Binswanger's Overwrite query

[Jane Van Tassel 101233.342@xxxxxxxx]

Binswanger asked (in part), "under what circumstances is overwrite valuable? I,
and most others apparently, NEVER use it."

The first few responses seem to suggest that "most others apparently" isn't
quite right.

But I'm convinced that the real point of Harry's question is that It Doesn't
Matter. It is blindingly easy to switch between overwrite and insert; and what
is to me particularly striking is how much easier it is to understand *how* and
*why* the two modes work in XyW -- as compared with (say) MS Word, where I
always have the sensation that the software is taking my thoughts around the
back somewhere out of sight and doing things to them that the program doesn't
want me to see.

So the whole question turns into yet another opportunity for me to thank my
stars that the computer guru at Princeton University Press let me in on the
excessively well-guarded secret of (as it was then) Billericay.

HOWEVER, one of the differences between XyWin and XyDOS 4 is that in the Windows
kludge the cursor looks the same whichever mode you're in; in the DOS version,
there are two different cursor shapes. The only real drawback to overwrite -- I
find this particularly hazardous in writing XPL -- is that you can lose some
text that you can't easily recover. But (for instance) I couldn't do without
overwrite when I want to write a whole series of search-and-replace subroutines
into an XPL program.

As to Fisher's comment that in certain situations overwrite requires
substantially fewer keystrokes than insert -- I've just made a mental survey of
my own habits, and I find that when I'm revising an existing text I use a
mixture of overwrite and insert. But when I go over to Insert, to avoid
overwriting phrases or even single words that I'm retaining in the revised
version, the combinations Ctrl+Delete and Ctrl+Back-Delete save a lot of extra
effort.

Incidentally, I wonder if anyone else who uses Compuserve finds that its
clumsiness in text inputting is a spectacularly good advertisement for
overwrite. You don't realize how useful it is till you don't have it. And that
applies, _a fortiori_, to whole-word deletion: if there's a way to do that in
Compuserve I haven't discovered it.

Cheers,
Eric Van Tassel


PS: This is still being introduced as "Re: Workaround (Binswanger)" -- could
correspondents update their subject-lines a little more frequently?