Re: Pre-Xy

["E J Inggs" inggsej@xxxxxxxx]

My path to XyWrite.

1974
Typewriting lessons in Journalism One - have a certificate somewhere for 50wpm on a manual
typewriter. These days I can hardly move a key on my antique Underwood which dates back to the
1940s.

1980/81
My employer, Eastern Province Herald in Port Elizabeth, introduced the first ATEX system in South
Africa - infatuation/love at first sight.

May 1981
Bought 1st personal computer: Radio Shack handheld which is now used as a fairly powerful
calculator. Had fun learning BASIC though.

1983
Bought a late 1970s vintage Commodore PET to write my thesis - 32K memory, twin floppy drives and 40
character half screen. Wordprocessor was WordCraft (if memory serves correctly, maybe WordPro).
Could only have three pages in memory at any one time - no spell checkers and other gyzmos. Learnt
VisiCalc to crunch numbers on the side. Professor of Computer Science at the university amazed at
what these "little" machines could do.

1984
Upgraded to Commodore Business Machine 8000 - same as above but with an 80 character full screen.
Recently donated this machine to the Cape Town Computer Museum.

1985
Move jobs to another university - the new economic historian is only person in a department of
economists with a PC.

1986
Go to local PC Faire, weaken and purchase an IBM XT clone with twin floppy drives. Eventually,
frustrated by department-supplied DisplayWrite, do research, reject WordPerfect and Multimate as
being too user-unfriendly/menu-driven, finally discover XyWrite 3 - love at first sight (probably
because of similarity to ATEX and WordCraft/Pro).

The rest is history.

Persuade department to use Xy3+. Tried Signature but hugely disappointed until the advent of Xy4
Dos. Bought XyWin but not tempted because of the glaring Windoze environment, ditto for NotaBene -
far prefer soothing white character-based text on a black screen than fuzzy black graphic-based
characters on a glaring white screen (or at best a less oppressive grey one).

Unfortunately the department, under university pressure, converted from Xy4 to WordImperfect a few
years ago. Now, the dwindling number of diehard XyWriters are considered to be dinosaurs.

Which reminds me: "If M$Word is the Tyrannosaurus of wordprocessors, XyWrite is the
Velociraptor - smart, fast and mean". 

Jon Inggs


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Jon Inggs                           Telephone: (012) 429-4464
  Economics Dept                      Fax:      (012) 429-3433
  PO Box 392
  UNISA
  0003
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