RE: Millenarianism (was: Xywrite)

["Frank Kenneth B." KBF@xxxxxxxx]

The only Y2k issue we are aware of is the display of a 2000 year in a DIR
listing. That has been fixed in the SmartWords version of the code, but it
is not presently clear as to whether patches will be built for older
versions.

K.

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Evans [mailto:peterev@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 1998 9:53 PM
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Millenarianism (was: Xywrite)


For the Arizona Highways Magazine, XyWrite III+

>is working great but I've found out that it
>not year 2000 compatible and there is no fix planned.

My questions are: (i) How is it incompatible? and (ii) So what?

I don't have XyWrite III+ on this hard disk any more and so can't
experiment, but I can imagine that perhaps the DA [insert current date]
command wouldn't work. As far as I remember, Xy III+ has little in the way
of--hmm, what's it called?--"groupware" or "revision tracking" features;
and if there are fewer features, there are fewer to go wrong.

>My question is what version would be good to switch to.

I'd imagine--but don't claim to know--that the Y2K (in)compatibilities of
XyWrite 4 (DOS) and XyWrite for Windows will be the same. Although I use
and am pretty happy with XyWin, I think it's universally accepted that: (i)
it's buggier than the DOS version (the arguments are over just how buggered
up it is); (ii) in draft mode (not attempting to represent TrueType fonts
etc., on the screen), it's less easily legible than the DOS version. I'd
have great difficulty recommending Xy4DOS to the GUI-addicted masses, but
if your people are used to and happy with Xy3, my guess is that--after some
initial confusions and irritations--they'd be happy with Xy4DOS as well.

But really, I thought Y2K glitches were likely to do such things as stall
elevators (whose moronic "intelligent" chips would think their servicing
was decades overdue). I don't see how it's going to cause problems for a
lean and mean word processor used by people who are bright enough to be
writing for a magazine in these competitive times.

As for Y2K in general . . . pardon the plagiarism, but lemme quote from the
HUMANIST mailing list:

>    Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 15:06:08 -0400
>    From: John_Lavagnino@xxxxxxxx
>    Subject: Re: 12.0040 gleanings: sex, chips and a serious bug
>
>Willard writes, in summarizing the Guardian's coverage of the Year
>2000 problem:
>
>|  There are some very sober people with very sobering things to say
>|  about this crisis, e.g. Ed Yourdon, "doyen of American
>|  programming", who thinks the crisis will have about the same
>|  impact as the OPEC oil crisis in the 70s.
>
>Ah, Ed Yourdon... Some of us are grizzled enough to remember his
>predictions in the early 1980s that the Japanese were going to take
>over the programming industry completely within a few years. But then
>if you went around saying that come 2000 things will probably just
>stumble along day-to-day pretty much the way they do now, that
>wouldn't be news, would it?

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Peter Evans