Except that WordStar 4 has a delete key. Actually, WordStar has a lot more editing capability than a lot of the "minimal" text editors that have been the rage the last few years.
I don't advocate that we should all follow GRRM's lead for our writing, but I'm wondering whether the race to introduce text editors with ever-decreasing functionality is actually taking us somewhere particularly useful. In 1994, I could run a DOS word processor called Nota Bene that supported movement, selection, deletion and transposition by word, sentence, line, paragraph and phrase, and could near-instantly index and do Google-esque boolean searches on entire project folders, showing you search terms in context. (And of course it had its own multiple file, window and clipboard support, IIRC with multiple clipboards.) While the editors are surely a lot prettier twenty years later, could we stop dicking around with ways to prevent me from editing and start coming up with ways to help me edit better?
I don't advocate that we should all follow GRRM's lead for our writing, but I'm wondering whether the race to introduce text editors with ever-decreasing functionality is actually taking us somewhere particularly useful. In 1994, I could run a DOS word processor called Nota Bene that supported movement, selection, deletion and transposition by word, sentence, line, paragraph and phrase, and could near-instantly index and do Google-esque boolean searches on entire project folders, showing you search terms in context. (And of course it had its own multiple file, window and clipboard support, IIRC with multiple clipboards.) While the editors are surely a lot prettier twenty years later, could we stop dicking around with ways to prevent me from editing and start coming up with ways to help me edit better?