Re: Nota Bene and writing emails

[Carl Distefano CLDistefano@xxxxxxxx]

Reply to note from Bob Zimmerman  Tue, 7 Dec
1999 01:03:50 -0500

-> Making it possible to write emails in Xywrite seems to be a
-> problem that a number of us Xywrite users have. ...

Bob's heroic (and, apparently, largely successful) effort to get
Eudora "talking" with Nota Bene prompts the following observation,
which I find self-evident and which I hereby nail to the cathedral
door:

The ability to send and receive documents electronically has become
as essential to modern writing as the ability to print. Therefore,
a truly modern word-processor must have integrated email.

I'm speaking not only of the convenience of using familiar
keystrokes and powerful editing functions to create messages --
important as that is. More than that, once a document is written,
one should have the options -- without leaving the current screen --
of sending it as plain text or as a formatted (encoded) document.
(In other words, one shouldn't have to drag a file to another
program just to send it, no more than one should have to drag it to
another program to print it.) Conversely, one should be able to
retrieve, filter, read and reply to mail without leaving the editor.
Isn't it obvious?

I suppose that programs like Outlook and Express are steps in that
direction. I'm unfamiliar with them, and I have no idea how
successful they are. My cobbled solution uses Hacksaw, a tool from
InnoVal Software http://www.innoval.com which combines email, ftp
and http into a single command-line utility for both Win9x|NT and
OS/2. (The additional "hooks" needed to bring these facilities
directly to the XyWrite CMline are published in the XyWWWeb Jumbo
U2.) I jumped on Hacksaw when it appeared 3 years ago and never
looked back. It's not a perfect system, but close for my money:
The keystrokes I use to compose, send, retrieve, read and reply to
email are all 100% XyWrite.

The merits of the Hacksaw solution are debatable (as far as I know,
I'm unique in my adoption of it), but on the central issue of email
integration, am I a voice in the desert? I suppose a similar
argument can be made for integrating editor + browser (or editor +
everything), but that's another jeremiad.

--------------
Carl Distefano
CLDistefano@xxxxxxxx
http://users.datarealm.com/xywwweb/