For Ken Frank re: past present future

[holmgrn@xxxxxxxx]

> To begin with, what other products (Windows especially)
> continue to offer to the user such a rich array of options
> to take the product into his/her own hands and shape it to
> their liking? What other companies continue to enhance > this
capability in parallel to their interface development?

None. Look, I'm not an agent provocateur from Lotus or M$!
I do _use_ XyWrite. I'm grateful for those options and for
XyWrite's continuing existence, which, frankly, amazes me. I
believe we owe it to you. And I grasp your views. There's no
dispute about the millions lured into computing by easy
-to-use interfaces. It's a growing part of the American ethos
(which we're rapidly foisting on the rest of the world) that
attainments can be "easy": education, work, money, happiness.
Very few people, when they flick on a switch, actually have the
dimmest (sic) understanding of electricity or why the bulb
lights. They never think about it. They're not even curious.
So what else is new? Most computer users belong in the niche
that Apple described as
"the rest of" them. If the goal is simply to broaden usage,
which funnels money into the industry to build faster machines
and software, & thereby further expands demand (and onward and
upward), then there's your masses, yearning to Xyurf.

You "guarantee" that you'd be trampled if you abstained from that
madness. Well, I'm not privy to your balance sheet, so
I can't argue the point -- but I think its the core question. I
won't presume to tell you how to run your company. But I have no
hesitation to expound my own business philosophy (I have run, and
now own, several):
 Narrowest/deepest possible niche. Top quality (this
 is not just jargon; it means targeting a workplace
 where there's such exposure that you're recognized
 as the best in the world, or at least unique at
 what you do). Inflexibly small size. Absolute caps
 on growth. Breathtaking level of service (astound
 the client, who is convinced you're "the best" -- and
 he's right, too). Charge more than the competition.
Restraining growth is the big difficulty. At a certain point, I
simply stop working. I do what I can with a few people, and
that's it; if I can't accomplish it this year, I do it next.
Growth has its own internal momentum, requiring ever larger
quantities of capital, sales, employees, infrastructure,
complexity, stress, not to mention the pressure of impatient
investors.
I fail utterly to see the necessity of that. Very few people, I
observe, seem able to say, Hey, we've made enough money, enough
is enough -- let's go home. They're trapped in the belief that
there's never enough, that there can't be enough.

So, no, if I were in your shoes, never would I go after a share
of the market amongst the big guys. In fact, I think its
laughable futile & wasteful -- as ridiculous as you think my
letter to TBaehr was. (I lived in India for ten years, and one
of my teacher's capsule consciousness-gulf sayings was, "He is
laughing at you, and you are laughing at him.") Look what's
actually happening out there. Who's left among the large wp
players of a decade ago, who tried to compete head-to-head? The
market is already apportioned. You believe that "the product
might have continued to enjoy greater popularity if it had taken
a more aggressive parallel track earlier than it did." Frankly,
I don't believe that XyQuest is capable of pursuing both of these
tracks at a standout level. My own sense is that
XyQuest has alienated *many more* users, over the years, by its
immense condescension, lack of communication, and glacial
unresponsiveness to problems, than brand new users acquired by
appealing to CommonUI instincts.

You speak as if you have been affiliated with XyQuest since the
beginning. Is that true? If so, you must realize that there
have been huge waves of defections, and most of these occurred,
not during the post-III+ two-track period, but in the era of
XyWrite's greatest acclaim. I believe that it had to do with
channeling energy into A la carte instead of into the
perfectionism and power refinements that users sought and found
in XyWrite. BTW, you and TBaehr both impute to me an opposition
to implementing complex procedures via the Menus (read: XPL), as
opposed to crotzing them out on the CMline, which is just absurd.
Of course one automates these things! That's what XPL is for.
That's what EDITOR is for.

Imagine, if you will, the impression that it makes when the chief
programmer and co-owner of the company calls you up long distance
at 11 PM, tells you to load DEBUG, and proceeds to patch
EDITOR.EXE by verbal telephone instruction so that it works for
you, because your bloody Diablo serial printer is non-standard,
and you haven't been able to print for a couple of days. That's
a small company that cares.
Now imagine the taste in your mouth when you try to print a
plain-vanilla 300 page text with totally standard formatting
chained over four files onto a totally standard HP laser, there's
a total breakdown of EDITOR, and you're told that this elementary
word processing failure isn't "high priority", and it
subsequently takes ten weeks to make the fix and print the text.
Well, that's the same company, ten years later, overwhelmed and
out of focus. I was so embarrassed on XyQuest's behalf that for
weeks, until I started getting this "not high priority"
, that I kept it a secret, and was doubting my
own convictions about
XyWrite. I mean, the _reason_ we don't have a site license for
lots of copies in XyWrite here is that everybody thinks
I'm crazy, they all use WordPerf, and I'm not authoritarian.
That's the truth of it. My _own_ _son_ uses Word Perfect -- in
MY house!

If you don't like "triumphantly anti-standard", would you accept
proudly or exultantly individualistic? Because that's what they
were -- and excuse me, they were on or near the top of the heap,
triumphant, at least critically and amongst power users, at that
time. So now you're, what, a proud marcher in the back of Bill
Gates' band? Lemme ask you, you didn't like partnership with
IBM, but now you think its good to be in partnership with
Microsoft where they own the premier programs and the operating
systems and all the betting money and the marbles? Are you gonna
tell me that you have no choice? Get out of there! Those people
are racketeers and brutes. Here's a guy who stuck us with a
1970s OS for 15 years, and he's your future?

I think you're darn lucky to have the fanatic support of a hard
core of hard heads like us. Who try to offer constructive,
off-payroll criticism, as a kind of "loyal opposition". Who
don't badmouth XyWrite "outside". Believe it or not, we want
XyWrite to succeed.

But I think you should be less thin skinned about criticism, and
not try to shush M. Fisher up so blatantly, but listen to what
people say and feel without getting bent out of shape, or taking
it personally. Believe me, it's much worse over on RIME, the
RelayNet XyWrite Conference. When Fisher speaks about a
longstanding mindset, an institutional culture that is
"remarkably uncommunicative", for me it rings a real bell. If
you want, I'll happily rehearse my experiences. Or, if you're
curious what I think XyWrite could be in the future instead of a
Windows applet, I'll be happy... Time's up.


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Robert J. Holmgren holmgrn@xxxxxxxx
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