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

[russurquhart1@xxxxxxxx]

I would love to see the Xywrite source used as a template to jump off to
bigger and better things. (Isn't Nota Bene in some sense like that
though?)
I agree that we would probably need help, but the Open Source community
is a mixed bag.
Also, at least on the Mac OS X side, over the past few years, I've seen
a lot of different and specific wordprocessor being produced. While some
you see that try and mimic M$ Word, or Open Office, i have seen a lot
that are specific to writing a novel, writing a screenplay, keeping
track of bits of information related to writing your novel/screenplay,
some wordprocessors that mimic the old DOS days with the notion being
that the windowed environments make it distracting when trying to write
creatively. I mention this because it reminds me of the good old days
when Xywrite, Wordperfect, Multimate, Wordstar, etc were all thriving as
well as a lot of smaller specific purpose wordprocessors existed for
DOS. There were a lot of neat choices back then!
Also, on the Mac side, an interesting thing is happening with the Eudora
Mail application. From what i understand, the people that had this
application on the PC, as well as the Mac, Qualcomm, decided to stop
active development on Eudora, and use source from the Mozilla
Thunderbird Mail application as the basis for their NEW version of
Eudora. Long time users of Eudora weren't too happy with the interface
changes and feature changes that this was going to entail. Another
company, Infinity Data Systems, took the task to create a Mail
application, Odysseus, that would offer the features and functionality
of the old Eudora. An important note, they do NOT have the source from
the old Eudora, so they are writing this new application from the ground
up.
They have been offering the beta's for free, as well as offering a low
intro price now, for the released product when complete.
It would be nice to find a company interested in Xywrite they way IDS is
about Eudora!
It'd be nice to have an updated Xywrite. I'd like to have a native
version for OS X.

Russ

On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 12:08 PM, Brian.Henderson@xxxxxxxx wrote:
My original thoughts about an Open Source XyWrite, long before talk
about the actual source code, revolved around writing something new.

I thought, we already have the example of an app, that's not like
anything else available, with attributes that we consider valuable,
and
which we believe would be even more valuable if updated to a modern
form. Having a template like that is a good basis to start from. There
must be someone who would be interested building a modern version.

The real trouble is that it's only us True Believers that have any
interest in such a project, and there doesn't seem to be any among us
with the right abilities. Nor, I think, could any of us "finish" the
mythical 32-bit version even if we were able to get
it,
free and clear.
It would take Deep True Believers to re-invent a XyWrite wheel, and
ones
with the right abilities are pretty unlikely to come along. There is,
though, a small but real possibility of bringing Xy into the 21st
century with the aforementioned "Unicorn Version". I'm sure that a
strong case made to the right crowd would find some interest. At the
very least, there's always plenty of (White Hat)
just-for-the-hell-of-it
hackers out in the wild.

-BH


-----Original Message----- From: russurquhart1@xxxxxxxx
An open source project could only happen if the legitimate owner of
the source code made that code available and designated it as "Open
Source".

Anyone else trying to do that, might open themselve to legal action.
While it's debatable what the outcomes of Open Sourcing Xywrite would
be, IMO best case might see improved functionality if not also more
cross platform support. Worst case would only be what we have now,
which

isn't bad either.

Russ

On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 6:56 AM, Bill Troop wrote:
There is a little talk every now and then that the latest versions of
XyWrite were primarily in C. Is there the smallest chance the source
code could ever form the basis for a project within the huge
open-source community?