XyWrite under Win95, email programs

[Harry Binswanger hb@xxxxxxxx]

To Michael Edwards:
As one who has been using Xy for 15 years, as operating systems have
evolved, I say to you: fear not.
This is all plain vanilla stuff--Win95 *is* DOS; it has a pretty interface,
but the works underneath are DOS. It is very congenial to Xy, and Xy
doesn't do "funny things" with memory. It could be that your F3 buffer is
getting wiped out by Xy being run, I suppose. But chances are that even
that is due to something that needs to be set somewhere.
You don't need to actually go through DOS and type editor.exe. Just make up
a desktop icon for Xy. You know how do that, right? There are a few
"Properties" settings you'll want to make, for convenience. Some have been
mentioned, but I'd add: under the Miscellaneous tab (in the Properties
dialogue box), at the bottom there is "Windows Shortcut Keys." All should
be checked *except* ctrl-esc, which you may need if you run macros--in Xy,
ctrl-esc stops a macro if it gets into trouble.
If you run in other than 25 vertical line mode, there may be problems with
the display not clearing properly. At least I've had them, maybe other
XyWriters can speak to that.
The delay on startup is probably due to Xy running its initialization file,
STARTUP.INT. Depending on the speed of your machine, that can take anywhere
from 1/2 to 4 seconds. You can look at startup.int--and even edit it--in Xy.
As to email programs, I also recommend Eudora. Again, fear not. If it can
import Outlook Express files, I can't imagine it does so by doing anything
to your old files, only by making a copy for itself. But backing up first
is always a good idea.
Eudora keeps its messages in plain ASCII (Dos text), and I suspect Outlook
does, too. Every day I use Xy to edit Eudora mailbox files (they are files
ending in .mbx). Eudora is robust and forgiving, not finicky. For instance,
in Xy I just made a new file named test.mbx and typed in the following:

 From ???@??? Tue Jun 11 18:46:00 2002

Hello there sports fans.
Harry
Then I saved it in Xy and opened Eudora. There appeared a new mailbox
called "test" and the message was there. You do need the first line,
however, with the strange ???@??? etc.
You can also use Xy to edit Eudora's address book, which is a file called
nndbase.txt.
You are probably not going to do any of this stuff, but I mention it to
show you that Eudora is simple and forgiving and that XyWrite is an
all-purpose editor. And maybe others on the list will want to try this kind
of thing.
(One caution: don't edit any Eudora files while Eudora is running. Close it
first, then re-open it when you've finished editing and saved your changes. )
I even have two copies of Eudora, from different directories, running at
the same time--one for personal mail and one for an email list I moderate.
They don't interfere with each other.
Bottom line: yes, there are snags from time to time with XyWrite and
Eudora, but they aren't mysterious and won't do anything bad to your setup
or your life.

--Harry



Harry Binswanger
hb@xxxxxxxx