RE: Netscape, XyWrite, and the Media

["Tom Robertson" t1r@xxxxxxxx]

Dear Folks:

If anyone "gave" anything away in this personal computer
business, it was IBM, in the early days of this technologies
development.

Its worth remembering that in the birthing days of DOS, if one
wanted to write, there were a number of programs embedded in the
diverse world of users. In business, there was Multimate, IBM's
DisplayWrite, NBI, Lexitron, and a bunch of CPM leftovers. I was
involved with way four large organizations made their way through
this mess. The dominant factor was the opinion of folks who ran
word processing pools, who did not want to learn the programs
they had spent their lives learning and had no interest in going
to a new program because it was more "efficient."

In fact, during all this time, the main factor in word processing
software decision was formed by how much the new program was like
the last program. The idea that one program operated with far
more functionality with one third or less relatively easy to
remember keystrokes was functionally irrelevant.

Years later, when IBM did its little flirt with Signature, I
thought, "Hot dog! These are the people who designed the 101 key
keyboard, and surely there will be folks there who will
understand "keyboarding efficiency" particularly as related to
writing, so we could get on with the show. I was mistaken. No one
at IBM that I could find, and I had top level access, really had
any overall idea of how computers are used in writing and thus
there was no one who could understand the efficiencies available
from XyWrite/Signature.

Nor did XyQuest or as far as I can tell nor does Technology Group
or NotaBene.

As for XyWrite. Using a setup I customized for writing, I could
do the learning demo XyWrite shipped with their program with
about twenty percent less keystrokes, which were easier to
remember than the standard version XyWrite, and tended to get
people into thinking of how they could use the program to do what
they wanted to do and do as easily as possible. It simply made
sense that if you could do your work with twenty percent less
keystrokes, your productivity was increased by both the reduced
demand on learning keystrokes and the fact that in your writing
operation, the computer became essentially invisible.

By the 1990s, WordPerfect has pretty much blown away the
competition. To do equivalent work, my custom keyboard took
almost half the keystrokes for general writing as WordImPerfect,
but it made no difference. "People see WordPerfect as the
standard, so it does not make any difference if another program
is better. We will stay with the standard."

Its almost funny that one of the reasons people are resisting the
now-almost-universal shift-over to MS Word is because they do not
want to lose the "reveal codes" feature of WordPerfect. Most
writers I know who use WP have up to a quarter of the screen
taken up by the "reveal codes" window so they can manage what WP
was never able to clean up in the program. It takes about a half
day to show someone who is interested how they can use MS Word
and not have to mess with and lose screen space to the "reveal
codes" business.

All the while, XyWrite had a far superior "reveal codes" feature
that few of the people I taught the program to ever messed with.

Today, I backstop about ten users of XyWrite. None will go to
Word, mainly because they do not want to go from an invisible
word crafting process to the In-Your-Face environment offered by
MS Word. And while Word is getting better, the good writing
features are becoming an increasingly small and easily lost part
of the whole software package and its increasing focus on
Internet integration.

Now here is what I see interesting here. In Microsoft Internet
Explorer, with a text-oriented web page on the screen, go to the
menu line and hit View, and then Source. What you will see is a
page full of  which are essentially a similar format to
XyWrite. Thus, in my view, the programming used in support of
writing may be coming full circle, with most of the code for
writing simply embedded in the document itself.

As for "Windows (which Mr. Binswanger says he curses daily

My clients an I use Windows 98 Second Edition. I would hear of a
crash if anyone had one, and it does not seem to happen. The
program never crashes with me, and my most accident prone client,
who on occasion has had two versions of XyWrite open when she
needed more than nine windows to work in, has also never had a
crash--and I would hear from her instantly if she did.

Maybe a parallel focus of this list should be on making Win982nd
Ed work the way it should with XyWrite.

I cannot see ever leaving XyWrite, and I also see myself
operating in the Microsoft operating program environment well
into the foreseeable future.

How can we make it so folks like Mr. Binswanger and others do not
"curse daily" what should be a productive and pleasant working
environment.

Better yet, what can be done to constantly increase the ease and
productivity of the writing process.

Of course a lot of these kinds of questions are daily answered in
this list, for which I am ever grateful.

TR

Thomas A. Robertson
529 10th Street, SE
Washington, D.C. 20003-2807
Phone: (202) 543-7545
Fax: (202) 543-7622
e:Mail: t1r@xxxxxxxx


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-xywrite@xxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-xywrite@xxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Harry
Binswanger
Sent: Monday, February 21, 2000 8:35 PM
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Netscape, XyWrite, and the Media


>If giving a near-monopoly on the operating system to a company
that wants to
>sell *applications* is such a great idea, how about 

Guess who "gave" MS the "near-monopoly"? Users. By their
purchases. It was
not a Government 5-year Plan that did it. Nor can such a plan fix
things.

I'm hoping the new fusion of Apple and Linux will provide a
better
alternative than Windows (which I curse daily).

Harry Binswanger
hb@xxxxxxxx