Re: XyWrite under Linux

[Wendell Cochran atrypa@xxxxxxxx]

Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 16:46:47 -0800
From: "mike shupp" 

> .... telling an old Linux salt that XyW is a wonderfully
customisable word processor wih various neat features just isn't
going to impress. "You want customization? Use Emacs," is what
you'll likely be told. "You want features? Use Emacs."

> What XyWrite is actually good for is creating thousands of words of
text per day with minimal pain -- AND THAT IS NOT WHAT THE TYPICAL
WORD PROCESSOR USER DOES OR WANTS TO DO.


Yes -- but on a few other hands . . .

Emacs is certainly one way to go. But it's only one of many, & I doubt
that it's the route most often taken even amongst hackers. What's more,
the market for Linux is shifting rapidly from hackers to the run of the
keyboard.

As for `word processor', that generally means a bloated monster like MS
Word, which in 1997 had 1,033 commands (vide Donald Norman, in _The
Invisible Computer_), of which the `typical' user invokes only a dozen
or
so (my guess). The typical user would likely consider XyWrite just
another word processor, & use only a small fraction of its potential.

Here I stress that Linux is not merely a secure & crash-resistant
operating system that performs the same functions as MS's WinDOSe.
Linux is not WinDOSe in disguise. It differs fundamentally.

In Linux (as in any other Unix), a file is independent of the command
that created it, And Linux commands fit together like Lego blocks.
Thus a user replaces MS-style word processing or even desktop publishing
with a series of command executions, the output of one command becoming
the input for another. To me it's flexible automation of writing =>
editing => typesetting => printing as we knew it in the good old
hot-type days.

So Linux doesn't need a word processor, however defined. Such things
violate the Unix principle that each command must do just one thing -- &
do it well.

However -- here my prognostication diverges from Mike's -- the packaging
of Linux is changing even as the kernel & associated elements remain the
same. See especially Red Hat, Mandrake, & SuSE, which are working with
KDE & GNOME to make the Linux desktop appeal to the GUI generation of
home & office users who have never known anything on the screen but
MS Windows.

(Note, too, the common but spurious complaint that Linux lacks
`applications'. The murmurers mean applications that look & work like
_Microsoft_ applications.)

And so, with mass market in mind, commercial evangelists for Linux have
begun to bundle AbiWord, Applix, & WordPerfect 8, as well as the suites
StarOffice & OpenOffice. Hackers (& converts) can always resort to the
command line, or they can invoke X Window plus window managers to devise
custom GUIs at will. Either way, the Linux plethora of choices now
includes word processors.


If AbiWord, why not XyWrite?

Wendell Cochran
West Seattle