Re: XyWrite and XML

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

Carl Distefano wrote:

> Reply to note from "J. R. Fox"  Tue, 03 Jun 2003
> 11:05:12 -0800
>
> Jordan:
>
> > I take it this was more than a simple keyboard macro, in order
> > to test for whether you're at the beginning or the end (itals
> > ON / OFF).
>
> I think Patricia was speaking of the XY4.KBD assignment for Ctrl+I,
> which is a call to a routine named ITALIC in the Xy4 DiaLoG file
> (XY4.DLG).

Not on mine. I'm pretty sure that my kbd assignment for Ctrl-I is one
that
remained unchanged from the default. (But I can't stand the CUA
conventions,
and checked the box NOT to use it, in setting up Xy-4, if that makes any

difference. Here, Ctrl-I inserts a Tab. That's a rather dumb
assignment, in my
view, and not one I ever would have put there myself.

When you're talking about the .DLGs, you're necessarily referring to
stuff that
happens via the drop-down menus, right ? Unless said calls have been
ported to
the KBD file ? I'm a bit confused here, because in my entire usage of
Xy-4, going
on however many years now, I have used the Menu system for just a very
few
specific things -- selecting Typeface & point size being by far the
prime example.
Otherwise, I've mostly ignored it. You know, I had such a wealth of
writing / editing
stuff implemented in my 3+ kbd for so long, which got carried over into
4, that the
Menus seemed irrelevent, and kind of like a set of training wheels for
semi-
competent, brand new Xywriters. (I could be very wrong about that; it
was just
my original impression.)

This impression was bolstered by brief forays into sampling some of the
menu
controls, such as the one for envelope printing, which seemed buggy to
me.
(Unfortunately, I expect that's the kind of thing WURD excels at.)

> (There are analogous frames BOLD, UNDER(line), etc.,
> assigned to Ctrl+B, Ctrl+U, etc.) I've played with it a bit since
> yesterday; my gripe is that, with text DeFined, it doesn't act as a
> toggle. If the DeFined text is MoDe NorMal, it italicizes the
> DeFined block, as you'd expect. But if the block is already
> italicized, it doesn't remove the italics; it embeds  at the
> end of the block, italicizing what follows. That makes no sense,
> and couldn't have been what was intended.

A good XPL routine with conditions-testing could probably do it
much better.

Jordan