Re: House Call

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

Robert Holmgren wrote:
> Regrettably, XyWrite does not "just work", even on a DOS or
> Windows PC. The main (some might say only) reason to use it is
> configurability -- which is not merely an option but a
> necessity.
Well, my memory isn't what it was, and I certainly hesitate to
differ on such a matter with Robert, but my recollection is that
when I first started using Xy (under, IIRC, DrDOS 6), it did
"just work." I soon, being an inveterate tinkerer, started
tweaking, and had it doing some neat tricks; the first, I think,
was printing real case fraction halves and quarters (ASC 171 &
172) on an Epson RX80, which did not natively contain those chars
in its car set. Of course, the RX80 had a REAL manual.

I can see that even out of the box, Xy would have powerful
attraction for people who just want to write: no fancy formatting
if you don't want or need it (but impressive capabilities if you
do), no need to take your hands off the keyboard to mouse around,
the ability to store snippets of text to macros (other WPs don't
do that: a macro--at least as far as I've been able to find
out--is a procedure, not a string).

But that said, I think the "I don't want to know how" attitude
can be dangerous. Obviously, if you have to do it over again, as
I said. But even more because if you don't know how and why,
you'll be stumped when the smallest thing goes wrong. Yes, we're
all willing to help, but the person with the problem needs to do
some preliminary debugging (advice I need to take myself
sometimes), and for that one needs some idea of what's going on.

Yes, vita brevis, ars longa, as I am more and more aware of. And
sometimes one's own time, being also worth money, is better spent
doing one's own work and paying someone else to do the tech
stuff. But I never make that decision without some regret: I
should really like to know as much as I can about these
fascinating--if maddening--machines.

--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx