Re: XyWrite and C (in the 21st century)

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

Robert Holmgren wrote:
>  They're
> irrelevant to an editor (a.k.a. "EDITOR.EXE"). I'm a writer,
> not a printer. A-Z, 0-9.

Maybe to a writer, but not to a copy editor. The time I have
spent cleaning up the copy of people who don't know the
difference among a hyphen, an n dash, and an em dash, not to
mention those who use a solidus (/) for any and all of them, has
been considerable. I agree, over-formatted text is a plague and a
bane, but total ignorance of typography (which is most certainly
not Robert's case) can lead to problems too. For another example,
an author who knows about case fractions (as opposed to 1/2; when
the fraction is supposed to be used, not written in words, of
course) saves an editor a lot of time.

And "those funny little marks foreigners use" (as most Americans
think of accents) are things we must get used to in the global
economy. But Ansified XY seems to meet most of that.
As far as DTP goes, the problem is that DTP programs seem to have
been devised by people who never read a book. If all one needs to
do is flow text evenly from page to page, and the heavily
graphical UI of most DTP programs is off-putting and uncongenial
(as it is to many word persons), it is tempting to try and make
Xy or some other WP into a DTP app. But one cannot. Take
feathering, or vertical justification. That is the ability to
finagle the line spacing so that facing pages seem to be the same
length, even when they're not. Which they often cannot be if one
is to avoid widows and orphans. No mere WP can do it. Well, I've
heard that Weird can, but am not willing to have that piece of
detritus on a system of mine long enough to prove or disprove the
claim.
--
Patricia M. Godfrey
priscamg@xxxxxxxx