Re: XyWhere?

[Bob Brody brody@xxxxxxxx]

On Tue, 20 Aug 1996, R Tennenbaum wrote:

> Bob --
>
> Looks like we've got a live one, now.

Well, when I visit a foreign country, a coup d'etat breaks out (I
think the CIA has me down as some kind of international agitator),
when I write an editorial for the newspaper, wannabe Unabombers log
into the Internet to find out how to make letter-bombs, and when I
post a note to a discussion, blood pressures percolate if not
errupt. Alas, there's the stricture from screenplay writing 101,
"Where there's agreement, there's boredom."

>You really ought to check out some of the stuff in the
>ccat.sas.upenn.edu archives

Yup, already have. Did that first, actually, since what and how
people script for a program tells me a lot about the program.
XyWrite is an extensible program (a concept alien to many people,
particularly if they're only familiar with DOS/Mac platforms) and
while XPL as an extensible programming language should be taken out
back and shot, it does at least provide for some good extensions
even though I've often felt core XyWrite and XPL have some kind of
love/hate relationship going on. Alas, where there's agreement
there's boredom. :)

Anyway, back to cases, I'm consumed by a project that requires
Windows95 (in preparation for shifting it to NT) and am not
experiencing problems with Win95. Plus I'm developing a comfort
zone with '95 that I'm finding rather agreeable. Unlike Andy Glass
who won't share his secret for getting younger with each passing
year, I'm getting older. I'm not averse to a few comforts.

Consequently, '95 is the focus since that's where the userbase is
for this project, and respective peripheral projects. We have a
superb extension written to Word for Windows95 because Winword95 is
also where the userbase is. I thought of sticking in XyWrite for
Windows and/or DOS 4.xx for my own use. I dunno. Still might. If
high-speed raw text input were all I needed, Xy 3.55 or 4.xx would
more than suffice, same as any of the excellent extensible ASCII
editors would. While writing is certainly the locus of the work, my
needs are more involved and incorporate live links to data, file
sharing across nets and within certain research institutions, etc.
To start in yet again with things like explaining to people you run
this macro to run this program to remove these Ctrl-Z's, or so
forth, isn't where I want to be. Been there, done that, don't wish
to drive 'cross country in reverse.

Best regards,

Bob