Re: XyWrite Development

[kfrank@xxxxxxxx]

Annie Fisher asked several questions about III+ compatibility. I
have looked into them and have some information:

   "Because I find the restrictions on xyWrite MV and CP confining and weird, I
   don't use the functions in xpl or .kbd files. I put text on the stack
   unconditionally with the define and remove functions (DF/DF/RD, RP, RW,
   etc.), and get it--often after I've ernv'd the file it came from--with the
   unconditional UD.

   As far as I can tell, Signature/xyWrite 4 wiped out the concept of v3
   DF/DF/RD ... UD. With the, uh, casual v4 documentation it's difficult to to
   be sure. You say quite definitively that I am making a mistake: Can you say
   with the same certainty that xyDos 4 will now treat my .kbd and xpl UDs
   exactly the way v3 does?"

I am not sure what restrictions Annie is referring to about MV
and CP, but in III+ defines, moves and copies were all
restricted to the current text buffer, which was always smaller
than 64k, somcetimes even smaller than 32k. This restriction
has been removed in Xy4 and XyWin. If you are referring to
something else, let me know.

I'm not sure Signature had anything to do with any of this, but
in Xy4 we added the concept of an undelete stack, which allows
you by setting the values for D1 (see p. 18 of the customizaton
guide) to specify a stack of deletions for later undeletion. If
you use this capability, it does affect the unconditional UD,
since deletions are stored differently.

If you turn the undelete stack off, however, (d1=0) UD will
continue to work exactly as it did in III+.

   "The UD change was reason enough by itself for me to uninstall v4, but--after
   reading that even RE had been tampered with--the last straw was finding that
   Signature/v4 treated lower-case mode codes as errors. What a porting
   nightmare! Am I really making a mistake in supposing that that case
   restriction remains?"

I am not aware of any change to RE. What are you referring to?
And which RE are you talking about, the command or XPL function?

Finally, I am not aware that we ever had a problem with case in
mode commands, but I can tell you that I do not experience any
problems with them now. If you put them in manually from the
command line Xy4 or XyWin converts them to upper case, but it
doesn't care when it processes mode commands whether they are
upper, lower or mixed case.

It does not appear to me that any of the things you describe are
problems today, whether or not they may have been in the past.

K.