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 sequences required for the terminal and printer had to be identified in the hardware documentation, then hand-entered 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. 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' groups during that time.
DOS versions of WordStar at least had standardized the screen display, but still had to be customized for different printers.
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