XY4 DOS 4.016 (it's buggy)

[Tom Hawleymail02699@xxxxxxxx]

A year having past since I last got a fresh EDITOR.EXE
(4.015_O), I sent $15 off to Baltimore. In a few weeks, a set
of disks for 4.016 (the .EXE is dated 10-12-94) arrived.
Accompanied by one page of installation instructions, which tell
you to save your customization files, delete \XY4, and do a
fresh install.

It appears that the only files changed since 1 January 1994 are
EDITOR.EXE, and the XY4.HLP, -.MNU, and -.DLG files, and there's
a new POST-HP.PRN dated 3-23-94.

The readme's are two years old. Nothing about what has been
fixed or what is new, although I was able to get TTG to fax me a
list of changes.
 It's the same one which was posted here a few weeks ago.

The menu structure has changed slightly:  there's now a "Print
Envelope" choice in the File menu, a typo in ";Manaqe Jobs..."
What used to be called "Formatted-Page Line View" is now
"Page-Line View". A new "Accents" choice has been added to the
Insert menu. The only real substantive change seems to be an
addition to the Define Counter command which allows you to
redefine the counter format without incrementing it.

And now the BUGS: Basically, Formatted (now Page-Line) mode has
serious problems and does not work much of the time. Sometimes
it works OK, but when it does not, the screen behaves in
strange ways, the P-L counter is way off, and (most significant)
what you type does not appear on the screen. Text is being
entered, but does not appear until you switch to draft view.

Another problem is that the cursor position is not always
accurate when you are in P-L. You position the cursor at a
certain point on a line and insert a CR; the CR appears
somewhere else.

I have experienced some of these problems under prior versions
(going back to Signature), but only rarely. Now, they are quite
frequent (although they do not always occur at the same time,
or in any consistent manner--so far as I have been able to
determine.)

I should mention that I'm using 4.016 on both OS/2 and DOS
systems; the problems are identical on both platforms.

TTG's first response was to suggest that my .DFL file was
"corrupt"; the recommended solution being to use the default
.DFL instead. (Never mind the dozens and dozens of hours that I
have invested in customization, etc.!) They claimed not to
have heard of the P-L view problems.  Finally, I sent them some
test files and a step-by-step procedure to demo some of the
problems, and they were able to reproduce them on their system.
I am told that they have been reported as bugs. No indication
as to when there will be a fix.

The problems are really obvious if you work in P-L view, and it
makes one wonder how this .EXE could have been around for some
four months without TTG being aware of them.
 ______________________________________

 Thomas J. Hawley   mail02699@xxxxxxxx
 New York      Fax +1 212 475 3002
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