Replies to old questions

[TBaehr@xxxxxxxx]

Harry: it's Tim Baehr, return address tbaehr@xxxxxxxx (Harry
pointed out that some Internet readers don't include the header
info).

I've been going over old posts, and have some comments that may
be helpful.
1. Jim Besser wanted to know how to set sort order. Rather than
do surgery on XY4.DLG, you could put BX dsort d,r Q2 in the
Startup file (for Date, Reverse). The routine in DLG looks to see if you've already set it and
forces F,E only if it finds nothing.
2. If you're getting an error on getting to the open file options
dialog, it may indeed be because you either don't have conversion
filters installed (and therefore no TEXTIN.FLT file) or because
XyWrite isn't "pointing to" the right location. If you never
want to use filters, the easiest way to get to the options dialog
may be to create a file called TEXTIN.FLT with just the word
 in it (you don't even need that). Then in Settings.dfl,
put in the line "default ww=c:\xy4\" or whatever the location is
of your TEXTIN.FLT file. This, I expect, will fool XyWrite into
thinking you've got filters.
 TTG folks: You should address this -- maybe force the
installation of at least one filter. Restart XyWrite and see if
it works. I haven't had time to try it, so let me know if it
doesn't.
3. Oh, that pesky "%"! Yes, you can do BX sa
%≪pv1234≫,filename Q2 to save
Save/Get 1234 to a file. But within the routine under a K frame,
you need to put in a second "%": BX sa %%≪pv1234≫,filename Q2.
 I forgot that once and spent a couple of hours spinning my
wheels. I haven't tried Joe Solla's fix using a 3-byte "%" --
bravo to him for discovering it.
4. Speaking of Joe, he wanted to know if Xy4 4.017 would fix the
OF command.
 Sorry, that was a design decision (one that I didn't like
either) to make OF a page-oriented item and use IP for adjusting
inward from the offset margins.
 If you want a header that's a different width from the text, you
have to set overall widest text area with OF and use IP to adjust
inward from there. A pain in the keester, but there it is.
5. Unitary -- I like that word, too (was Carl the first to use it
here?).
 With a couple of exceptions, Xy4DOS is a very happy program in a
Windows environment. I don't miss button bars, and don't use 'em
in "real" Windows apps either. I'd like to see Xy4DOS do
TrueType and be able to drag and drop frame areas. And I'd like
better integration into a Windows-based fax product (a pipe
dream, since I doubt that any DOS word processor could use
Windows printer drivers, which is the way we get into the fax
stuff). XyWin is, in my book, a dog as it's delivered now. GPFs
all over the place, and an unreadable draft font. Pretty,
though. But I'll stick with the gray-on-IBMblue draft screen and
the ability to see WYSIWYG text when I need it. And, despite all
the added features, Xy4DOS is still _fast_. I even run
XyWrite in an old OS/2 partition at work, and it's fine there. I
can save files as RTF files and use them directly in Lotus Notes
or the occasional
Word 6 (lots of GPFs there, plus inexplicable lockups -- on a 16
Meg 486/66) doc. Xy4DOS *is*, for my purposes, a cross-platform
"unitary" product.
6. Charles Herold had a lot to say a couple months back, and here
are just a few responses. (a) The bug fix to get III+ to stop
truncating long files is called XyWrite 4. Guess you can't
upgrade in reverse! (b) You're right, the
DR default for double tempfile locations doesn't seem to work in
DOS. Don't know about XyWin. Bigger problem is that XyWrite in
both platforms craps out with files longer than about 4.2 meg
(yup, I have a couple -- they're not word processing documents
but huge data files of English sentences; some are over 20 meg!).
 Kenny, Dave, and others are aware of the problem, and I hope to
heck they're close to a solution. (c) You're right, you can't load
DICT.SPL because it's a binary file from Microlytics. Offhand, I
don't know how you'd pre-load it at the beginning of a session.
One thing you could do if XyWrite always comes up with a file
open (default UN=1 will do it) is to type Ctrl+F7 first thing. I
believe this loads the speller in order to check one word. You
can't do it in STARTUP.INT because you've got to have a file open
first. I spoze you could have STARTUP.INT do an NE command and then the
SO function call (type pfun SO from the command line), but I've
not tested it. (d) Accidental accented E: you may be hitting
Ctrl+apostrophe after typing the E. I do that sometimes when I'm
aiming for Shift+apostrophe.

BTW -- I've discovered that I have a couple of files containing
nearly all of the VA defaults, with info on how they're used, and
so on. I'm trying to figure out a way to format or reformat them
so they can be e-mailed (they're old XyWin/Signature files,
nearly 100K total, and in column table format).
 Another problem is that they may be proprietary info belonging
to TTG (tho I really doubt it -- the openness of XyWrite is
legendary.) (OTOH, they may actually be in the manuals; I don't
have them here at home. I'll check
Monday.)

So: Kenny, if you're out there -- can I share this VA stuff with
the folks if it isn't already in the docs?