Pivot monitors (XY,NBW)

[Nathan Sivin nsivin@xxxxxxxx]

I just encountered an interesting difference between XYWin and
NBWin. When I bought my current computer 18 months ago, I had
planned to buy an LCD monitor, but they had doubled in price a
couple of weeks earlier (how's that for timing?)! The prices have
just dropped to *below* the 1999 level, so I just got a Princeton
Senergy 560 15" model to use in digital mode.

One of my main desiderata was a pivoting model. Like most
writers, to me a portrait monitor makes much better sense than a
landscape one. As with other Windows word processors, a display
in portrait mode shows an entire page at once, full size. That
the screen area of this 15" LCD monitor is 9 x 12", a touch
larger than that of a 17" CRT. Despite the need for a new
graphics card with digital output, it was easy to install and is
delightful to use, filling the screen at 768x1024 resolution.

I mention this because my fellow subscribers may find it handy to
know that under Win98SE:

(a) XyDOS 4.018 works in landscape configuration only. If you
have pivoted the monitor, you will see the screen sideways until
you pivot it back to landscape.

(b) XyWin 4.12 also works in landscape configuration only. It
opens if the screen is vertical, but hangs if you try to open a
file and sits there until you perform the 3-finger salute.

(c) NB 5.3 (which I now also use for linguistically uncomplicated
files) works perfectly in both portrait and landscape.

Cheers,
--
Nathan Sivin
History and Sociology of Science
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia PA 19104-6304
(215) 898-7454
nsivin@xxxxxxxx