Problems with XyWrite and Windows 95.

["Michael Edwards" mje@xxxxxxxx]

                         Michael Edwards.

   I acquired a copy of XyWrite, version 4, perhaps a year ago, and I
experimented with it, with a view to adopting it as my main word-processor, but
I have had problems running it with Windows 95, and these have deterred me from
continuing with it.
   I am using an I.B.M. ThinkPad 770 ED, just in case that's relevant. The
problems I have are two-fold.

   One of them is common to any DOS program that I run, and that is that, when
I go to the DOS prompt, the entire DOS screen occupies only a smallish square in
the centre of the screen, I suppose amounting to half the total screen area, and
the entire DOS program is squeezed into that, even if I am running at 50 lines
per screen. Perhaps this is specific to my computer, and there is no solution,
or, if there is, there is nothing that XyWrite itself can do to correct this.

   The other problem is specific to XyWrite. When I am ready to quit XyWrite,
and I press the keys that should return me to the DOS prompt, I get a completely
blue screen, the background blue that XyWrite uses (well, the square that DOS
uses goes blue, with black around it - I'm not talking about the Windows "Blue
Screen of Death" here), and the program freezes indefinitely.
   I can still use Alt-Tab to cycle between other Windows programs I'm using
at the time, although of course I do have the uneasy feeling that the stability
of those programs could be endangered. And if I press "Ctrl-Alt-Del" to show a
list of what's running, and I select XyWrite for closing, I then get error
messages telling me that the program is not responding. I can then close it,
once I click "OK" on enough screens with error messages, but I feel all this
shouldn't be happening, and I don't feel I can trust things while they're
working this way.
   Another sign that something may be wrong here is that, after I've been
through all this, the cursor in Windows programs, selection bars in menus, and
the like, seem a bit "sticky" and slow to get moving when I try to move it.

   I think I did write in about this once before, and got no response. I'd be
grateful if anyone could please help me with these two problems. I got XyWrite
hoping it would be just what I want in a word-processor, and I still feel it
will be right for me once I'm used to it and know it better; but all this has
put me off doing much at all with it, and this does rather disappoint me.
   Would it really be better for me not to use XyWrite (or any DOS program at
all) with Windows 95 at all, but have a completely separate computer, or at
least hard drive on my laptop, for DOS programs? (I use a few others, too, or
have done, but these tend to be inhibited too by my not quite trusting the
combination of Windows 95 with any DOS programs.) I can see obvious advantages
to having a dedicated DOS computer or hard drive, and it would enable me to use
DOS far more purely; but of course it would create problems spreading my work
between two different computers.
   Any ideas or thoughts would be gratefully welcomed, thank you.

             Regards,
             Michael Edwards.