Nested Conditionals & Other Stuff

[Robert Holmgren]

 Well, as a mindless test I just nested conditional  statements to
100 levels, which is plenty for me. It works. You know, a change like this
means a lot to me; it's a Big Deal. It ought to mean something to you too.
It's one tiny step toward refuting the old (substantially true) charge that XPL
is primitive. (Actually, I've always felt that XPL was uncannily suited to
manipulating a word processor, although horribly inappropriate for math or any
other task.) It's crazy that improvements like this aren't publicized or
mentioned anywhere.

 I must say, I haven't bothered to run any comparative tests, but XPL feels
pretty lively these days. Really zips right along. All in all, XyWrite is
looking up. I just wish they (Baltimore) would leave the BBS in Billerica, and
phone in (participate!) like we ordinary non-OEM single-copy folk do. Kenneth
Frank in particular. Robert Hemenway's report (msg 9644) that Frank is
personally responding on CI$ incites me to a violent mood. CI$ is **VERY**
expensive and **VERY** cumbersome to use. May we infer that CI$ is the place
Frank phones to measure the public|user interest?? Grrrrrr...

 I know it doesn't sound progressive, but I'm sure that opening the BBS to all
& sundry without charge will simply degrade the quality of the BBS. Free
phones are the policy in Baltimore right now. Result? A plague of low level
questions, an energy drain for whoever is responding (=degraded response
quality), and a time drain for everyone else. Plus, you know yourself that
with serious technical issues, Baltimore is clueless. All versus the
possibility of new blood. If you have enough traffic to justify, you might
want to establish a few different Conferences -- not too many, but enough to
steer people productively. For example,
  beginner questions
  tech issues (advanced questions; Conf.Host=Billerica)
  extensions + 3rd-party utilities (e.g. W4W, or XPL programs)
  bug reports
  suggestions (i.e. where are we going? rant|rail at Frank et al.)
  private (user can DL this week's EDITOR.EXE bug fix with a password)
 The problem with having one single arena (as currently) is that you get a few
gladiators and a lot of wallflowers...