Re: Is XY-Write a word-processor or a text editor?

[jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

"Yo Intl." wrote:

> At 09:34 AM 12/17/00 -0800, jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> >Maybe it's a factor of hardly ever using Auto-replace (guess I agree with
> >Carl that it's just too distracting),
>
> You must be kidding! Surely there must be some words/phrases that you type
> repeatedly during your working life? I could not live without it.

Not enough to be worth the beeping and onscreen change. I guess my distraction
threshold is much less than yours.  ;-)
(Actually, there have been times when it was useful, but not that much on a
regular basis.

> but I'm having trouble seeing how this
> >matters a lot. If the word comes up often enough, it could be treated
> >directly in the replacement list file, no ?
>
> I do not understand what you mean. The castration of XY 3.56 meant that you
> always had to press an *additional* key to make any replace work. Terribly
> distracting.

I just meant that if one has a tendency to type "teh" instead of "the" (overly
basic example, since you could just as easily expand abbreviations into
paragraphs of boilerplate), this can go into the replacement file. Then,
whether you have to hit an extra key or no, it still amounts to a big savings.

> I intensely hate the person who brought the lawsuit at the
> time, and his greedy lawyers.
> Did he ever get his pay-off?

I don't recall the details. Perhaps Tim Baehr was witness to this, and can
enlighten us. I do seem to recall that the guy who brought the suit was the
author of a standalone utility -- TSR, I guess -- for automatic shorthand
expansion. His case was probably dubious on a code-based or (coincidental)
independent design level, but I guess a good lawyer can nullify that with
appropriate intimidation. IBM, during the SIGNATURE period, would have had the
wherewithal to toss this off like a speck of lint, but I think the resolution
-- whatever it was -- came after that.

Jordan