Re: XyWrite's future - NB 10 or something different?

["Carl Distefano" cld@xxxxxxxx]

Reply to note from Kari Eveli  Sat, 07 Mar 2015
16:56:04 +0200

> Xy should move to 64-bit.

No argument there, Kari -- though I've never been able to see a clear
path forward to that dream. More bluntly, I don't see it happening,
ever. As for alternatives, most of the powerful editing packages that
I'm aware of, including the ones you mention and SublimeText,
mentioned by Manuel, seem to have specialized focuses, such as line
editing/code editing, math, science, etc. Ideally I would want an
editor which, like XyWrite, is primarily focused on free-form text,
and which has XyWrite's configurability and programmability. I'd be
happy to give up XPL for a more user-friendly scripting language,
such as Python, provided that it's as tightly integrated with the
editing engine as XPL is with EDITOR.EXE. (Nota Bene is not an option
for me as it's veered off into a development direction that is far
removed from my interests, and a world away from its XyWrite roots.)

My two main uses for XyWrite are as a an editor for minimally-
formatted text and as a gateway to Windows and Windows applications.
For the foreseeable future I've found a near-ideal solution in Xy4 +
U2 + XyPy + vDosXy. Peter/catastrophicanomaly's vDos fork came like
manna from heaven just when I needed it. For the more-elaborately
formatted documents I need to produce at work, I'm required to use
Word, which, frankly, I find suitable enough to the task (though with
commonly-known frustrations). (Word along with its Office mates also
has the advantage, whether earned or not, of being the lingua franca
of the business world.) I'd be delighted, though, to explore and use
a XyWrite-like 64-bit word processor if one, or a reasonable
facsimile of one, could be found.

Finally, I will say that I can fully relate to your frustration with
Xy3/NB3's memory limitations; this was probably the primary reason
(along with the enhancements to XPL) that I embraced XyWrite 4 when
it replaced Signature. In fact, I don't understand how you can even
edit a 3 Meg document in v3. In my experience, Xy3 became flaky with
documents larger than 500KB (which thankfully back then I rarely had
to deal with). It also barfed on directory listings of more than a
couple of hundred files -- an immense frustration. Xy4 does not blink
at documents of 3-4 Megs, and with Robert's BigEdit U2 add-on I
routinely edit documents of several tens or *hundreds* of Megs.
(Unfortunately, I can't get BigEdit to work reliably under vDosXy,
but I did write a poor man's substitute, called BigEd, which
replicates most of BigEdit's essential functions.)

This is a topic of intense interest here, and I'm sure others will
weigh in.

--
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxx