StarWord is a faithful re-creation of WordStar 7.0's editing experience — the same control-key commands, pull-down menus, dot commands, and blue screen — rebuilt as a modern, cross-platform terminal application. If you knew WordStar, you already know StarWord. This page lists what's new, what's different, and the few WordStar features that were intentionally left in 1992.

## Brand-new in StarWord

### Cross-platform

One program runs on Windows, Linux and macOS. On Windows it can relaunch itself inside Windows Terminal at a configurable startup size.

### Unicode documents

Full UTF-8 editing. Files saved with the `.WSu` extension are Unicode; word, character and cursor handling are rune-accurate.

### Opens real WordStar files

Genuine WordStar 3/4 documents (`.WS`/`.DOC`) — with their 8th-bit soft spaces, soft returns and `^Z` padding — are auto-detected and decoded to clean text, with bold/underline markers preserved. Forty-year-old files just open.

### OS clipboard

Alongside WordStar's internal blocks, `Ctrl+Shift+X / C / V` cut, copy and paste through your system clipboard, and bracketed paste from the terminal is supported.

### Mouse support

Click and hover the pull-down menus, click to place the cursor, double-click to select a word, drag to select, and drag-and-drop a selection to move it. The wheel scrolls.

### Open dictionaries

Spell-check uses Hunspell `.dic`/`.aff` files (with affix expansion); the thesaurus uses MyThes data. Either may be a local file or an http(s) URL that StarWord downloads and caches.

### Redo + safer exit

An undo and redo history, plus a confirmation dialog whenever you try to leave with unsaved changes (keyboard and mouse friendly).

### Soft / hard returns & reflow

StarWord distinguishes wrap (soft) breaks from `Enter` (hard) breaks. Switching to soft word wrap reflows each paragraph to the margin (joining soft-broken lines, keeping your hard breaks and blank lines); switching back re-wraps. It's reversible (Edit › Undo) with a one-time confirm.

### Resizable screen

Unlike WordStar's fixed 80×25 display, StarWord flows to fit any window. Drag the terminal to any size and the text re-wraps and re-paginates live — a small popup shows the new dimensions as you resize. You can also set a preferred startup width and height in the configuration screen.

### This help system

HTML Help and this What's-New page open in your browser from the Help menu, plus an About box.

## Classic WordStar features, faithfully kept

- The control diamond (`^E ^X ^S ^D`) and the `^K`/`^Q`/`^O`/`^P`/`^J` command menus.
- WordStar 7 pull-down menu bar with the original Alt-key bindings.
- Block operations, place markers 0–9, find & replace with options.
- Dot commands and real pagination (`.pa .pl .mt .mb .he .fo .pn .po .ls .cp`).
- Footnotes, index and table-of-contents entries.
- MailMerge (`.df` / `.rv` / `&variable&`).
- Column (rectangular) block mode and block math.
- On-screen calculator and keystroke macros.
- Document vs non-document modes, and the WSCHANGE-style configuration screen.
- Print preview and print-to-printer.

## Things that work a little differently

Area | WordStar 7 | StarWord
--- | --- | ---
Help | In-program help screens | The Help menu opens HTML help in your browser (the classic `^J` on-screen help is still there too)
Clipboard | Internal blocks only | Internal blocks plus the OS clipboard via `Ctrl+Shift+X/C/V`
Files | 8.3 DOS names, CP437 | Long file names and UTF-8 (`.WSu`)
Print styles | Driven by printer-specific codes | Bold/italic/underline etc. are kept as on-screen markers and rendered logically when printing

## WordStar features intentionally left behind

These were tied to 1990s dot-matrix and daisy-wheel printers and have no modern equivalent, so they are deliberately not implemented:

- Printer pitch changes and raw printer escape sequences.
- Double-strike, overprint and “phantom” character mechanics.
- Micro-justification for fixed-pitch printers.
- Paper-bin / sheet-feeder selection.

Everything that defines the WordStar writing experience is here; only the obsolete printer-hardware plumbing was dropped.

## Modern printing

Printing is built on modern foundations, not 1990s printer codes:

- Windows print dialog — available now. File › Print opens the standard Windows print dialog to choose the printer, orientation, paper size and copies, then prints in a monospaced font. (On Linux/macOS it prints to the default printer.)
- PDF export — available now. File / Layout › Print to PDF writes a paginated, print-ready PDF named after your document (Unicode-faithful, embedded monospaced font) and opens it.

Still on the roadmap:

- Rich style rendering — bold, italic, underline, super/subscript and headings rendered with real fonts instead of fixed-pitch markers.
- Page setup — paper sizes (Letter/A4/…), margins and orientation from a simple settings screen.
- HTML / plain-text export — hand your document off to other modern tools.

These replace WordStar's printer-hardware features with their modern equivalents, so the formatting you mark up on screen carries through to whatever you print or export.