have thousands of times more memory than a Commodore 64. Even very large documents aren't limited to the size of memory, though they are difficult to work with.

Comments

The Commodore 64 has 64kb of memory, and most programs can't even make use of all of that for code. The screen buffer takes up 1k of memory, color information takes up another kilobyte, and access to the audio/video interface chips is at least two more kilobytes. BASIC and Kernal ROMs, containing the Commodore 64's default operating system, take up another 8k, but The Write Stuff “switches those out of memory,” deactivating them.

Even so, keep in mind that almost all the features in the program mentioned below fit into 25k of optimized machine code. The 6510 microprocessor, which the Commodore runs on, has a much more efficent instruction format than the x86 chips in most desktop PCs, but even so, this is an astounding feature-per-byte ratio.

Clipboard

The Write Stuff

9k Cut and Paste (“Eat and Regurgitate”) buffer. The Write Stuff doesn't support the selection of a range of text, so special key commands are used to “eat” words, sentences and paragraphs and add them to the clipboard, poetically called a “stomach” by the program. Then they can either be ignored (effectively a deletion) or “regurgitated” back into the document. By taking advantage of the multiple-document open feature, text can be transferred between documents in this manner.

Microsoft Word 2000

System-supported clipboard features allowing selection-based cut, paste and copy of text into the same document, other documents, and other programs. The Office Clipboard, new to Microsoft Office 2000, allows the user to manage multiple clipboard entries. Clipboard size is limited only by system memory.

Comments

Cut-and-paste is one of those features that's taken for granted in a word processor. It actually hurts Write Stuff a bit to make this available, since that 9k clipboard buffer, were it used for opening documents, would add another page to The Write Stuff's maximum file size.

Drop-down menus

The Write Stuff

Has five menus, accessable by pressing the Commodore's up-arrow key. Offers quick access to Editing, Printing, Load, Save and Help features.

Microsoft Word 2000

Every feature is available from the drop-down menus, which are always accessable by mouse or keyboard (hold Alt and the underlined letter in the menu title).

Comments

What a lot of people don't consider when using Word's drop-down menus is that, to some extent, they provide an effective first-line help system. By browsing through the menus you can get a quick and comprehensive listing of everything the program can do. The Write Stuff, on the other hand, has many features that you have to go to the manual to learn about.

Help screens

The Write Stuff

Contains 60 help files, loaded from disk on demand, describing most of the program's features.

Microsoft Word 2000

Contains an extensive help system, presented by Windows HTML Help, an automated hypertext text presenter.

Comments

The Write Stuff actually compares pretty favorably with Word in this department. Over half of the program disk is devoted to help files. Word's is still easier to access, due to Windows Help's integration with the operating system and its hypertext organization.

Multiple Documents Open At Once

The Write Stuff

Can split the text buffer in two, allowing the user to have two 11k files open at once.

Microsoft Word 2000

Can have any number of documents open at once, limited only by system memory – and not even at that, if you factor in Windows virtual memory, which slaps infrequently-used pages of memory to the hard drive temporarily to make room for more data.

Comments

If you thought 22k wasn't too big.... there's not a lot you can do with 11k, honestly, but it's a nice gesture.

Capital Toggle

The Write Stuff

Press Control-Shift-C and the character under the cursor changes case, from lower to upper, and vice-versa.

Microsoft Word 2000

Has no capital change command, though it will automatically capitalize things if it thinks it should from context.

Comments

The Write Stuff comes out on top here! Perfect for all your chase-changing needs. I believe WordPerfect also has such a magic keypress. Word's capricious and unasked auto-capitalization “feature” is one of its biggest flaws, in my opinion.

Support for memory expansion

The Write Stuff

Supports the Commodore 1764 RAM expansion, which was slick stuff in its day. An extra 512k of memory to save temporary files! By way of comparasion, a Commodore-format 5 1/4” floppy disk can only hold about 160k.

Microsoft Word 2000

Can use any system memory, whether it be conventional, expanded or extended, though those distinctions don't mean anything these days. The maximum memory for a Windows 98 machine is 2 gigabytes. For Windows XP, it's 4 gigabytes. Even if you don't have that much physical memory, the use of a swapfile will increase the number of programs that can be used at once.

