Wordstar General Information Manual

This document is the General Information Manual for WordStar Version 3.0, published by MicroPro International Corporation in 1983. It provides a comprehensive overview of WordStar, describing it as a screen-oriented word processing system with integrated printing.

The manual details WordStar's extensive editing functions, which include:

• WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Video Editing: Text appears on screen as it will print.
• Automatic Disk Buffering: Supports large documents limited only by disk capacity.
• On-Screen Text Formatting: Features like word wrap, automatic margination, justification, line spacing, and paragraph re-form.
• Powerful Editing Commands: For cursor movement, text deletion, block operations (move, copy, delete), find/replace, and hyphen-help.
• A Help System and Dynamic Page Break Display.
• A distinction between "hard" (user-entered) and "soft" (WordStar-inserted) carriage returns and spaces, crucial for formatting and re-forming text.

The printing capabilities are also extensively covered, including:

• Page Formatting: Control over margins, headings, page numbers, and pagination.
• Special Effects: Underline, boldface, subscripts, superscripts, variable character pitch, and ribbon color, controlled by embedded "print control characters" and "dot commands."
• Microspace Justification for daisy wheel printers.
• The optional MailMerge feature for producing form letters, merging data, and chaining documents, supporting concurrent printing (editing one document while another prints).

The document outlines system requirements, emphasizing WordStar's compatibility with a wide range of CRT terminals and printers (both Teletype-like and daisy wheel), typically operating under the CP/M operating system. It also explains file and diskette management practices, such as file naming conventions, diskette capacity, the critical importance of saving documents (which automatically creates a backup file), and proper diskette handling procedures.