XyWrite Development

[Carter Campbell campbelc@xxxxxxxx]

April 5, 1995

Dear Mr. Frank;

I do not wish to restart the OS wars that raged through this list
a short time ago, but at the risk of doing just that, I want to
add my voice to the concern over you and your company's decision
to concentrate solely on XyWrite development for the MS-Windows
environment.

First of all, I want you to know that I understand your
reluctance to develop an OS/2 variant of XyWrite and, although I
use the operating system myself, I can understand that you may
not have the resources necessary for such an endeavor.
Unfortunate, but enough said on the topic.

The DOS version of the product is a different matter. You
already have the source code and installed user base for this
variant. As such, I cannot see any real reason for your decision
to drop the product. I believe that by doing so, you will
alienate a fair number of your user community.

I personally, do not like MS-Windows and do not use MS-Windows, nor do
I wish to use Windows-specific software (unless I absolutely _must_).
I do not wish to deny MS-Windows users access to software that is
specific to their chosen environment and, likewise, I do not see
why I should be forced to use MS-Windows if I don't want to.
However, that is essentially what you are doing by discontinuing development on
XyDOS. You are telling me that I no longer have a choice, that
if I wish to continue to receive support and to use XyWrite, I
_must_ do so under MS-Windows.

TTG has already done a good job of discouraging me in the past,
but I continued to hang on, as I ultimately believed that you
needed time to get up to speed and the that resulting product
would eventually be as stable as XyWrite III+; that it would be
truly worthy of the XyWrite name. I was wrong.

Currently, XyWrite 4 is fragile (especially in the WYSIWYG mode, which
I need and was the main reason why I upgraded), the graphics
filters are lacking at best, and I have never been able to successfully use
Orbis, ever. It has always locked up my computer if I used it
for more than one operation (indexing, searching, etc.) and did
not restart XyWrite between each operation; on a majority of
computers I have installed and tested it on, it will not run at
all.

Now, with the latest release of XyWrite, I cannot run it on any
computer, end of story. This is quite disheartening after all of
the shenanigans I went through to get it in the first place; I am certain
I singlehandedly turned Jeff Ramsay's hair shocking white.

This being the case, I cannot consider XyDOS to be a complete
product and, with this latest revelation, I do not think that I
will ever have access to a stable version of XyWrite 4. I find this upsetting, as
XyWrite II was the first DOS/IBM programme I learned after I
switched from Apple II's and I have been using and supporting it ever since

Having said all of the above, I can only say this, I am asking,.
. . no, I am begging you to reconsider your decision to
discontinue development on XyDOS. I feel that there is a lot of
work that could be done to stabilize this product and I believe
that there is still good market potential for it. Not all of the
world uses MS-Windows.

Thank you for you time and attention.

     Carter Campbell
     campbelc@xxxxxxxx
     carterc@xxxxxxxx