Comments

The Write Stuff doesn't use the expander to increase the size of the buffer, but as a kind of RAM disk. The 1764 was released late in the 64's life, and is pretty esoteric as far as Commodore hardware goes. Commodore itself is no longer in business, so these devices are rare. You can simulate one in the WinVICE emulator, if you so desire.

Print Preview

The Write Stuff

Uses the Commodore's high resolution mode to display the current document in 80 columns (the normal display is only 40 columns), which is the line width of Commodore printers. This mode is still monospaced, and hard to read due to the low resolution of the screen. Each letter ends up being a scant three pixels wide, making it a difficult to tell apart 'H's, 'M's and 'W's.

Microsoft Word 2000

Print preview uses the Windows printing system, which works by simply outputting the character information to a different display context. To actually print, programs simply output the document to the context for the printer device. Furthermore, since the display itself is WYSIWYG, the edit windows are their own form print preview.

Comments

The graphics buffer used by Write Stuff for print preview takes 8k of memory. To make up for this, it uses the memory used by the clipboard “stomach” for double-duty. This means if you do a print preview, you lose everything on the clipboard. I remember being bitten by this once.

File conversion

The Write Stuff

Can export to fourteen different (Commodore) word processor formats. I doubt many people reading this remembers the likes of Speedscript, which was a type-in word processor published by now-defunct Compute! magazine, but that was a big feature in the day. More useful is that Write Stuff will happily and easily convert from its own file format (which is basically just Commodore screen codes in order) to both Commodore's peculiar flavor character coding, PETSCII, and true ASCII.

Microsoft Word 2000

Can import and export to a variety of processor formats, though not always perfectly. Their format support isn't as good as WordPerfects (the winner and still champion), but it's not bad. Woe be to the other program that tries to read Word's native format, however, though OpenOffice does a good job.

Comments

Much hay has been made of Word's poorly documented native file format. At least you can't say Write Stuff has an obscure format – it's almost entirely Commodore screen code. When you only have 25k of program code, and only 22k of text buffer, you can't get too fancy. Most of the “control codes” that active special features are actually just special characters you enter, which go straight into the text buffer and are even displayed on the screen. In this way, Write Stuff is more a text editor than word processor.

Character Formatting

The Write Stuff

Support for character formatting: boldface, italics, underlining, condensed, reverse, double-width, subscripts, superscripts, emphasized and extra-quality printing, plus user-defined character formatting. Most formatting options are supplied by the printer, so whatever the printer supports, Write Stuff can typically take advantage of. On the other hand, most compatible printers output monospaced characters only.

Microsoft Word 2000

Support for character formatting: boldface, italics, underlining, strike-through, double-strike-through, subscripts, superscripts, shadow, outline, embossed characters, engraved characters, small caps, automatic all caps, and “hidden.” Text can be print in a wide variety of font sizes, and depending on the printer, may also have different foreground and background colors. Finally, you can have text displayed on the screen with a blinking background, a crawling black or red outline, with “Las Vegas lights,” with a heat-like shimmering effect, or with little sparkles. (Oh, how I wish I were making that last one up.)

Comments

While The Write Stuff's lack of proportional output on most of its compatible printers hurts it, does anyone really need their text to have little colored sparkles?

Dvorak keyboard support

The Write Stuff

Surprisingly, yes! The Commodore keyboard is built into the machine, so you won't be able to just plug in an alternate keyboard with the proper letters on the keys. Still, if you're keyboard-savvy enough to be using Dvorak, you can probably type blind anyway. To turn it on, press and release the Control key, then press Shift-K. Do it again to turn it off.

Microsoft Word 2000

This is actually more of a Windows feature. Under Windows XP, you have to go under the Control Panel, Regional Settings, then Regional and Language Options. In the property page that appears, click the Language tab, then in the Text Services and Input Options box click the Details button. Finally, in the Installed Services box click the Add button, and select “United States/Dvorak” in the Keyboard Layout/IME list. Whew! Once it's on, all your programs will use it until you change the setting back.

