PerfectStar 2k

A modern TUI homage to WordStar for DOS and WordPerfect 5.1 — a real daily-driver writing tool, inspired by Robert J. Sawyer's essay A Writer's Word Processor.

Plain text and Markdown in, prose out. WordStar's touch-typist command language and "long-hand page" metaphor; WordPerfect's clean blue screen and Reveal Codes; a few of Emacs's best ideas (kill ring, incremental search, never-lose undo) folded in where they serve a writer.

cargo run --release -- draft.md

The philosophy

• Hands never leave the home row. Every command is a Ctrl chord with a positional mnemonic. Arrow keys, PgUp/PgDn, Home/End also work — WordStar itself allowed the same.
• The long-hand page. Mark a block now, decide what to do with it hours later. Ten bookmarks. A jump ring that remembers where you were. Notes to yourself (.. lines) that display dimmed and never export.
• Least modal. Writing and editing are one continuum. No modes to enter, no menus to descend for common operations.
• The tool adapts to the writer. Config for theme, menu delay, autosave, wrap margin, and help levels from hand-holding to a completely clean screen.

Keys

The diamond (with ^Q… prefix chords, press the second key plain or with Ctrl):

^E ^S ^D ^X	cursor diamond	^A ^F	word left / right
^W ^Z	scroll line	^R ^C	page up / down
^QS ^QD	line start / end	^QE ^QX	screen top / bottom
^QR ^QC	document top / bottom	^Q, ^Q.	sentence back / forward
^Q[ ^Q]	paragraph back / forward	^QP	previous position (walks the ring)
^QO	outline: jump between Markdown headings	^QN	next misspelled word

Editing:

^G / ^H	delete char / left	^T	delete word
^Y	delete line	^QY	delete to line end
^U	undo (never loses a state; redo = undo an undo)	^N	open line
^QT / ^QG	transpose words / chars	^V	insert / overtype
^QM	record macro	^QJ	play macro

Blocks, bookmarks, and the kill ring:

^KB ^KK	mark block begin / end — whenever you like	^KC ^KV	copy / move block to cursor
^KY	delete block	^KH	hide/show highlight
^KU	toggle previous block	^KW ^KR	write block / read file
^KP	put a clipping; press again to cycle older ones	^QB ^QK ^QV	jump to block begin / end / source
^K0–9	set bookmark	^Q0–9	jump to bookmark

Search, files, screen:

^QF	incremental search	^L	find next
^QA	find & replace (g/n/w options)	Esc / F1	command palette
^KD ^KS	save (atomic, with one-time .bak)	^KX	save & exit
^KQ	quit	^KE	export with .. notes stripped
^KM	export standard-manuscript-format RTF	^OD	Reveal Codes
^OB	cycle theme	^OW ^OR	word wrap / wrap margin
^OH	help level (0 clean · 1 menus · 2 hints)	^OT	typewriter scrolling on/off
^OS	spellcheck on/off	^OA	add word under cursor to personal dictionary
^OK	other window: open a file in a split, or switch focus	^KA	copy the other window's marked block to cursor

Hold any prefix (^K ^Q ^O) briefly and its menu appears, WordStar style.

Two windows

^OK splits the screen and opens a second document below the first (press it again to bounce between them; ^KQ/^KX close just the focused window when two are open). Each window is a complete editing context — its own cursor, undo history, bookmarks, jump ring, and, most importantly, its own marked block, exactly the WordStar feature Sawyer's essay singles out. The kill ring is shared, so ^KY in one window and ^KP in the other moves text between documents — or mark a block in one window and ^KA copies it straight to the cursor in the other.

Sessions

Cursor position, bookmarks, block marks, the jump ring, and full undo history persist per file (under the user data dir — your manuscript's folder stays clean). Reopen a draft and your fingers are still in the pages.

Spellcheck

A bundled Hunspell-compatible en_US dictionary (via spellbook) underlines misspelled words on the fly — no network, no system dictionary required. ^QN jumps to the next one; ^OA adds the word under the cursor to a personal dictionary that's global across every document (essential for character names and invented words) and persists at ~/.config/perfectstar2k/personal_dict.txt. See THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md for the dictionary's attribution.

Manuscript export

^KM writes a standard-manuscript-format RTF — the layout agents and editors expect for fiction submissions: 12pt serif, double-spaced, 1-inch margins, first-line-indented paragraphs, chapters (# headings) starting on a fresh page, *italic*/**bold** rendered as real emphasis (not literal asterisks), and straight quotes/dashes upgraded to typographic ones. .. note lines are stripped, same as ^KE. It's hand-generated RTF — no dependencies, no external converter. (^KE still exists for a plain-text copy with notes stripped.)

Config

~/.config/perfectstar2k/config.toml:

theme = "wp-blue"        # wp-blue | wordstar | terminal
menu_delay_ms = 700
autosave_secs = 60       # 0 disables
wrap = true
wrap_margin = 0          # 0 = window width
help_level = 1           # 0 clean · 1 delayed menus · 2 menus + hint bar
spellcheck = true
typewriter = false       # pin the current line, scroll the page under it
manuscript_font = "times"  # times | courier — for ^KM RTF export

Build

Rust 2024. cargo build --release produces the pstar binary. cargo test runs the buffer/undo/wrap/markdown/rtf unit suites.