Editing WordStar (section)

===WordStar 2000===
At the time, the [[IBM Displaywriter System]] dominated the [[dedicated word processor]] market. IBM's main competition was [[Wang Laboratories]]. Such machines were expensive and were generally accessed through terminals connected to central mainframe or midrange computers.

When IBM announced it was bringing [[DisplayWrite]] to the PC, MicroPro focused on creating a clone of it which they marketed, in 1984, as '''WordStar 2000'''. WordStar 2000 supported features such as disk directories, but lacked compatibility with the file formats of existing WordStar versions and also made numerous unpopular changes to the interface. Gradually competitors such as [[WordPerfect]] reduced MicroPro's market share. [[MultiMate]], in particular, used the same key sequences as Wang word processors, which made it popular with secretaries switching from those to PCs.

''[[BYTE]]'' stated that WordStar 2000 had "all the charm of an elephant on motorized skates", warning in 1986 that an [[IBM PC AT]] with hard drive was highly advisable to run the software, which it described as "clumsy, overdesigned, and uninviting ... I can't come up with a reason why I'd want to use it". WordStar 2000 had a user interface that was substantially different from the original WordStar,<ref name="shapiro198606">{{cite news|author=Shapiro, Ezra|date=June 1986|title=Upgrade Fever|pages=329|work=BYTE|url=https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1986-06/page/n341/mode/2up?view=theater}}</ref> and the company did little to advertise this. However, its lasting legacy on the word processing industry was the introduction of three keyboard shortcuts that are still widely used, namely, Ctrl+B for '''boldfacing''', Ctrl+I for ''italicizing'', and Ctrl+U for <u>underlining</u> text.