Just a few idle comments

[wolfie@xxxxxxxx (Wolfgang Bechstein)]

After a month's absence from my desk, I am now skimming through
accumulated messages on this list. I must say that I find it a
very welcome development that Mr. Frank and other TTG persons are
now posting opinions and advice in public. Although that doesn't
turn TTG into the most user-friendly company overnight, it
certainly helps to get a more balanced picture.

As to the question of what kind of person 'the typical Xy user' is,
I don't think that only heavy-hitter power user types can benefit
from this program. I know quite a few people (translators,
mostly) who had versions of XyDOS set up for them and who worked
quite happily and productively with them but who never went
beyond inserting a couple of foreign-language characters in the
keyboard file (if that). Of course, such users are (and in fact,
have been) quite easily lured away when the tide turns. Many of
them are now WordPerfect or Word for Windows users.
The ones who are still here (and who probably represent the
majority on this list) are those who enjoy delving deeply into
the inner workings of the tools they use and shape them to their
liking. I myself probably fall somewhere in the middle between
those two categories. I did a fair amount of tweaking in the
first few years and constructed my own programs. I had an
unlimited undelete stack and a quit-and-resume routine long
before these features turned up in Xy 4, but now I mostly just
want to _use_ the software I have and not have to fiddle too long
to achieve a certain task.

If I were TTG, I'd try to concentrate on reaching a focused
audience. If it is feasible in terms of costs, an ad campaign in
publications such as
The New York Review of Books, as was suggested here, might indeed
be a good idea. Since the major software stores don't seem to
carry Xy, this probably would also mean direct marketing by the
TTG. And please, set up a reliable database of existing users and
contact them on every new release.
Some time ago, I was rather skeptical about the probability of
there being any new releases to inform people of, but recent
traffic on this list has made me somewhat more hopeful again.

                =o=o=o=

Finally, regarding the blatant OS/2 propaganda contained in
virtually every message by a certain user whom I hardly need to
name, I agree most heartily with Richard J. Williams who wrote on
March 30:

> If you don't like Windows/Microsoft, fine, but I'm not sure this is the
> forum to vent your spleen. [...] let's try to keep the discussions on a
> professional level, and leave the sniping and gloating out.

Wolfgang Bechstein
wolfie@xxxxxxxx
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