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Re: We should move en masse to Nota Bene

I have been running Xy as a VM for 3 years on the Mac. That works pretty
well, except that you slow down the other XP programs a bit (not terribly,
but I'm a speed demon). There is some fiddling needed almost daily between
what peripherals are assigned to the host and what to the guest. But
running XP as a VM on Win7 has a worse drawback: confusion. When the host
was a Mac and the guest was XP, it was quite clear "where" you were. When
both are Windows, and both have a C: drive and both have a Program Files
directory and many other same-named directories, it gets very confusing. I
want to get away from that.


One stopgap I've considered is restricting the VM to just XyWrite, keeping
even the XPL files run by Xy on the host machine. If I could restrict
things in that way, it might be feasible. But even there, it's not fully
clear to me what "goes with" Xy and what can be extricated.



Just thing how much easier it would be to continue using XyWrite. Install
Virtual XP in Win 7-64 and it's difficult to find problems. You won't have
to worry about betas or new versions either. Meanwhile, how does XY4 work
on Win 8?



On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 2:11 AM, Harry Binswanger
<mailto:hb@xxxxxxxxhb@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm devastated to hear that there are problems running XPL. That's my main
concern. Is Dave Erickson still working for them?


I suppose I could use NB9 until the XPL problems are resolved. That 9 ran
XPL quite competently (if not too rapidly).


--Harry


Harry

I have been thinking along similar lines for some time although I might
approach the issue slightly differently. I've been working with NB10 for
a couple of betas now and find the basic word processor much better than
NB9 in terms of cleanness of the interface and text window -- I get much
less 'noise' with NB10 that I do with NB9. It even offers different
styles so that in common parlance it can be skinned. This is probably not
of much interest to most XY users but I find you can tweak some of the
styles to increase menu font size, for example.


What works less well at the moment with NB10 is compatibility with XPL
programming and particularly many of the routines within U2. I do not
know enough about XPL and XYWrite to come close to identifying what the
problems might be but as of beta 7 they are still major. NB is generally
sympathetic to the needs of former XY users and I have had quite a lot of
useful contact with Steve recently. HOWEVER, their overriding concern is
to get all the basic functions that their main user base needs working
solidly. Once that is achieved then I think they can be persuaded to pay
more attention to other issues, and I can accept that as reasonable.


My own wish is that NB10 should be capable of running everything in U2.
(Or virtually everything: there will be some routines that are no longer
necessary such as ANSI compatibility that I have recently been wrestling
with.) I too would like to see more users on the group trying out NB10
and identifying its weaknesses. The collective technical expertise within
the group could probably help pinpoint issues that, for example, prevent
U2 routines from functioning correctly. I'm sure there will be strength
in numbers when it comes to negotiating with NB and for that reason alone
I would encourage all of us who are able to embrace NB10 and help it on
its way. It should work: as far as I can see -- which may not be very far
-- it utilises the same underlying engine and philosophy as our beloved XY4.



Paul Breeze

On 19/12/2012 16:53, Harry Binswanger wrote:
Having bought a Win 7 machine, I've been giving a lot of thought to
this, and I think we XyWriters are in an unsustainable position. 16-bit
DOS XyWrite is drifting ever further back into the mists of history.
Fortunately, Nota Bene is our lifeline.

I've been trying using a VM (Parallels Workstation) to run XP in Win 7.
It works, yes, but with such mental and computer overhead that I'm
thinking I am going to struggle with NB 10, 64 bit, so that I can
continue gaining the advantages of the XyWrite engine.

As I see it, the situation is this: we can spend our time either on the
complexities of getting things the way we want in a VM (note the
extended back-and-forths here on DOSBox) or invest roughly the same time
in getting things the way we want in NB. The advantage of the latter is
that for the same time spent, we create a setup that carries forward
into the future.

It would be considerably easier to make the Xy-to-NB transition if we
had each other (especially Carl) to email to. I suppose that would mean
either a large number of us moving to the NB list, which I gather is
presently too nontechnical for us, or staying on this list but devoting
a large part of it (a sublist?) to things NB-related.

Comments?


--Harry