Comments

Dvorak is a special, optimized arrangement of letters on your keyboard. The traditional “Querty” arrangement is actually designed to slow typing down. It dates back to the days of typewriters, when a sufficently-quick typist could tangle up a typewriter's works. Computer keyboards are electronic where it counts, so they aren't so vulnerable. However, everyone was already used to the Querty layout, so almost all computers these days default to it.

File encryption

The Write Stuff

The “file encryption” option simply ROT13's the contents of the text buffer. That means all letters of the alphabet are shifted ahead 13, wrapping around from Z to A. It's simple to decrypt – just do it again, and all the letters will shift ahead another 13, undoing the process.

Microsoft Word 2000

You can put a password to a document, but the file won't be encrypted. Windows XP supports file encryption as a system service.

Comments

Write Stuff's “encryption” is seriously lightweight, but really it not meant for serious use, just casual obfuscation. Windows uses mathematical encryption using a key, which is some serious scrambling mojo. Of course, that can be a bad thing too.

Calculator

The Write Stuff

An interesting extra feature, Write Stuff has a built-in, command-line calculator. Actually this works, most likely, by temporarily swapping the BASIC ROM chip back into memory and passing the arguments entered directly to it. Very elegant! A full-function calculator, with formula support, for very little memory cost!

Microsoft Word 2000

While Word has no such calculator, Windows has come with a Calculator applet since version 1.0, and being a multitasking operating system (since version 3), it's a simple matter to open the Calculator and do whatever you want. It's not as powerful as a BASIC interpreter, but then again Word often comes with Excel, which is about as math-happy as you can get without resorting to hideous things like Mathematica.

Comments

How often do you need to calculate things during your word processing? This is more a convenience feature than anything else. Nice to have, though, and you don't have to go to Start > Programs > Accessories to access it.

Word Count

The Write Stuff

Has it, and will also count characters. Not much else to say.

Microsoft Word 2000

Has it, has a character count, and some other things besides. It'll even give you an elementary reading grade of your document, though I don't think you should unquestioningly believe a single thing Word tells you about your writing style.

Comments

Word count's useful if you're writing a school paper, or a piece that shouldn't be too short or long, or if you're in one of those “50 words or less” essay contests, but that's about it.

Disk functions

The Write Stuff

You can get listing of disk contents, save files and load files. You can also enter arbitrary Commodore disk commands, but the less you know about those the better. By the way, Commodore disk drives of this era don't have directories! All files are just “on the disk.”

Microsoft Word 2000

Uses a modified version of the standard Windows file open/save dialog box, which is really Windows Explorer in a special mode! That means you can create and delete directories, move and rename files, cut, copy and paste files, follow shortcuts and do lots of other things. In addition, there's buttons for going directly to common save locations like the Desktop or your My Documents folder, you can browse network shares, and even save to an FTP site. Of course, most Windows programs these days can do all this up to the FTP thing.

Comments

Windows' incredible file dialog boxes are one of the best UI things about it, in my opinion. Did you know if you have an Explorer window open, you can drag files from an open box to that and back? That you can even start programs from a save dialog? It's almost absurd how powerful those boxes are!

Merge & append with files on disk

The Write Stuff

You can save the current document to the end of a file already existing on disk.  This is actually a special feature of Commodore disk drives, which all have their own built-in processors and simple operating systems. All Write Stuff does is tell the disk to add the data and it does the work. You can also load a file into the file currently in memory, but with you only have 22k of memory space this is of limited use.

Microsoft Word 2000

While it has no simple file append command, you can “embed” practically any file into your Word document using object linking and embedding (a.k.a. “OLE” - now there's an acronym you don't hear much anymore).

Comments

While Write Stuff can't hold files of over 22k in size in memory at once, it comes with a special program, BB File Reader, that can read files up to 44k in size. Unfortunately, it has limited support for printer features, so your document will look rather plain.

Screen-reading and speech synthesis

The Write Stuff

A special version of Write Stuff was available that used a speech synthesizer to read out letters as they are entered, and even read aloud the contents of documents! This is a great feature for blind users, and until recently there wasn't much in the way of a Windows equivalent that didn't involve buying a separate add-on for Word.

