Tape based Word Processor for IIe?

[SIO2]

Just wondering if anyone knows of a word processor for Apple IIe that runs, loads, saves from/to cassette?  And also prints of course.

 

 

 

 

[Iamgroot]

Check the Brutal Deluxe website.  He has collected just abour every cassette out there for the Apple.

[Krebizfan]

Darell's Appleware claimed to have a word processor on cassette which Brutal Deluxe mentions but does not have a copy. There was probably an Applesoft BASIC minimal word processor but I could not find an example with a quick search. 

[SIO2]

@Krebizfan - Thanks for that.  I found a source that lists that information: https://archive.org/details/Apple_Software_Directory_1978/page/n5/mode/2up

 

I could not find any other info regarding the Darrell's Appleware program. I see there is also another tape Word Processor listed as made by "Computer Components".  Try searching the internet for "Computer Components" sometime.

 

So I thought I might just be crazy and that nobody ever used a Word Processor with tape.  Then I found "Educational Software's Mini Word Processor" for use with a 32k Atari.  So someone tried it once anyhow.

 

I am wondering if Computes Speedscript allows save to tape but I have not tried it yet.  Most of the references I find for Speedscript are for Commodore.

 

Anyhow, thanks again.

 

[magnusfalkirk]

I have copies of Speedscript for the Apple II on 5.25 disk images. I looked back through the pdf's I have of Compute! to find an article about it. Found two article one from Jun 85 and a second from Apr 87 issue. Both articles only mention being able to save to disk, either drive 1 or 2.

[BassGuitari]

2 hours ago, SIO2 said:

So I thought I might just be crazy and that nobody ever used a Word Processor with tape.  Then I found "Educational Software's Mini Word Processor" for use with a 32k Atari.  So someone tried it once anyhow.

Radio Shack also had cassette versions of Scripsit for some of their TRS-80 systems. 🙂 

[Iamgroot]

Creating and saving text files to a tape really isn't that feasible as there really is no catalog feature.  And editing and overwriting a document would be cumbersome.  But writing to tape from applesoft is doable.  And there are some pretty good text editors written in applesoft.

[Krebizfan]

Using a single cassette for each document does make it easy to revert to an earlier version by simply rewinding the tape the appropriate amount. 

 

The Disk II was available alongside the 16K Apple II so there wasn't a large memory cassette system to push the development of a cassette word processor. The best possible cassette word processor on a 16K machine would have very minimal features and might be able to handle a few pages. Compare it with Tasword on the Spectrum or Wordpro in East Germany with systems with 48K or more and no standard available disk drive making big applications involving cassettes mandatory. 

 

Some of the text editors or word processors written in BASIC were surprisingly decent, at least until the BASIC stalls doing garbage collection. 

[Iamgroot]

10 hours ago, Krebizfan said:

Some of the text editors or word processors written in BASIC were surprisingly decent, at least until the BASIC stalls doing garbage collection. 

 

I wrote a garbage collector that ran pretty decent.  The Applesoft versioin is 275 bytes.  My version was 368.  The Prodos version is 477 bytes.  And the one written for Dos 3.3 (can't remember what it is called - procrastinator - or somethin like that)  was over 500 bytes.

 

My version is exactly the same as the Applesoft version, but I stuck an insertion sort in it to make it 255 times faster.  It is only 2 seconds slower than the Prodos version, but with only 93 bytes difference, it could fit into Applesoft Rom.  I was able to combine DRAW/XDRAW in Applesoft and saved 100 bytes.  Just enough room for the faster garbage collector.