Windows vs. DOS XyWrite

[Jack Shafer 71011.3715@xxxxxxxx]

Andrew,

I've suffered the transition from XyWrite III+ to XyWin with only a few tears.

My biggest problem was the keyboard. XyWin is CUA compliant, which, among other
things, means that the Alt key activates the menu bar. Because the geography of
the XyDos keyboard is second nature to my hands, I rewrote the living hell out
of the keyboard and threw a dip switch on my Northgate keyboard to shuffle the
Control, Alt, and Caps Lock keys to make it as much like XyDOS as I could (I'll
tell you more if you're interested.)

XyWin can be configured to look like XyDOS--clean screen with command line at
the top--if you go through the Advanced/Preference menu. I personally think TTG
should have shipped the XyDOS look-and-feel as an installation option to help
people with the transistion.

The advantages of XyWin are mostly Windows related. If you're running other
Windows applications, it makes for easy task switching and Clipboarding. The
Random House Dictionary Thesaurus runs nicely, too. Printing is a breeze. XyWin
makes automatic backups of open windows, a feature that has saved me countless
times when the power has gone out or somebody has bumped the reset button on my
computer. Most XPL programs and macros that I used under XyDOS work with XyWin.
XyWin also saves your most recent deletions and preserves the most recent
command line requests.

Drawbacks: The cusor looks the same in insert and overstrike. cc:Mail support
exists, but isn't seamless because you must key in name and password every time
you pass off from XyWin to cc:Mail, even if cc:Mail is on your desktop. (If
Kenneth Frank of TTG is listening in, I'm still waiting to hear from you on
this.) Other wordprocessors can be imported, but there is no autorecognition,
and Word 6 isn't supported.

Bottom Line: The best word processor is the one you know the best. I knew XyDOS
very well, so I'm predisposed to XyWin, even though I'll never conquer the
world with it. XyWin is a bother, but it's worth it.

--Jack Shafer