Column Tables

["Thomas J. Hawley" tjh@xxxxxxxx]

I've been working with the XYDOS 4.017 Column Table feature in connection
with a project which requires this capability. This is not one of
Xywrite's strong points, to say the least, and it seems to be amply endowed
with quirks and erratic behavior.

One of the more troublesome is when the text in a cell disappears and
reappears, seemingly at random but perhaps somehow related to cursor
movement, sometimes with the text at the right margin appearing without its
initial character, and so forth.

Has anyone discovered a way to make Column Tables work smoothly? Are there
some secrets, or is this just a poorly implemented feature that is best
avoided?

What I need to do is place blocks of text side-by-side, what the 1970's
vintage text editor I once used called "parallel paragraphs." The XY
Snaking Column feature, in conjunction with the Break Column command, can
be used to force this effect, but it doesn't keep the blocks "parallel"
across a page break. And as far as I know, there's no other way in XY to
do this.

Staying in Draft View, where the text blocks are displayed sequentially
rather than side-by-side helps a bit. Any other suggestions would be most
welcome.

 Tom Hawley
 Burke & Parsons, New York
 tjh@xxxxxxxx