Re: A couple of issues

[kfrank@xxxxxxxx]

A couple of thoughts.

James Eibisch's comment that "I'm afraid I strongly doubt that any Windows
program, whether from TTG or not, would make me change from Xy3.55" pretty well
sums up the essence of one of the more important issues we face.

We are all quite gratified that 3.xx serves people's needs as well as it does.
 I mean that sincerely. It is very nice to have created a such a superior
product and to have such loyal users. If the market were large enough to make
a living serving that body of users perhaps that's what we would do.
Unfortunately that product reached its technological and market limits. So
today we must produce products we can sell in large enough quantities (or at
high enough prices, or both) to sustain our organization, and pay for the cost
of R&D, support, etc., and return a areasonable profit.

Having said that, and recognizing the GUI world is where the markets are, we
have taken great pains (and I underscore "great") to preserve the essence of
our older products in our new ones. The continued presence of a command line in
a Windows product is heresy, and we regularly suffer criticism in some areas of
the trade press for doing so. You can configure the interface for XyWin to
look and function almost identical to the DOS product if you desire.

Maintaining the high degree of backward compatibility with files, commands and
XPL as we have is also virtually unheard-of. I was amazed the other day when a
new version of Excel I used said it wouldn't read an earlier Excel file, even
though it recognized it as such.

We have never sought, and I do not expect, any particular credit for this
approach. We do it because we think it is right and because, despite the fact
we recognize we must reach a much broader market for our products, we want our
existing users to feel that our products continue to advance the state of the
art for them as well. If they choose to stay with the older versions (which we
still support, a position that is also rather unusual) that is fine, but then
they should not be terribly surprised as our new products evolve towards those
who are purchasing them.

That brings me to the second issue. When Peter Feldman states that "Something
happened to XyWrite between releases 3.xx and 4.xx. Whatever it was, it was a
turn downhill in terms of real functionality", I believe he is in error. While
3.xx may be faster in some areas, and our benchmarks clearly indicate certainly
not all, in terms of functionality 4.xx is vastly superior. I think the
comments of a number of the knowledgeable participants on this list have
confirmed this view. Nevertheless that is his perception, and that of a number
of others who prefer to use the older product. I suspect a number of them have
not really explored the newer products. Of course there are differences, and
sometimes changes in a newer product require adjustments users resent. While
those things are unfortunate and inevitable, they should not be confused with
lack of advances in the underlying technology. I don't quarrel with his right
to his view, but objectively (for what that's worth) I don't think it is
correct.

I also must take a little exception to Jim Besser's comment about our
"unwilingness" to fix bugs. He is using 4.014 for DOS (the current version is
4.017). That means we have completed 17 maintenance releases, designed to
nothing but address reported bugs. Some bugs are more difficult to track and
fix than others, and if they deal with portions of our product that are
licensed from others, like the speller (and I am not suggesting that the
particular bug he refers to is in this category) they may be beyond our ability
to fix without the cooperation of the vendor of that module. I don't pretend
that we devote the same level of resources to fixing older products as
development of new ones, but we really do try to maintain a balance.

I realize this message may sound defensive. I do not feel defensive, and these
comments are not offered in that spirit. I just have a somewhat different
perspective on some of the issues I see discussed, and I think it is worthwhile
for me to express my point of view like everyone else.

K.