Re: Goodbye Xy?

[James Besser jbesser@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to note from Harmon Seaver  07/05/96 9:54pm
-0500

>   Isn't this crazy? We revert to XY, essentially because we haven't
> figured out how to use Describe/Starwriter, etc., as well, and it isn't
> easy yet, so we perpetuate the agony

Well, I don't think so; we revert to XyWrite because it's just plain faster. Even on
my 66 mhz machine.
>
> Herb Tyson says he has it doing the same things with the same
> keystrokes, for the most part. I look at Starwriter's keyboard, and --
> although I haven't tried it yet, since I have nothing but German dox --
> it looks as easy to customize as XY's. BUT -- it all takes so much time,
> I spent almost ten years on XY.

If I remember correctly, Herb is using WFW because of the lack of configurability in
DeScribe.

  I'm just not sure -- can you or can't you? In Starwriter, I can choose
> to make the formatting codes visible, so does that mean I can edit them?
> Don't know yet. OTOH, maybe they do it some other way. And, while
> Describe might be a dead horse (and I don't even remotely understand why
> that company decided to fold -- or did they?) but Starwriter is s

I really dislike not being able to manipulate formatting c odes in DeScribe. A while
back, I was working on a 99 page document with some complex formatting. At one
point I wanted to change the margins of indented areas only. With DeScribe, there
was no way to do this except piece by piece. So I converted BACK to XyWrite, did
the job quickly in expanded mode, pumped it b ack into DeScribe.



        ***James D. Besser, Washington correspondent ***
 Fax: 703-978-3675 * E-mail: jbesser@xxxxxxxx or 4212207@xxxxxxxx ***