Re: Power Users and TTG?

[MCSWAIN@xxxxxxxx]

As a new comer to the discussion group, it appears to me that
many participants are quite passionate about their software and
xywrite in particular. As a longtime participant in all sorts of
academic discussion groups and lists and BBS, I expect a measure
of give and take from academics because they are largely
frustrated idealists and love to pin opponents to the floor
whenever possible on issues often meriting little human
attention. But the vehemence, and frankly traces of bitterness,
which some on this list have displayed suggests something is at
stake here deeper and more important than the usual BS toand from
academics or intellectuals. I have been using XYWRITE since ver.
2 and currently work with ver.3+, have no desire to move to
WINDOWS, but frankly view the company's position as realistic in
light of current market conditions. I cannot afford to buy the
WINDOWS ver. merely to ensure the survival of the company, though
emotionally I am very tempted; I think the emotional undercurrent
of some of the discussions stem from the deep associations many
of us have with a piece of software which started us on a life of
successful or productive writing, in part in my case, because it
felt like
'play' not work, you could write and write and then erase the
whole mess and rewrite; in short I discovered XYWRITE about the
same time I read
Peter Elbow's book on writing; Elbow explained the unconscious
forces in writing, and XYWRITE made it technically possible to do
what Elbow was suggesting. No one can deal with threats to such
an arrangement without becoming distracted, angry or fearful; all
of which I have felt as I try to gauge thefuture of XYWRITE in
the GUI environment with Bill G hanging over the balcony calling
for our death; I am going to hold on to ver. 3, perhaps
irrationally, but basically because it works wonderfully, took me
about 3 hours to learn, poses interesting intellectual games to
solve when I try to do something I have never done before, and
makes WP, MICRO-
WORD, AMI, etc. laughable; the key here for TTG is to maintain
their realism about the market place but save the 'magic' of the
original software if possible; regards, James McSwain
mcswain@xxxxxxxx