RE: R: xy windows [again]

["Frank Kenneth B." KBF@xxxxxxxx]

Actually XyW is so WYSIWYG that we had to do some things to make it less so.
To fully understand WYSIWYG and justification you have to understand the
action of a relatively obscure default setting.

The primary actor here is a default we call "O1" (the letter "O," not zero.)
O1 specifies how XyWrite handles screen/printer font mismatches in graphic
view. The settings are:
0=use printer font widths and do error correction between words
1=use printer font widths and do error correction between characters
2=use screen font widths and do error correction at the end of the line

Because printer resolution is far greater than screen resolution, the first
two settings attempt to place either the start of each word or the start of
each character exactly where it would appear on the printed page. Because
of the mismatch of resolutions and the further effects of rounding, either
of the first two settings result in on-screen justification but, to my way
of viewing, irregular spacing. For either of these cases WYSISYG attempts
to be so accurate I think it is unpleasant to look at. The third setting
was invented to give more pleasing inter-word/character spacing on the
screen, at the expense of accurate character/word placement and viewing
justified line endings.

And, obviously, to see on-screen justification, JU must be 1.

As to SmartWords, I am embarrassed that it has taken this long to get the
material together for distribution, but unfortunately the people who are
responsible for the installs and related materials have been preoccupied
with some major revenue-producing deliverables. I am pressing to get this
released, however, and in the meantime have also arranged with our vendor to
offer a full set of new import-export filters as part of the package. Since
the holidays are upon us, we will commit to making this beta version
available in January.

K.


-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Evans [mailto:peterev@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 1998 7:53 AM
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: R: xy windows [again]


Robert Holmgren:

>If real WYSIWYG is your preference, XyWin delivers
>(albeit in its buggy way).

Er, more or less. Note that there's no effort to represent justification
(which I think is A Good Thing if it speeds things up), but also that using
certain fonts (particularly emboldened ones) causes the right end of your
[printable] text to spill over into the invisible right hand margin when
you're looking at it in graphic mode.

No doubt The Technology Group has it all worked out in *Smart Words* (the
program whose release is merely held up by "the completion of some rather
simple documentation").
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Peter Evans