Re: Is XY-Write a word-processor or a text editor?

[Leslie Bialler lb136@xxxxxxxx]

Michael Edwards wrote:

>                          Michael Edwards.
>
>   Thanks for the various points of view. On the whole the answer seems to be
> what I expected.

[Leslie Bialler:]

>>By today's standards, the latter [a text editor]. Back in the long ago, when
>>it was born, it would have been considered a full-featured word-processor, but
>>by today's standards it is a text editor--which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
----------------------------------------

[Michael Edwards]

   >Maybe that won't matter. But what kinds of things are the ones it *can't*
do (that render it a text editor by today's standards)?

Aha! Glad you ask. Well for starters, neither XyWrite in its various versions, nor
Nota Bene, features a paperclip (which I can understand can be converted into a cat)
that suddenly appears and tells you it will help you write a letter. If you do not
wish to have the th in 20th nor the st in 21st set as superscripts, it will not
insist upon it. If you start a paragraph with a number, it will not automatically
assume, when you type the second paragraph, that you wish it to start with the
number 2. Nor does XyWrite attempt to offer itself up to you as a desktop publishing
program. It sensibly assumes that if you want to desktop publish, you will purchase
Quark or something very much like it, and allow it to fulfill your needs in that
direction.

On the other hand, in XyWrite (I've not tried it in Nota Bene) you will not easily
be able to pop in pictures, text objects, or tables. Shading and bordering is
harder. It is not easy to get multiple columns to work well. The spellchecker is
primitive. Setting styles is harder to do but, once you get the hang of it, just as
sophisticated as Word's.

I report, you decide.

--
Leslie Bialler, Columbia University Press
lb136@xxxxxxxx
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