Re: Fwd: Xy4/DOS quirk?

[Leslie Bialler lb136@xxxxxxxx]

Timothy Olson wrote:

> In the discussion for cursor movement regarding why inserting function NI sometimes fixes and
> sometimes doesn't, I am reminded of a thread from a couple years ago that offered another facet
> toward solving unusual problems with keyboard control. The idea was to rename one's keyboard
> *tables* after something other than the normal keys. For example, "TABLE=ABLE" instead
> of "TABLE=ALT" (etc. for the other tables of CTRL, CAPS, SHIFT). Then reassign the key
> definitions accordingly: "ABLE=56,98" etc.

Yessir!

This was a suggestion I first saw made by Herb Tyson in his book. It was designed, as I recall, as a
workaround to a bug in the 3 IBM keyboard. When I ran 3 I took his suggestion and never had
problems. What I did was to rename 'em all. SHIFF, ALTT, KTRL, KAPS. That did it.

When I upgraded to version 4, I took the transitional keyboard supplied on the iinstall disks--I
think it was named XY4-3.KBD or somesuch. Anyhow, this keyboard was designed to allow 3 users to
continue to use the keyboard assignments they'd long become familiar with. (I _still_ think
ctrl-right arrow is a more logical way to get to the end of the line than "end" is.) Then,
I copied the modifications I had made from my old 3 kbd file to it, renamed it CUP4.KBD, and have
been using/updating it ever since. For curiosity's sake, I did not do the Tyson-style renaming,
merely to see if the bug still lurked. I found, at least on my system(s) that it did not remain.

I first installed ver 4.01x on a Gateway 386 running Win 3.1 (which I bypassed) and DOS 5.0. This
would have been when XyWrite 4 first was released under that name (I bailed on Signature). In 1995,
I ported it over to a Gateway Pentium 75. I was still running 3.1 but with DOS 6.22. I soon upgraded
to Win95. In neither instance did the error crop up. In late 1999 my office machine was upgraded to
a Dell Pentium 3 500 mhz machine running Windows NT and 128 mg of ram.. Again, the problem didn't
arise.

In early 2000, at home, I upgraded to a Gateway Pentium 3 500 mhz machine with 64 mg of ram and
Windows 98 second edition. Again, the problem didn't arise.

>
> I don't thoroughly recall the reasoning behind this (couldn't find the message in my archives
> either), but I believe it had something to do with less DOS "hooks" and more XyWrite control.
> Perhaps Carl or Robert can (re)enlighten us on how/why this helps. Or perhaps it's on XyWWWeb;
> I don't have time to look.

I, too, hope the Zenmasters will enlighten us all about why this happens (happened).

--
Leslie Bialler, Columbia University Press
lb136@xxxxxxxx
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