Re: idea/content organizing concept written in XPL

["Young For Life Products, Ltd" contact@xxxxxxxx]

Thanks, Carl, very much.

What I created before in XPL does this: when you are starting a writing
project, but are not sure of all the parts or the exact outline yet (some of
us have the Myers-Briggs type that prefers to write a creative piece by
hopping around to different parts of it as inspiration strikes, rather than
linearly from start to finish - Rex Stout, I have read, was the exact
opposite: he would think out all the parts of a Nero Wolfe mystery novel in
his head and then write it start to finish with no edits, if you can believe
such a thing - I would love to know if anyone knows about writers who work
in the way opposite to Rex Stout - that is, different pieces of the puzzle
at different times, as inspiration strikes, then put it all together), it
can be a pain in the neck to keep it all organized. You either end up with
lots of different files that then have to be merged, or one monster file
that has different parts scattered through it and you have to define and
move the parts around inside the file when it's time to organize it all. My
idea was to write a program that creates an overview screen with many boxes
in it. I forget how many there were, but this was back in the days of
mono-only monitors, so not as many as could be done now, I think. The
program allowed you to hop around easily from box to box in the overview
screen for a particular project. When you entered a title into a box and hit
a designated key, a file would immediately and automatically be opened for
that box. When you were done writing in that file, the program would
automatically save it in a directory created for that project, and return
you to the overview screen. You could then title another box for another
piece of the puzzle, write in that file, and then the program would
automatically save it and return you to the same screen. You could, of
course, go back to any box in the screen and open it, write more in that
file, and then return to the overview screen. Eventually you would have a
bunch of boxes titled with different parts of the same project. Notice that
its OK if the order of the boxes - in the grid - is random. That's not a
worry yet; you're still creating all the parts - putting them into order is
not yet necessary, yet you can see all the parts on the same screen. Now,
here's where it gets better. When you reach the point where you want to
organize all the parts into one document, the program enables you to easily
move the titles of the boxes around to different places on the overview
screen. You can switch box contents between two boxes, move box contents to
empty boxes, or move one box content to an occupied box and move the
displaced box contents to another box, etc. You can also merge the contents
of one box into the contents of another box, appending it onto the contents
of the second box. When you have all the parts done, and arranged in the
right order on the screen, a compile part of the program merges them all
together into one document in the order that they are in on the screen.
(Left to right, top to bottom, or top to bottom, left to right, whichever
you prefer - that's a default choice when installing the program). This can
all be done in XPL with a LOT of coding and subroutines and read-character
loops, although I'm sure there are much easier ways to do it if the xywrite
code is available. I also added an extra dimension of complexity, which was
TOUGH, which was a box could stand for a whole new overview screen instead
of just a file. THAT got hairy. But it worked.

What do you think?

Best Regards,

Charles

----- Original Message -----
From: Carl Distefano 
To: XyWrite List 
Sent: Sunday, October 21, 2001 12:57 PM
Subject: Making XPL written in Xy4 compatible with Xy3 [was Re: young and
notabene]


>
> Reply to note from "Young For Life Products, Ltd"
>  Sun, 21 Oct 2001 10:32:53 -0500
>
> > Morris, what a good idea. I don't have XY3 anymore,
> > unfortunately. Is there somewhere I can download it still?
>
> You don't need Xy3 to write a program that will run in Xy3. Just
> write it in Xy4, using Xy3 conventions. It will run, and you'll be
> able to debug it, in Xy4. If there are debugging issues specific to
> v3, interested Xy3 users will tell you about them.
>
> What exactly does your program do? I'm not clear on that.
>
> If you're ever unsure about where your Xy4 program directory is,
> simply command VA/NV $ED. This returns the full path to EDITOR.EXE.
>
> When you want to know where *somebody elses's* Xy4 directory is --
> and often you do if you're writing "public" XPL -- use 
> (avilable in v4+ only). This returns the fully-qualified path to
> EDITOR.EXE, for example, in your system, D:\XY4\EDITOR.EXE. To get
> the directory name, save  to a Save/Get and parse the
> contents of that Save/Get into two strings, directory and filename.
>
> The Jumbo U2 has a routine, GETPATH, that does that parsing job.
> Feed it any fully-qualified filename in Save/Get 50 and it returns
> the directory portion (minus the final backslash) in S/G 50. So,
> for example, to put the directory that contains EDITOR.EXE into S/G
> 50, you'd write: >JM 2.GetPathQ2 . You can then use
> S/G 50 to locate and use other files in the same directory. For
> example,
> ;*;
> BX exist \underln.exe ONQ2 )>;*;
> BX do/nv/x \underln.exe ONQ2 ;*;
>
> --
> Carl Distefano
> cld@xxxxxxxx
> http://users.datarealm.com/xywwweb/