Microsoft Word 2000

Word 2000 doesn't have a screen-reader function, but I hear Office 2002 comes with one.

Comments

The speech synthesis in Write Stuff is provided by S.A.M., or the “Software Automatic Mouth.” This is actually a very similar technology between both Write Stuff and Office 2002. It's also similar to the synthesis used in the Macintosh OS.

Soft hyphenation

The Write Stuff

There's a special control code that doesn't print out unless it would break a line. Then it both prints, and breaks the line at that point.

Microsoft Word 2000

Not only has a soft hyphen, but a built-in hyphenation dictionary that can hyphenate many words without having to worry about it. It's on by default, however, so if you don't want it you'll have to dig through the Preferences dialog to turn it off.

Comments

Most people don't even need auto-hyphenation. This is not a big advantage for Word unless you have some special need for it.

Headers and footers

The Write Stuff

These are included by entering a control code, the number of lines in the footer, a semicolon, then the text of the footer. All this appears on the screen, which can be seen as negative (it's all visible right there smack in the middle of your document making it ugly) or positive (easy to find, easy to edit).

Microsoft Word 2000

In the menus, go under View > Header and Footer and they appear in boxes at the top and bottom of each page. Then all you have to do is click one and enter what you want up there.

Comments

Hey, Write Stuff's only 25k. So what if their headers and footers are a little clunky?

Page numbering

The Write Stuff

By putting a Control-Number Sign in a header or footer, at print time it will be replaced by the page number. You can use another control code to start the page numbering wherever you want.

Microsoft Word 2000

Surprisingly similar. Instead of Control-Number Sign, you click on the Header/Footer toolbar and insert a “- PAGE -” code. It basically works the same way.

Comments

Of course, Microsoft Word has many more codes that can be put into headers and footers than just that. Page numbering's probably the most useful, though.

Rapid document browsing

The Write Stuff

The function keys, which are arranged vertically on the early Commodores, allow you to scan up and down quickly through the currently-loaded document.

Microsoft Word 2000

You can do this in Word too, in fact it works in most Windows programs that use text boxes, but most casual users don't know about it. Hold the Control key and press the left or right arrow keys to jump backward or forward a word at a time. Control plus up or down arrows jump back or forward one paragraph at a time. The Home key takes the insertion point to the beginning of the current line, and End takes it to the end. Control-Home is a shortcut to the beginning of the current document. Control-Home takes you to the end of the document. There, now don't you feel enlightened?

Comments

Basically the same feature using different keys. Being able to get to the end of the file isn't as important when you're limited to 22k of memory, though.

Page breaks

The Write Stuff

Another control code makes the printer eject the current page when encountered.

Microsoft Word 2000

In addition to having an Insert Page Break command, you can insert column breaks, word wrap breaks, and several different flavors of section break.

Comments

Both work. Not a lot else to say.

Left and right alignment, line centering, and justified text

The Write Stuff

Control codes. The text doesn't appear any different on the screen, but will be of the appropriate style on the printout.

Microsoft Word 2000

You can either click the happy little alignment and justification buttons on the toolbar (if Word's set up to display them), or you go under the Format > Paragraph menu and choose the alignment you want.

Comments

It would have been nice if Write Stuff actually showed the text with the proper alignment.

Printer Support

The Write Stuff

Extensive... if you have a printer that works on a Commodore.

Microsoft Word 2000

Very extensive... if you have printer that works under Windows.

Comments

Those two categories, Commodore and Windows printers, they don't intersect in many places (though they do intersect). Write Stuff prints primarily in character mode, while Windows prints graphic images composed of all the individual font glyphs. If this sounds like the same thing to you... it's not. Character mode printing is often faster, at least on dot matrix printers. You don't see dot matrix printers much anymore, though.

Page columns

The Write Stuff

Prints up to two columns. It's a bit kludgy though. You have to enter a special code, then the number of spaces to leave between columns, then the number of lines (which must be an even number). This isn't very compatible with text formatting, like boldface or underlining, as these attributes have a nasty habit of “leaking” across columns.

Microsoft Word 2000

Not only can you have multiple columns in your document without the problems mentioned before, you can put text boxes on your page that work like sidebars in a magazine, and even choose if and how text automatically flows between them, much like a desktop publishing program.

