Tandy SCRIPSIT 16 unlocked?

[MHaensel]

Tandy released a version of SCRIPSIT for XENIX multiuser. The disks have been archived, but so far as I know nobody archived the manual. Reviewers online say they played with the program a bit but weren't able to do much. That was my experience too.

 

An eBay auction ($85) has a SCRIPSIT 16 upgrade disk and hotkey reference sheets.

 

For those who want to play around with SCRIPSIT 16, we now have some hints at how it works:

<ESC> H opens the help menu. To leave help, hit <CTRL C>

 

<ESC> H <ENTER> shows a list of help topics, but either <CTRL C> or <ENTER> seems to lock up the system. I've attached the (first?) screen of help topics so people spend less time rebooting.

 

<ESC> H DEFINE <ENTER> explains how the define mode works.

 

<ESC> _ starts underline. <CTRL U> _  stops underline.

 

<CTRL V> shows control characters/style changes on screen. <CTRL U> <CTRL V> stops that.

 

I've enclosed the photos of the sheets from the auction, and the list of help topics from SCRIPSIT 16.

 

And of course, if the program is already figured out, or the manual is available online, I'd love to know!

 

[jhd]

 

Thank-you for sharing this.

 

This actually makes WordPerfect 4.2 (the very first word processor that I ever used) look user-friendly in comparison.

 

I am never giving up a GUI.  

[jwse30]

I am mostly into the Model 100 and the Color Computers, but I am glad you were able to retrieve that tidbit. 
 

I find it frustrating that a lot of good software seems to be lost to time. 
 

J White

[rivercityrandom]

On 2/25/2022 at 6:39 AM, jhd said:

 

Thank-you for sharing this.

 

This actually makes WordPerfect 4.2 (the very first word processor that I ever used) look user-friendly in comparison.

 

I am never giving up a GUI.  

I imagine part of the reason why old word processors and productivity software in the days before GUI standardization were so terse and hard to use was because of limited RAM and disk space to store help files and provide user-friendly menus, and part of it was to ensure vendor lock-in by making it so learning another piece of software would take a similarly huge investment of time and training resources. Part of it might also have been copy protection by making it so the program was useless without the 900-page manual. I love the idea of typing in the plain gray-on-blue screen of WordPerfect 5.1, but I use Google Docs these days because I don't want to figure out which of WordPerfect's bizarre non-standard control codes does underline and which one launches nukes at Russia.