Re: XyIII+ in WinXP

[Mark Garvey mark.garvey@xxxxxxxx]

Thanks, Harry. I do like the looks of that screenshot. I'll be
experimenting with TameDOS. And, yes, IV, eventually.



Harry Binswanger wrote:


Thanks, Harry. I'll play around more with the windowed mode--and I'll
check out TameDOS, which I assume I can find via the archive. Why do
you prefer the window vs full-screen mode?


For one thing, with TameDOS, I can get a 43 or 50 line display in
windowed mode.


I've put up a screen shot (that includes some examples of bold,
underline, and italics a la Tame) at:

http://www.hblist.com/Tame-Xy.jpg

 But even without that, I feel "blind" when the screen is filled with
XyWrite and I can't get to my other programs (except by alt-Tab).
There are other benefits, such as easier access to copy-paste.
XYWWWEB.U2, however, has a facility for copying-pasting back and forth
between Xy and any Windows program. Indispensable.



I do own a copy of IV, and I may give it a shot again. At one time I
was into XPL, but my interest now is pretty much purely in having Xy
back as a writing interface--so, speaking from ignorance here--I'm
not sure what advantages IV would bring in that regard.


One feature that's great is wildcards in search and replace (III has
wildcards only in Search). Say you have paragraphs numbered thus:


1) Blah, blah, blah .....

2) More blah, blah, blah ....

3) Ditto ..............

Suppose you have 30 such, and you want to change the parens to
periods. How do you do that in III? You either write an XPL program or
you do 30 Searches for the wildcard for any number followed by a
paren, then each time manually make the change of each paren to
period. With IV, you can do one Change Invisible--here, I'm using N to
mean the red wildcard for any number:


ci /N)/N./

The meaning of that is: change any number followed by a right
parenthesis to THAT SAME NUMBER WHATEVER IT IS followed by a period.
(Now you'd have to take steps to make sure you're changing only the
"hits" you intended to change, but that's a detail.)


I think Robert Holmgren has posted on the advantages of IV over III+,
but it might be hard to locate that in the Archives.




On 7/13/07, Harry Binswanger
mailto:hb@xxxxxxxxhb@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Mark wrote:

windowed mode

>have no effect on the full-screen font; it seems to stay the same no
font--I'm just
the

>full-screen font.

I recommend not using full-screen mode. A window, as large as you
want it,
is really preferable, once you get used to seeing the Windows
taskbar, etc.
around its edges. OTOH, in full-screen mode there is no latency with
the

cursor movement. On the third hand, you can get a really nice windowed
screen with no cursor latency by using TameDOS.

Also, there's the fabulous quasi-plug-in XYWWWEB.U2. I forget
whether that
is fully compatible with Xy III+, not having used that version in
over a

decade. Even we stick-to-the-tried-and-true-old-programs people tend to
regard Xy IV as a very valuable upgrade. True, it's not a necessary
upgrade, but once tried you'll never go back. And it doesn't require
much

at all in the way of departing from III+ procedures. As I recall, for
normal uses, you can 95% control it as if it were III+. The sands of
time

may have erased the birthing pains from my memory--I do know I was very
suspicious of Xy IV when it first came out, and I still have my list of
"problems"--all of which look very stupid to me now, in hindsight.
And now
there's this group to help with any questions you have. Of course,
you may

have to wait 8 hours for an answer. :-)


Harry Binswanger
mailto:hb@xxxxxxxxhb@xxxxxxxx



Harry Binswanger
hb@xxxxxxxx