Development Activities Sound Wonderful

[Stephen Shaw sshaw@xxxxxxxx]

I am delighted by the description of your new product. I am especially
pleased by:
 1) the creativity reflected ;
 2) the integration of other emerging standards such as HTML and Visual Basic.

I have many questions, but understand that the best clarification will be
provided by the release of the product itself.

With anticipation,
Steve Shaw



At 05:32 PM 4/10/96 EDT, Ken Frank wrote:
>A number of you have asked me recently about the current status of our
products
>and new releases. This is probably as good a time as any to respond.
>
>First, we are nearing completion of the first beta installment of our new
>product. We should be starting internal testing in a couple of weeks, and
>begin more earnest beta testing within several weeks after that. Didn't quite
>make 1st quarter, but we're close.
>
>I referred to the "first installment" of the beta because the full set of
>functionality for this product will not be complete until some time this
>summer, and we are building and testing it in stages, partially to accomodate
>some applications for the product we are building with third parties, and
>partially because the breadth of the functionality is such that it will take
>that long to full implement everything. You should also be aware that it is
>highly likely that this new release will have a new name.
>
>While I don't want to go into too much detail here, a broad outline of the
>product as fully implemented includes the following:
>
>1. A tight integration with several categories of databases.
>
>	a. The product will be able to incorporate data from traditional
>relational databases as either merge data or in boolean expressions used to
>control conditional text. An optional Data Dictionary module allows design
and
>creation of databases, dialog boxes, menus, etc. Data dialog boxes as well as
>interactive Q&A sequences of dialog boxes are accessible from within a
>document; data incorporated in text is highlighted and can be changed
>simultaneously in the document and in the database.
>	b. Text objects may be stored in libraries and organized for re-use
>using graphical outlining tools. Objects in these libraries may be organized
>into multiple topical outlines. Text may be physically stored in a
document or
>incorporated by reference to the library. Multi-user access to libraries is
>supported.
>	c.  Full text search and retrieval for user-definable textbases.
>
>2. Full collapsible outline capabilities
>
>3. Vastly improved user interface incorporating vertical and horizontal
>rulers, dockable button bars, tabbed dialog boxes to manage settings,
"post-it"
>style notes, preview boxes, retention of the command line, of course, and much
>more. Developer toolkits for the entire interface will be available in Visual
>Basic.
>
>4. Font selection in draft mode will probably be supported.
>
>5. User definable command delimiters, e.g. "<" and ">".
>
>6. Expansion of style capabilities including nested styles, end style (e.g.
>"/STYLE") functions and elimination of "US" as a required prefix to use of a
>style.
>	
>7. Optional internal "journal" stores a record of every change; provides
>permanent "undo" and "redo" as well as version control and comparison
>capabilities.
>
>8. Through a combination of 5 & 6 used with external style definition files,
>as well as some possible native processing, tagging, display or printing of a
>variety of tagged materials will be possible, including HTML, SGML etc.
>
>9. Hypertext-like "Jumps" to labels within files, as well as tagging portions
>of text and calling external sources, like help files, passing associated
>key-words, by clicking on the tagged text.
>
>10. Embedded visual basic and XPL as internal programming languages.
>
>There are a number of other features I have not mentioned, but this should
give
>you an idea of what is coming. So far the major tradeoff for all of this
>functionality seems to be load time, but as we get closer to release I am sure
>we can make some improvements there. Internal performance is still as good as
>ever.
>
>The first testable version of the product will focus on the items discussed at
>the beginning of the list. Those functions enable development of integrated
>applications combining data and variable text in a number of interesting ways.
> Current projects underway for third-parties utilizing these capabilities
>include "shrink-wrapped" expert systems for the legal market producing a
>variety of types of documents from information about particular transactions,
>intelligent query interpreters for database products, and automatic production
>of NIH Grant Applications for research institutions to name a few. This
>version will be able to process both standard and "smart" documents.
>
>The next phase, probably 1-2 months after the initial version, will be
expanded
>to include the style and tagging capabilities, and the embedded VB programming
>language.
>
>
>This is a very exciting product. All who have seen it have been impressed,
>including a number of long-term XyWrite users. I am always interested in your
>feedback, and have no doubt you will give it to me!
>
>K.
>
>