Typing shorthand.

["Michael Edwards" mje@xxxxxxxx]

                         Michael Edwards.

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[Morris Krok:]

How to speed up our typing. Without changing from a qwert keyboard to dvorak,
use the word expansion program that comes with Xywrite. The AR function will
expand an abbreviation for a word or sentence to their completed form....
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   I didn't understand the detail in the several paragraphs that followed
this, but it does sound impressive, if I've got the gist of it right. I'm even
beginning to wonder if XY-Write migiht be the word-processing program I've been
looking for in vain for years.

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I have gone one step further by writing a simple program that enables me to type
in shortform without using the space bar and then expanding whatever has been
written when the key for that program is pressed. When this method is used, the
full word is typed when you do not know the shortform or no shortform exists for
the word. This is how I would type a line.

#nw/z/t/ti/f/all/gd/m/men/to/cm/to/t/aid/v/toz/n/distress.

when expanded it reads as follows

Now is the time for all good many men to come to the aid of those in distress.

By typing in this manner, typing becomes very silent as the space bar makes a
noise in comparison. You will also note that it changed the first letter of the
sentence into a capital.
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   I have a bit of a quibble with this last suggestion. Surely typing the
slash key would greatly slow down typing because its position is much less
convenient than the space bar. I could type the complete sentence far faster
than the shorthand version given above. The above example seems to save about
1/5 of the keystrokes - but this saving would (for me at least) be *more* than
outweighed by the inconvenience of using the slash key so often.

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If anyone is interested I will send my entire shorthand file, as well as the
program to run it.
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   When I get XY-Write (which I feel fairly sure I will - the more I hear
about it, the better it seems), I would definitely be interested to try it out;
I've done Turbo Pascal programming in the past, and even contemplated writing my
own program to do something along these lines. XY-Write sounds as if it must be
very powerful and versatile if it can do things like this.
   I'd like to see this, and try it out when I get XY-WRite. But could you
please send it in a plain-text e-mail, not H.T.M.L.? If you are using Outlook
Express and are not sure how to make this adjustment, I can tell you how to do
it, on request - and it will, to the best of my understanding, stop this
problem.
   I'm personally a bit less worried about this virus now that I seem to be
immune to it, but I realize other people may be vulnerable. But still, the
presence of it (even in spite of my apparent immunity) makes me rather nervous
around this list. And if I buy XY-Write, I want to stay on it.

             Regards,
             Michael Edwards.