Editing WordStar (section)

== Installation ==
Installation of early versions of WordStar, especially for CP/M, was very different from the approach of modern programs. While later editions had more-or-less comprehensive installation programs that allowed selection of printers and terminals from a menu, in the very early releases, each of the [[escape sequence]]s required for the terminal and printer had to be identified in the hardware documentation, then hand-entered (in [[hexadecimal|hex]]) into reserved locations in the program memory image. This was a fairly typical limitation of all CP/M programs of the time, since there was no mechanism to hide the complexities of the underlying hardware from the application program. To use the program with a different printer required re-installation of the program. Occasionally short machine-language programs had to be entered in a patch area in WordStar, to provide particular screen effects or cope with particular printers. Researching, testing, and proving out such installations was a time-consuming and knowledge-intensive process, making WordStar installation and customization a staple discussion of CP/M [[users' group]]s during that time.

DOS versions of WordStar at least had standardized the screen display, but still had to be customized for different printers.