Re: XyWrite and TeX

[Leslie Bialler lb136@xxxxxxxx]

Harry Binswanger wrote:

> > Of course it makes sense to recommend XyWrite. Those people who are
> > having trouble getting it to run under XP are simply not following
> > the instructions that have been given time and again on this site.
> >
> >
> > Learn them! Follow them! Love them!
>
>
> Leslie, the instructions do not work perfectly for all systems. I have
> had a nightmare with XP on my new computer. And because it's a laptop,
> working in full-screen is not a good option (too slow to switch back
> to windowed mode for using other apps).


Interesting. I wouldn't know. I hate laptops.

> After a lot of sweat and brow-scratching, I have most of my problems
> solved. But the cursor is too slow (even in full screen). Characters
> lag just a bit behind my typing, too.


Do you have your default ks=0,0?

> XP with XyDOS on a laptop (and I have the latest 3.2 Gig HP) is, well,
> just satisfactory.


For me it zooms.

> I've downloaded a trial of VPC to see if the answer is to run Xy
> inside a Win9x emulation. I'm also curious about Nota Bene, which at
> least I was finally able to install under XP (which I couldn't under
> Win98, but that was something weird about my particular setup).


Sounds to me like piling emulations on top of emulations. That trick
never works.


> What I can understand is why the average user puts up with all the bad
> new software. My wife suggests that most people not only restrict
> themselves to Word, Outlook, and I.E. (never doing anything unusual),
> but they do not customize anything and they just take things as they
> come, as if they were facts of nature. If, in XP, it takes 8 steps
> through menus just to search for a file, and if a little doggie comes
> on the screen, well, that's just the way it is, they feel.


Aw! I like the little doggie.

> This is wholly alien to me. I know it's an old canard, but going back
> to the mid-80s, why and how did IBM put over the change from the XT
> keyboard to the AT (the removal of the function keys on the left and
> the putting of ctrl and alt in absurd positions).


Because that's the way it was on the old selectric keyboards, and on all
typewriters back unto the early twentieth century. Caps lock, shift.


I miss the Royal Standard keyboard from the mid-1950s, which had an
elongated tab key about where the return key would turn up on electric
models. You could hit it with your palm. I miss it but I don't expect to
see it again. And for sure I don't spend any time whining about it.


> Harry Binswanger
> hb@xxxxxxxx


--
Leslie Bialler, Columbia University Press
lb136@xxxxxxxx
61 W. 62 St, NYC 10023
212-459-0600 X7109 (phone) 212-459-3677 (fax)
> http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup