Feedback on new Windows ex-Xy program

[wolfie@xxxxxxxx (Wolfgang Bechstein)]

The following message is intended mainly for K. Frank. It is by
Peter Evans, a friend and fellow XyWriter who is not on this list
but to whom I showed Mr. Frank's messages about the impending new
product. I hope it may be useful in the sense of providing additional
user feedback.

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KF > The product will be able to incorporate data from traditional
  > relational databases as either merge data or in boolean expres-
  > sions used to control conditional text.

In other words, "mailmerge": one of the few things that Xy3+ couldn't do
as well as CP/M-era WordStar (I never investigated Xy4's abilities).
Though it does seem that, um, "akaXy5" can do a lot more in this direction
than facilitate junk mail.

KF > Expansion of style capabilities including . . . elimination of "US"
  > as a required prefix [for] a style.

My first reaction: "yes, why not?" My second: "why?" What worries me
here, as with the availability of alternatives to "duck's-feet" as command
delimiters, is that the akaXy5 file format might become so protean that I
wouldn't be able to digest your files, and vice-versa. I hope TTG does
something like provide for a file-header that defines command delimiters,
etc., etc., so that anybody's tweaked akaXy5 can digest any file that
anybody else's tweaked akaXy5 created.

KF > Optional internal "journal" stores a record of every change. . . .

The "optional" is welcome: this kind of feature sounds to me as if it could
easily cause file sizes to balloon.

KF > tagging, display or printing of a variety of tagged materials will
  > be possible, including HTML, SGML etc.

Now I'm wide awake, interested, and even eager to pay money.

KF > our new product will have all of the functionality of XyWin

A similar claim was made for Xy4 and Xy4Win. I think it was justified;
however, there's at least one area where I'm certain Xy4(Win) does a worse
job than Xy3: footnote placement. I do hope that Xy5 can do everything its
predecessors did just as well as those predecessors did them.

KF > We are not positioning it as a competitor to Word or WordPerfect,
  > rather as a product that can be used along-side the incumbent word
  > processor.

That's probably a wise move, since the majors among putative competitors
have much more marketing clout. The few remaining minors seem to linger on
thanks to desperate pricing policies. If the RRP of *DeScribe* is a mere
$49, as I think it is, and if its sales are as low as I'd guess them to be,
it's hard to imagine that the publisher can afford any further work on it.
(My guess is that it's a final product in the "end-of-the-line" sense.)
But if Xy5 is really going to be used alongside another word processor,
then it had better have file conversion capabilities that are more up-to-
date than those of Xy4, and at least as good as any text file conversion
than I've ever heard of. Which is a tall order indeed. In addition, it
should have a file format that's . . . I don't know how to describe it,
but anyway similar to that of Xy3, Xy4, and WordStar 4 in putting every-
thing in marks-on-paper order. I mean, I can use another editor or
utility to edit a Xy4 file, or perhaps to do some intricate "real-expres-
sion" substitutions, and the result will still be a Xy4 file. I can't do
the same with a WinWord "6" (i.e. 3) file.

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Wolfgang Bechstein                   
Technical translator            Japanese / English / German
Sakura, Japan          Tel 81-43-461-5911 Fax 81-43-461-5910
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