Comments

A nice feature to have when you need it. Good for newsletters, but in many cases if you need multiple columns you also need other features, and you're better served going to dedicated desktop publishing software.

Find and replace text

The Write Stuff

This is one of the big features any word processor needs. Even the earliest ones could do this, and Write Stuff doesn't disappoint, though it calls the feature “Hunt Text.” You can also perform caseless searches, if you happen to know the secret keypress (Shift-Return).

Microsoft Word 2000

Of course you can perform searches and replaces, and specify case, like duh! There's really only one problem....

Comments

Microsoft Word doesn't let you search for formatting codes! In its zeal to completely hide from you the details of how it implements formatting, it doesn't let you do things like search for usages of boldface and the like. You can do that in Write Stuff easily, simply by pressing the Control key and then the code to search for on the search prompt. WordPerfect lets you do this too, letting you specify the codes to search for using a frighteningly extensive drop-down list.

Macro definitions

The Write Stuff

This is a big feature for a 25k program, as Write Stuff includes around a hundred pre-made, macros for many common English words. They can also be readily edited to suit the user's needs. They can even be saved to disk and reloaded with a keypress, and using them is simply a matter of typing in the first letters, or the special character, that represents the whole word and pressing the space bar. With practice, it can greatly increase the user's typing speed.

Microsoft Word 2000

There are two facilities in Word that can be considered matches for this feature. The original one, still called “macros,” are recordings of entered text that can be played back with a keypress. These days these macros are actually implemented in Visual Basic, and can be edited if you have skill in programing. The other macro-like feature, which will be more familiar with most users, is AutoComplete. Unfortunately it probably infuriates more users than it helps with its automatic, hard-to-turn-off changing of what you're typing, while you're typing it. (Hint: look under Tools > AutoCorrect. What you're looking for is probably there somewhere.)

Comments

At least Write Stuff's automatic completion feature is harder to trigger accidentally!

Tabs and custom tab stop

The Write Stuff

Tab stops are entered using control codes which, like all control codes in Write Stuff, are visible on the screen and ugly.

Microsoft Word 2000

You set tab stops by clicking on the ruler at the top of the page.

Comments

A “tab stop” is where the cursor jumps when you press the Tab key. It advances to the next stop with every press. Useful for indentation, though Word makes it more annoying by often applying an intent format change when the user simply wants a tab.

Auto-alignment of columns of decimal numbers

The Write Stuff

Another control code automatically aligns the decimal places of numbers in a list after it's entered.

Microsoft Word 2000

If this feature exists in Word I'm not aware of it. But Microsoft Excel, a full-featured spreadsheet often packaged with Word, has it in spades.

Comments

This Write Stuff-only feature's great for columns of figures, but little else.

Word-wrapping

The Write Stuff

Another of the big word processor features. In Write Stuff it's a little less automatic than most of today's users may be used to. If you enter a word that takes you off the screen, the program moves the whole word to the next line. However, if you then delete the characters that took you over, the word is not automatically moved back to where it was. While you can turn word-wrapping off in the editor, I don't think it can be disabled during printout.

Microsoft Word 2000

Word-wrapping is used in almost every text box in Windows, so it can hardly be called a Word feature. (You can turn it off in Notepad if you want.)

Comments

Word wrapping was one of the big, early word processing features. How far we've come.

File-linking

(connecting files together so they all load and print in sequence)

The Write Stuff

Yes, controlled by another special code.

Microsoft Word 2000

Not unless you use a weird mechanism to do it, such as a Visual Basic script. (If you resort to Visual Basic can do almost anything, including spread viruses). But since Word files are not so limited by available memory, the need for this feature is gone.

Comments

This is a feature of Write Stuff that exists specifically to get around one of its biggest limitations, the 22k text buffer. Word doesn't really need it.

Non-printing comments

The Write Stuff

Just put a Control-N code at the beginning of a line of text you don't want to print, and tah-dah! Not as elegant, in my opinion, as WordStar's two-period system of noting comments, but it does save one byte over that method.

