XY4 on Android--yes

[Jon P xywrite4@xxxxxxxx]

Now that I have an outboard keyboard for my Android tablet (10" Samsung), I thought that just for the heck of it I'd see if the tablet would run XY4.

Yes. In the Google Play store there is a free version of DOSBox called aDOSBox. I downloaded that.
 DOSBox sets the Samsung's internal memory as its virtual C:\ drive.  So I copied the XY
directory (with editor.exe, xywwweb, thesaurus, etc.) from my XP computer to the internal memory of
the Samsung. (Not using the Win7 version because startup.int and the .kbd have been tweaked to run
in XP Mode and communicate with Win7.)

With DOSBox open, CD XY put me in my XY folder and then ed.bat (just editor.exe, no TAME) started
XY4. I could CAll files that are full-screen and crisp. 

So far so good. But wait a minute--there are no function keys on this Android keyboard!  I
could tap the screen to move the cursor back and forth to the command line, but really...

So I made a new .kbd file, xy4andr.kbd, and assigned two-letter function key calls to the numbers
1-0 on Table = Alt. Links to the manuals are broken on xywrite.com, but I found some NB versions.

http://www.notabene.com/download/nbhelp/cpg-a4.pdf

http://www.penticoff.com/nb/help/codelist.htm

(Googling around later I also saw that the keys numbered 59 and up are the Function keys under Table
= in the .kbd file. But those all start with "Qn," before the two-letter command, and some
are different, and these are working, so I'm not going to mess with them.)

My .kbd file is still based on XY4-3.kbd, which kept the XY3 keyboard assignments in XY4. Of course
it's full of little things I've added through the years, too. But if anyone wants a copy of my
XY4andr.kbd, you're welcome to it. 

Anyway, I've got the functions (and my little macros) working and can cycle through 3 windows (all
I've tried so far) and paste between adjacent ones. Holding down the ALT button and then releasing
it brings up the menus, and I can tab through them--although I couldn't for a while, and I'm not
sure what changed. 

Sometimes I can tab through the Microlytics thesaurus, sometimes it won't move past the first
synonym. (This had something to do with toggling NumLock in  Windows, but there is no NumLock
on the Android. If anyone has suggestions, let me know.) 

DOSBox ignores (or uses for itself) CTRL+ key assignments, so I had to move some macros (like the
thesaurus, which was CTRL-T, and search, which was CTRL-F) into TABLE=ALT (now ALT-T and ALT-F).
I'll move some other former CTRL functions into TABLE=ALT as well. 

But anyway, our beloved familiar window is there, full-screen and responsive.  To export a file
out of DOSBox's C:\XY is actually easier than exporting from XP Mode to Win7. The XY folder is in
the tablet's main memory, not virtualized.  I save the file with a .txt extension and then use
Android word processing software (Kingsoft Office is a good free MS Office clone) to find it in XY.
(Actually, XY4 displays keystrokes instantly, a little faster than Kingsoft does.)

It's mostly proof of concept so far. More tweaks and annoyances to follow, no doubt, and it's
unlikely that anyone is writing an Android-to-DOSBox version of the invaluable CLIP.exe. But there's
a certain charm in knowing the old warhorse still gallops. 

Jon Pareles