Re: Version confusion.

[Nathan Sivin nsivin@xxxxxxxx]

I am surprised that Rene claimed XYDOS 3 and 4 use the same user
interface. Probably the strongest advantage of v. 4 is that it
offers, in addition to the old expanded, draft, and formatted
views, a graphic view that lets you see what the printed file
will look like. It is not quite technically WYSIWYG, but the
difference is negligible for the many tasks for which I use the
program. The v. 3 partisans find that view utterly unnecessary,
but I always check it before printing, and it lets me avoid any
number of mistakes. If you dislike super-quasi-WYSIWYG and never
make mistakes, there may well no reason to prefer v. 4.

By the way, you can use v. 4 from a single 1.44MB floppy in DOS
mode or a DOS window. Here is the directory of mine:

EDITOR  EXE    681,664 05-08-95 10:21a EDITOR.EXE
SETTINGS DFL    11,409 07-09-96 9:43a SETTINGS.DFL
ED    DIR     1,184 01-20-00 9:45a ED.DIR
STARTUP INT      251 07-11-96 10:03a STARTUP.INT
XY           01-20-00 9:22a XY
SIVIN  LOG       4 09-25-95 5:32p SIVIN.LOG
ENHANCE DLG     2,704 07-13-96 12:55p ENHANCE.DLG
SAVEGET SGT     1,477 02-08-96 5:40p SAVEGET.SGT
MAIN   DCT    18,604 06-24-96 9:32p MAIN.DCT
XY    BAT      10 07-11-96 9:39a XY.BAT
XN    KBD    14,465 05-11-97 9:57p XN.KBD
COMMAND COM    93,812 08-24-96 11:11a COMMAND.COM
ENHANCE MNU    52,495 05-16-96 10:39p ENHANCE.MNU
ENHANCE SET    12,506 04-23-97 2:27p ENHANCE.SET
XY4   ZIP    224,037 01-20-00 9:39a XY4.zip

    14 file(s)   1,114,622 bytes
     1 dir(s)     31,744 bytes free

This compact configuration does not allow space for the menu and
dialog files, which are in XY4.ZIP. It does, however, use Tim
Baehr's enhancements to the XY commands (ENHANCE.*). Anyone who
wants to use the menu can install the whole thing on the computer
you are using. The \XY subdirectory contains about 20 XPL
programs that are assigned to keys in my keyboard file. They are
not zipped, so they work from the floppy.

Cheers,
--
Nathan Sivin
History and Sociology of Science
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia PA 19104-6304
(215) 898-7454
nsivin@xxxxxxxx