It's an incredibly useful piece of software for data wrangling and exploration.
taviso 2 hours ago [-]
Hey, another 1-2-3 nerd :)
I don't have any nostalgia it, I just appreciate how thoughtfully it was designed for data-input efficiency. I actually ported the official UNIX version of 1-2-3 to Linux a few years ago, I still use it regularly. It uses some tricks to get the original UNIX binaries working on Linux: https://github.com/taviso/123elf
I had been thinking about how to add UTF-8 support, it only supports LMBCS (Lotus Multi-Byte Character Set) by default. It's actually worse than that, it stores everything internally as LMBCS but in a lot of cases can only display ASCII, so it transliterates a lot of characters (e.g. é -> e).
It's also possible to run the real DOS version in dosemu - in terminal mode it's basically indistinguishable from an ncurses application, although dosemu is just cleverly sampling the framebuffer and translating it on-the-fly.
Very early in my career I made friends with the business’s sole Lotus Notes administrator, "the email server guy." He was pretty proud of what it could do, and I sometimes get nostalgic for the admin UI.
karunamurti 1 hours ago [-]
I took Lotus 1-2-3 course along with Wordstar and dBase when I was in elementary school. Good times.
bb88 4 hours ago [-]
I remember being a teenager and building forms using the Lotus 123 WYSIWYG graphics.
create_accounts 6 hours ago [-]
It would be great to have a terminal compatible Wordperfect alternative, like in the MS DOS days. Can you use Vim to edit documents for printing?
duane1024 5 hours ago [-]
I started this project because I was nostalgic for Lotus 1-2-3, but I really really really loved WordPerfect. I'm afraid of starting that project, however, as it might take over my life :) I used to use WordPerfect 5.1 on a 386 PC to edit my school newspaper with multiple columns, graphics, custom fonts, etc. No WYSIWYG, just the power of Alt+F3 (Reveal Codes)!
somat 1 hours ago [-]
Reveal Codes is a good start, but if I remember correctly they were read only. you could not close the loop and enter codes.
Reveal codes in a small way made me swear off word processing for good. We had an office document in wp 8 or 9 if remember correctly, you know the type, it lived on a shared drive and whoever needed to make changes did. anyhow it was a complete mess, internal corruption all over the place, no consistent style. one night I sat down with it and thanks to reveal codes I was able to clean it up. At which point I had a revelation, most of the sins of the document were due to the WYSIWYG interface. I was able to fix it because I could(almost) see the source. Why not cut the middleman write the document in source and render it to the final form. So I rewrote it in html. and have had a lingering resentment of word processors ever since.
You know why they call them word processors right?... Ever see what a food processor does to food?
gerdesj 5 hours ago [-]
I still have an original cardboard strip with the function key codes on it somewhere. Ctrl-F9 ... font (I think, it was rather a long time ago).
Yes, if you use a formatter like LaTeX. The beauty part is, "Reveal Codes" is always on!
manithree 5 hours ago [-]
As a big fan of WordPerfect on my first DOS machine (286 clone), I agree. I respect authors like GRRM for sticking with WordStar, but whenever I get nostalgic and wondering about WordPerfect in DosBox, I remember I use emacs and typst. All the good things about WordPerfect, but vastly superior.
bitwize 4 hours ago [-]
I keep seeing ads for expensive "writerdecks" that run between $500 and $1200 and have a bare-minimum OS that is intended for distraction-free writing. I keep wondering how these are any better than an old laptop, FreeDOS, and WordPerfect 5.2, except as Veblen goods.
Most notably:
https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im
Has been in HN often, most recently:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47662658
New takes: https://github.com/zaphar/sheetsui https://github.com/garritfra/cell
It's an incredibly useful piece of software for data wrangling and exploration.
I don't have any nostalgia it, I just appreciate how thoughtfully it was designed for data-input efficiency. I actually ported the official UNIX version of 1-2-3 to Linux a few years ago, I still use it regularly. It uses some tricks to get the original UNIX binaries working on Linux: https://github.com/taviso/123elf
I had been thinking about how to add UTF-8 support, it only supports LMBCS (Lotus Multi-Byte Character Set) by default. It's actually worse than that, it stores everything internally as LMBCS but in a lot of cases can only display ASCII, so it transliterates a lot of characters (e.g. é -> e).
It's also possible to run the real DOS version in dosemu - in terminal mode it's basically indistinguishable from an ncurses application, although dosemu is just cleverly sampling the framebuffer and translating it on-the-fly.
I wrote a display driver to make that work a little better: https://github.com/taviso/lotusdrv
Reveal codes in a small way made me swear off word processing for good. We had an office document in wp 8 or 9 if remember correctly, you know the type, it lived on a shared drive and whoever needed to make changes did. anyhow it was a complete mess, internal corruption all over the place, no consistent style. one night I sat down with it and thanks to reveal codes I was able to clean it up. At which point I had a revelation, most of the sins of the document were due to the WYSIWYG interface. I was able to fix it because I could(almost) see the source. Why not cut the middleman write the document in source and render it to the final form. So I rewrote it in html. and have had a lingering resentment of word processors ever since.
You know why they call them word processors right?... Ever see what a food processor does to food?