Re: XY on a Mac

[Caballero Carlo.Caballero@xxxxxxxx]

Dear Andy and other cross-platform fans,
I can confirm that VPC (Virtual PC) 6.0 runs well on OS 10.4.11 (Power PC
G4). I think I have one of the last versions (perhaps the very last)
Connectix made before selling the product to Microsoft. There are several
later M$ versions, and I'd be surprised if they didn't run on OS X 4.x as
well, though I don't know about the Power PC vs Intel factor. Flash
It would be good to see whether VPC is still being made, or if it has been
superseded by Parallels, as someone mentioned here earlier.
One can certainly find clean copies of VPC for sale on E-Bay, etc., some
still wrapped. Before MS took over, the basic package was DOS only
(PC-DOS 2000), which from a purely XyWrite points of view was ideal. Is
it true (anyone?) that M$ forced a Windows platform into the basic set-up,
so that DOS only was no longer possible?
Main challenges: printing (can be overcome pretty quickly), keyboard
(requires patience and experimentation). I haven't used VPC frequently
enough to completely control the keyboard issues, but plugging a Matias
Tactile Pro keyboard into your Mac will instantly improve the interface
(personal experience). Who would do a lot of serious typing on one of
those bubble-gum Apple keyboards or the built-in shallow keyboard of a
notebook computer anyway? Only on the road can I tolerate it...
Now, since you want to use XY3--and it's my preference too--you have to
consider a serious problem. So far as I can tell from this group, there
is no fix for the directory display of post-1999 years, which display in
the style 07-30-107 in native DOS. Perhaps not surprisingly, this
confuses the hell out of the Mac, which then assigns bizarre years (1980,
2025, 1907) to the files you save *across the platform*; that is, ones you
save in a shared folder on your Mac desktop. This is has a big potential
for confusion, as that desktop folder is often the one you might use to
move the file around, or to use as a back-up folder, and you really need a
good date. One kludgy solution: if you exit XyWrite to DOS in VPC and
save the file to the shared Mac folder (e.g., C:>COPY TEST.TXT Z:), the
date comes out right when you look at the file from the Mac side.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Carlo


Carlo Caballero
thyrsus@xxxxxxxx