RE: A plea for clarity --- Yea! Harry

[Thomas A. Robertson]

 From Harry Binswanger
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Some history:

I have claimed for some time that one of the major reasons XyWrite was doomed
to be an obscure word processing program was because those marketing the
program, and those buying it, had no idea of how one learned to write on
computers, what it meant in terms of both simple word output and intellectual
productivity, how writing could be improved, and what the payoffs were.

When the major market cuts were being made in what would be the main word
processors of the future, (the ones dominating the market today) XyQuest (and
TTG) perpetuated conventional market wisdom that the real competition was
WordPerfect or MS Word and that no one knew or cared about what it meant to
function with half the editing keystrokes of competing programs.

XyWrite marketers refused to reinforce the customizability of the program in
their manual, which in fact was a major selling point and one they could use
to distinguish their program from the competition. They failed to make it easy
for users to see that other key assignments may make more sense than the ones
in the manual and never saw the wisdom of promoting diverse Alt.KBDs and key
layouts in their marketing programs. Then by not having the key functions
noted along with the key strokes in the manual, they effectively cut off
acceptance of Alt.KBD setups and options not described in the manual.

This made it so easy, even in organizations with management that saw the
efficiencies of implementing XyWrite, for users to say that not only were they
being forced to use a program that was not used by anyone else (thereby
ruining their job transferability) but that the keyboard layout the
organization's consultant (me) was promoting, was not consistent with the
XyWrite manual.

In the organizations promoting XyWrite, I never found anyone interested in the
fact that by using my keyboard, (and others could probably do it better) users
could do the learning exercise in the XyWrite manual with one third the
keystrokes--and that when you make less key strokes the program is easier to
learn and the job gets done much faster.

Even today, there is virtually no discussion of how the writing process, and
its companion, the finding and access to pertinent references, is made
efficient through the aggressive use of computers.

FYI: Two example of what XyWrite can do:

I have a 120 MHrz Pentium with 32 mb of RAM and 6.5 Gig of hard disk storage.
On this system, I have used Partition Magic to set up my hard drive partitions
and a program called Virtual CD-ROM that lets me take CD-ROM content and store
it on the hard drive for both near instant and simultaneous (no juke box
hunting) access of the following reference sources:
o Oxford English Dictionary
o Microsoft Bookshelf
o Microsoft Encarta
o Microsoft Encarta Atlas
o The Encyclopedia Britannica
o U.S. Political reference
o and two specialized reference databases
All can be open at the same time and are easily, though not perfectly accessed
and open for data transfer to DOS-based XyWrite through a Win95 window.

My biggest problem with the above is learning to go after info on my system,
instead of assuming that it would simply be too hard to find.

MS Word97, which is rapidly becoming able to do much of what XyWrite can do,
(and even with fast systems is not as quick as XyWrite) shares with
WordPerfect (I believe) a major failing. You are not able, as you can easily
do in XyWrite, assign a specific XyWrite window (small "w") to a specific key.
This means that my "Notes" file, which is on my Shift-8 on the numberpad
keyboard, always comes up as my "Notes" location with the file loaded
accordingly. I have found no way to do same in Word97, and find an interesting
lack of interest in this feature by their tech people.

And so it goes.

TR...