Microsoft Word 2000

Columns are a special type of object. While they show up in your text as yellow highlighting, which is cool, each highlight actually takes you to a special comments window, which displays them all one after another, which is a big confusing. It doesn't have the same intuitiveness as having the comments directly in the text, in my opinion, but I'm sure some people will disagree. Word's comments do note who made them, and you can also do fancy stuff like insert audio comments, though that will tend to increase the size of your file even above standard Word bloat-levels.

Comments

Each method works in its own way.

Adjustable margins: left, right, top, bottom

The Write Stuff

Again, you use special codes, and again, they're reflected on screen solely by the reverse-video characters of the code, which are displayed where you entered them on the screen, though not on the printer.

Microsoft Word 2000

In Word, you have to go under File > Page Setup, which I consider to be a non-obvious place to look for it. Shouldn't it be under Format > Page? But there is no Format > Page option, just Paragraph.

Comments

Write Stuff's margins are all in character-sized units, so a left or right margin is in characters, and a top or bottom margin is in lines. Word uses real-world measurements, inches or centimeters. Usually that's better.

Single, double and triple-spacing

The Write Stuff

A code! A code! And of course that means you won't see any evidence of the spacing until you print the file.

Microsoft Word 2000

What You See Is What You Get, when you turn on the option from the dialog box that appears when you choose Format > Paragraph.

Comments

Who actually uses triple spacing? Word makes it hard to triple-space, perhaps because it's so little used. Also, Write Stuff doesn't allow fractional spacing, like one-and-a-half lines.

Paragraph auto-indent

The Write Stuff

Available with a code, and only manifests itself when printing.

Microsoft Word 2000

Not only can you turn this on yourself, but if Word thinks you need it it'll put it in all by itself. If you don't want it to do that you may begin to see the charm of these old 8-bit word processors, back before computers had more power than application developers knew what to do with.

Comments

Nice if you want it, and are expecting it.  If that isn't the case, then this is probably a mis-feature.

Mail merge

The Write Stuff

I can't believe it does this! You create two files, one containing the form letter, and another containing a list of the information to be slotted into the spaces. Then at the beginning of the letter you enter, on a line to itself, “x0:” followed by the filename of the file to be merged in. A <1> mark is put everywhere in the form where the first element should go (which could be multiple places), a <2> in the next place, and so on. The program prints out the form when all the replacements are made, then discards the changes and starts over with the next set of replacements in the file. Nifty!

Microsoft Word 2000

Of course, Word has a wizard to help you with mail merging, under Tools > Mail Merge. It lacks the elegance of the Write Stuff solution, but with the program stepping you through each step it's more likely to work the first time.

Comments

This is one of those many less-than-one-percent-of-users features that Word's full of. Still, I'm amazed Write Stuff even has it. You don't need megs and megs to have feature bloat! I think WS would have been better served by using that code to enlarge the text buffer, but maybe that's just me.

User-definable control codes

The Write Stuff

Potentially very nifty, you can even make your own control codes, similar to the ones mentioned above, and decide what printer codes will get sent when they're entered. You can also define “printer macros,” which can send a whole string of printer codes. Back in those days you more or less had to know these codes, which were listed in big, arcane tables in the back of printer manuals, if you wanted good output. On the plus side, you didn't have $60 ink cartridges either.

Microsoft Word 2000

Windows makes every effort to shield you from anything remotely resembling control codes. Even if you'd dearly like to mess with them.

Comments

This is one of the fabled trade offs between power and ease of use.

Price

The Write Stuff

$35 for one copy. Disk contains no copy protection. Once purchased, can be copied and used on any number of the user's (Commodore) computers. Can also be used on other computers by using a Commodore 64 emulator, such as WinVICE.

Microsoft Word 2000

Costs $99 as part of the Microsoft Works Essentials software bundle (with Microsoft Works and several other programs). A CD-Key must be entered into the installer or the program will refuse to copy itself to the hard drive. Must be registered with Microsoft, either on-line or over the phone, or the program disables itself after fifty uses. Many people get Word as part of Microsoft Office, which is much more expensive.

Comments

In this area, at least, The Write Stuff clearly wins out... if you can find it, and either own a Commodore or want to start up an emulator whenever you want to write.