RE: A radical idea: a new XyWrite

[Philip White pdwhite@xxxxxxxx]

Carl, 
 
As they (used) to say about the PC clones: Every day your 100% IBM PC compatible become a little less so.
 
I once bought a driver which was a PostScript emulation for use with an HP laser printer, (which spoke PCL-5, if my is clear.)
It was billed as 100% PostScript compatible. And yes, it was. The thing they didn’t mention was that their emulation wasn't a
full emulation. And as luck, (or Murphy’s Law,) would have it, the functionality I needed the most was in the part they left out.
 
The bottom line here is this. The things you expect are never going to be the same as you can get out of your
preferred version of XyWrite, unless is actually IS your preferred version of XyWrite.
– The reason I was asking for the original code to port onto a modern OS was so that
as much of the original functionality  could be preserved. – This the point that managed to slip through the cracks in this thread.
 
Phil
 
 
 


Sent from Mail for Windows 10
 


From: xywrite-bounce@xxxxxxxx  on behalf of Carl Distefano 

Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2018 11:40:17 AM

To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx

Subject: RE: A radical idea: a new XyWrite
 



Reply to note from Philip White  Sat, 21 Apr 2018

15:15:39 +0000



Phil,



Absolutely no nostagia for XyWrite here -- because I still use it for

real work, and fun, every day. (I'm another user, by the way, who's

happily employed it as a front end to LaTeX -- and Python, and AutoIt,

and C, and assembler. I like having my familiar editing customizations,

whatever I happen to be writing.)



Kari,



> My experience is that Xy4 imposes its ways over Xy3 files. Sure,

> you can read them in, but from then on they follow Xy4 rules.



Not true if you set your defaults meticulously -- a one-time exercise.

I honestly think that the trauma of Signature (a half-baked and truly

awful product that I personally found unusable) blinded many Xy3 users

to the overwhelming superiority of Xy4 when it came out a couple of

years later. Xy4 and Signature are night and day. And, in terms of

customizability, Xy4 is far superior to Xy3. Much of the stuff that we

do in U2 could be only done in Xy3 with great difficulty, or not at

all.



But ... this is a train that left the station a quarter century ago,

and I do not intend to retrace those tracks. Just saying that I would

have little interest in contributing to a project that didn't support

Xy4 XPL and U2. Wasn't that the whole point of Harry's "radical idea"

to begin with?



--

Carl Distefano

cld@xxxxxxxx