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RE: Possible activity heading towards XyWrite replacement



Hi Wally,
I had entertained a similar notion a few years back when i was looking
at writing some tutorials on using Vim, a vi-style editor. Vi as
implemented in Vim, offered some functionality on a par with XyWrite.

The only issue, as others have mentioned, is that the contributions made
by Robert and Carl have really extended Xywrite in areas that others
wordprocessors still do not have.

Epsilon looks interesting, i checked out their site. As a Mac user, my
only qualm was that, Epsilon either worked as a term application or with
X11. In either case, there is a potential to have to customize things
under the hood in a Unix manner. Mind you I have done that for other
programs, and am quite capable of doing that, but i think for the Mac
user, paying $250, i would expect it to be a proper Mac application.


However, it seems that you can, and others have, customized quite well.
I hold out hopes for the source to Xywrite seeing the light of day
sometime. I also hold on to the hope that the last version of such
source had been ported to C and could, in theory, be ported more
readily.


fwiw,


Russ

On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 10:14 PM, wbass@xxxxxxxx wrote:
Hi. Folks
I've been thinking about upgrading my computing software environment
with
some new tools. The main tools that I care about are my
text/programming

editor and the tool that I use for writing. For the most part, XyWrite
III+ has filled my needs in both areas up to now.
But XyWrite is getting old, and living within 8.3 filenames and 16 bit
DOS

boxes is getting a bit old, so I've been looking at alternatives. I've
owned an editor call "epsilon" from Lugaru Software, Ltd
(www.lugaru.com)

for a long time, but really haven't used it much, in part because I've
never had the time to personalize it.

But I've started to get serious about epsilon, and I've reached the
tentative conclusion that I can probably personalize epsilon to the
point
that it would be nearly indistinguishable from XyWrite III+ as a
writing
tool, up to a certain point, at least for what I do. (I haven't
thought

all that much about printing yet, but I rarely print stuff.)
Let me say a bit about epsilon. First, it's fairly expensive -- $250.
It's
been in development, I think by the same two guys, since about 1983,
and
is now at version 13.06. For $250, though, you get executables for
DOS,

OS/2 (although those two haven't been updated since version 10.03),
Windows console (e.g., a 32 bit module that runs in a Windows cmd.exe
"MS-DOS" box), Windows GUI, Linux, BSD, and Mac. (Perhaps not all Macs
--
I don't know Macs, but folks should be able to figure out if it runs
on
their Mac from looking at the Lugaru web site.) More than one person
who
uses epsilon has declared it to be the best implemented/maintained
program

on the planet, and there is no doubt that Lugaru's approach to
implementation and maintenance is just about exactly what such a plan
should be (e.g, major releases which cost money, usually from about 6
to

12 free upgrades to major releases until there are no more bugs to be
found, etc.).
You could think of epsilon a clone of emacs, if you know anything
about
emacs. The biggest "technical" difference in the "architecture" is
that

emacs uses a lisp interpreter as the primary personalization
language/mechanism, whereas epsilon uses a "C"-like, semi-compiled
language called "EEL" as the primary personalization
language/mechanism.
By "semi-compiled," I mean that you write in "EEL" and it is compiled
to a
byte stream file that is interpreted by a what folks these days might
call
a "virtual machine," which is within the editor module. My guess is
that
makes this kind "personalization code" probably 100 to 1000 times
faster

in epsilon than in emacs. Epsilon also has "keyboard macros," which
implemented at an interpreted level -- since XPL is strictly
interpreted,
XPL would in some ways be more like epsilon's keyboard macro files
(called

"command files") than it would be like EEL.
The other big differences are that is that (1) emacs is something of a
pig
in size, whereas epsilon is somewhat more of the "small, tight"
program
variety, and (2) emacs inherits somewhat more from the "Unix culture"
than
Epsilon does (although epsilon does show some Unix thinking/roots).
The

Unix influence on emacs shows up particularly in the way that it views
keyboards -- the keyboards of terminals like the VT-52 were the kind
that
it deals with easily, and stuff like the function keys found on a pc
are
kind of "glued on" to emacs in an ugly sort of way (last time I
looked).

Epsilon started on the PC, and has much less of that kind of problem.
So, anyhow, the questions would be: would folks here have any interest
in

a "XyWrite emulation" effort based on a platfrom like epsilon? For
example, would folks spring for spending the $250? Any guesses as to
whether there would be interest larger than group that gathers here?
Also, would any folks here be interested in a bit more of description
of

exactly what I'm thinking, why I think epsilon would be a reasonable
platform, and so on? To describe my thinking in more detail might
involve

quite a long post, but I'll attempt to do such a post if there is any
interest.

Wally Bass

PS: One of my off-the-wall measures of what is going on in the XyWrite
world is to watch the appearance and disappearance of Tyson's "XyWrite
Revealed" book in Amazon's used books. A while back, there were none.
Then, I looked about three days ago, and there were two -- one for
about
$180, and one for something over $700. Then I looked again two days
later
and there were three -- each for about $180. (I have two copies,
myself.)
Anyway, does anyone have any idea if these are actually selling, and
if

so, who's buying, and why?