from Clarence Verge:
>My 20 year old Wordstar for CPM has no problems with files as big as the
>disk can hold and CPM uses 64k MAX memory.
>The same program for the PC has shown no signs of size limit - although my
>version is a little retarded on paths and subdirectories.
How much disk can CPM access? Weren't disks very small in CPM's time, no hard
drives; weren't 5.25" 360 KB diskettes in vogue?
Have you ever accessed the internet with CPM (just idle curiosity, I suppose)?
For that matter, I would be quite helpless trying to access the Internet from
OS/2 1.3 and earlier. DOS compatibility box doesn't count, since it is limited
to about 500 KB memory, and clearly, one could better use straight DOS.
DOS text-editor writers seem to think they have to load the whole file into
memory.
I had Sidekick long ago, bundled with other software, and didn't find it useful.
I remember using Word Star in nondocument mode back in 1990 as a text editor,
think it padded the end of the file with a bunch of ASCII 26 characters. By the
way, a text editor that finds an ASCII 26 in the middle of a text file should
not mistake that character as end of file! Neither should Arachne!
>There will *never* be a "perfect" text editor. What is needed is a big
>fat clue stick to remind people that 9Mb files of text are DUMB DUMB
>DUMB! };>
>l.d.
How often are 9 MB text files seen? Maybe a concatenated email download file
that includes one or more messages with big base64 attachments?
