NBWin comments

["Myron Gochnauer" goch@xxxxxxxx]

Like many of you I've been trying out NBWin in the hope that it
would provide a *living* alternative to XyWin. NB appears to be
responsive to bug reports --- something to which we XyWriters are
no longer accustomed. Strange and comforting indeed.

But, for what it's worth...

NB comes from a tradition that does not value individual
customization to the extent that XyWrite did. For me, at least, this
is a serious barrier.

Although NBWin uses a large DLG file (XyWrite's current dlg file
with customization... you can still find reference to XyWrite and Xy
functions throughout the file), and several smaller XPL files, there is
no easy way to modify the menus. Indeed, so far I have not even
succeeded in turning off the button bar or moving the command line
via NB.dfl.

NB.exe is frightening large in comparison with XyWin 4.12 ---
4+Meg vs. 774K  This *must* represent a different design
philosophy, with much more built into the core program. It is
difficult to believe that this much code was necessary to fix the
bugs in XyWrite and add relatively few true features. We can only
hope the SmartWords is not similarly, errr... imposing. (I'll resist
saying bloated, since NB is a unique and wonderful program in a
world divided between desktop-publishing programs pretending to
be wordprocessors, web-page editors and editors for programmers.
Not many people actually write more than a page or two, it
seems... and they certainly don't edit long documents with any
regularity---a test of will with Word, it seems to me.)

NBWin is *noticably* slower than XyWin or XyDOS in many ways.
This may not be obvious on a fast machine, but on my 486SL-33
simple xpl programs doing repeated searches-and-replace (hmm...
what's the plural of search-and-replace? nothing sounds right) on
long files are strikingly slower, and anything but expanded mode is
almost useless for editing medium to large files. This may be
necessary for the expanded functions, but it does seem like a
terrific performance hit. Sheesh. It sometimes feels like they
converted from assembler to basic as their programming language.
Well, that may be excessive, but it certainly does feel like tight
code and XyQuest's devotion to being "lean, mean and masterful"
are things of the past.

Ah, well. At least XyWrite III / IV don't have expiration dates.

And once again I hasten to add that I think NB is wonderful. No
flames necessary. I may even weaken before the end of the month
and buy it because it is... well... it's really *neat* in its own sort of
way. But, unfortunately, it's not XyWrite with an attitude, which is
what I had hoped.

Myron