In the 80's in business non-verbal communication was by physically moving printed pieces of paper from desk to desk. Producing these was noisy and laborious. Laser printers in were an absolute breakthrough technology and together with print focussed word processors optimized that paradigm to its peak.

In today's world, does word perfect give you anything that markdown in obsidian doesn't? (other than weird key bindings and file format)

Maybe it does - distraction-free writing is a thing. Something vibed off wordstar but made more relevant could be pretty cool.

Vibe coding sounds easy 'cause the ai makes all the work. but it's much easier to code per hand because ai can make mistakes that a human don't see. also you have to prompt in the right way. if you don't prompt "right" the ai makes a thing you don't want you can write the ai "write me a word clone" and the ai gives you a simple texteditor code where you can write text and save it but you haven't hypermarker, ruler, image inserts, video inserts, link previews, etc. so you have to describe the ai exactly what you want into the least detail. thats very complex so most developers don't vibe code or vibe code only easy parts or complex parts that takes usually months to develope but a ai can do this in 10 seconds if you prompt "right". usually you use prebuild projects.

Maybe one issue is that word processors from the 80s are not described in sufficient detail on today's web.

yeah that's a true point. But that also means that a human can't code it either. except the person comes from that time so the person has to be over 40 years old and can code or can prompt in the "right" way that the ai can reproduce this.

It is easier to run them in DOSBOX-X than vibe code them.