Re: Rescue Xy3

[Myron Gochnauer goch@xxxxxxxx]

Leslie Bialler wrote:

> >> Doesn't it bother you that something as unique and
> >> wonderful as XyWrite 3 will never be allowed to reach its own kind of
> >> perfection?
> >Well, no. Actually XyWrite 3 was perfection in its time. But that time is
> past. A '57 Chevy hardtop, in two-toned white and yellow (Populuxe
> defined!) was as good as it got. For 1957. But would you want to drive it
> now as your day-to-day car? I doubt it.

I say this in good humour, so imagine a smile...

I accept that XyIII speaks of another time and that the intervening years
have brought genuine improvements in the technology. But the analogy with
that lovely old Chevy can be misleading. Current family sedans are, on the
whole, safer, easier to maintain, more fuel efficient and less wasteful of
resources. No one in their right mind would choose the 57 Chevy for
"utilitarian" reasons. The contemporary car does pretty much the same things
the old Chev did, but better. Not so for wordprocessors. Word 97 et al. are
not, on the whole, safer, easier to maintain or more
effort-or-computer-resource efficient. However, they do many things
undreamed of by XyIII, and simplify others. They are wonderful tools for
secretaries and others producing short, 'one-off' documents, or who need to
maintain immediate control over the layout design, include data from other
sources and a host of other business-oriented activities. But the cost is
enormous, and none of the current heavywieghts is even close to being as
convenient for large-scale writing and editing as XyIII or XyIV. It's as
though the new improved '99 Chevy were harder to drive around town than the
old beast.

> That said, you all cannot fail to have noticed that several recent threads
> are all about version 3 workarounds for features contained in version 4.
> So my advice is, use version 4. When you get through tweaking it you
> probably won't even notice the difference, and you won't have to use
> workarounds.

I'm not sure I would characterize an XPL-coded command stack, project
manager or recently-opened file function a "workaround". Much of XyIV relies
on XPL and help-screen programming too. (Borland's Sprint wordprocessor
wasn't much more than a pile of macros.) And although I have brought XyIII
and XyIV very close together in terms of function and feel (I use many of
the Windows key combinations), the former runs comfortably from a single
floppy and is quite useable even on my 286 and 8088 laptops. XyIV won't even
*run* on my old Zenith laptop (I've never figured out why, but its response
to keystrokes can be measured in seconds).

When I travel I carry two floppies: one with Xy3.57 and one with eight
chapters of a book I am working on (plus my zipped up Quicken data, just to
be safe). With those two floppies I can work on my book on most IBM
compatibles with no fuss, no muss, no embarrassing installations.  This may
seem like a perverse use, but only because "we" decided long ago to
sacrifice easy transportability of programs in favour of increased features
and WYSIWYGability. Users can no longer carry their programs around with
them. They have to carry entire computers or make sure that every computer
they want to use has paid tribute to the God of Word or equivalent.

I'm not suggesting we have gone the wrong direction, but I do lament the
fact that market economics has forced many useful programming directions to
be abandoned and other programs to be bloated beyond the point of usefulness
to most people.  If that old Chevy were perfect for some task or other
except for a quirky transmission, it wouldn't be hard to find someone to
"update" the transmission in their garage over the weekend. But if XyWrite
3.57 is nearly perfect for writing and editing book manuscripts except for
problems with memory usage or minor screen bugs, no one can "update" the
problematic part except TTG, for whom it doesn't make economic sense.

And yes, I'll snap up SmartWords when I can. I *like* new and improved, too.

Myron