XyWrite 3+ vs. Xy 4 for DOS

[W BECHSTEIN CXI00541@xxxxxxxx]

After a conversation with a friend who still sticks with the
venerable XyWrite 3 Plus (of which I also was a longtime user),
I happened to make a mental list of some reasons why I now prefer
XyWrite 4 (for DOS). I thought I might as well put this up here,
in rough and ready form, just as it popped into my mind. I
realize that other people will have their own pet peeves and
preferences, so this is nothing more than one man's opinion. But
anyhow, here goes.

        Some advantages of Xy4DOS over Xy3+

 Unlimited undelete buffer (I used to have my own XPL program for
 that, but now it is an integrated feature.)

 No 64K limit on defined blocks

 Command line stack (very handy)

 More memory free when shelling to DOS

 Proper wildcard handling is available on both sides of the
 search/replace string (replacing all occurrences of xyz
 with abc is now possible).

 The graphic view is nothing to write home about (especially since
 Xy4Win handles this aspect of course much better), but after a lot
 of fiddling, I have found a graphic view setting in Xy4DOS which is
 quite easy to read and has proven helpful for quick on-screen
 proofreading; I notice that I spot more mistakes in it than in text
 view (alas never all).

 The German-language thesaurus (surprisingly good) and spell checker
 of Signature can be used.

 Alt-Save/gets work also on the command line.

 The files are fully compatible with Xy4Win.

  (I never got into Orbis or Ibid because of all the bug reports,
  and because Lotus Magellan--another orphaned great idea--handles
  my text indexing needs just fine.)

             And on the downside:

 Program startup and handling of large files are ever so
slightly slower.

 Setting up the program required some fiddling, especially since the
 page format is handled differently. Line width etc. is no longer
 specified in characters but in (take your pick) inches, centimeters,
 millimeters, points, picas, Didots or 0.1 inches. The latter is what I
 chose, since one deci-inch actually corresponds to one text-mode
 character width in Xy3.

 The memory limit on personal SPL files seems to be considerably lower
 than in Xy3.

 The organization of the help system is much worse; there is no more
 "by word" search across the entire help text and one cannot jump back
 and forth between an open file and a particular help screen.

 AND OF COURSE THE MAJOR, REAL, TRUE UPPER-CASE BUMMER IS THAT
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROGRAM HAS ALL BUT CEASED. THE TECHNOLOGY GROUP
 NEEDED ABOUT A YEAR TO READY AN 'UPGRADE' FROM 4.015 to 4.016, AND
 I'M VIRTUALLY SURE THAT NO SUBSTANTIAL DEVELOPMENT IS IN THE WORKS.
 (WOULD LOVE TO BE PROVEN WRONG, THOUGH).

Wolfgang Bechstein CXI00541@xxxxxxxx
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