Re: Possible activity heading towards XyWrite replacement

[wbass@xxxxxxxx]

Patricia Godfrey wrote
> This, and much else in the post, makes me think that your use of
> Xy or Epsilon (and did you ever look at RegexBuddy?) is quite
> different from what most? Many? of us do. You seem to need a text
> manipulator, rather than a basic editor with some manipulating
> functions.

I think you observations are right on. There is a great deal of
functionality (e.g., footnotes, fonts, etc., etc.) in XyWrite that most of
you use, and which I use rarely if at all. So I'm sure that my tradeoffs
are very different that most folks here.

> For that, Xy may not be the best tool.

Perhaps not, but even considering that I'm not doing very much of what
XyWrite was intended for, XY III+ still has been and is, hand down and
without even being a close call, the best tool that I have ever used or
owned. Rightly or wrongly, I'm not as enthusiastic about Xy IV, though --
my attempts to get it working to my liking have both been more effort and
less successful than I would have liked, and for what I do, much of it's
new functionality doesn't do that much *for me* and the kinds of things I
do. It is more than 3.5 times as big (.EXE file size) as XY III+, all of
which means a great increase in complexity. Added complexity represents a
burden in several ways (learning effort, personalization effort, bugs,
migration effort elsewhere when/if that becomes necessary), and I'm still
not at a point where IV's apparent benefits outweigh the apparent burden
(again, for what *I* do with it). Disassembling XY III+, then modifying
key areas and reassembling it to have a module which works on other
platforms seems perhaps doable -- doing the same with XY IV doesn't seem
nearly as doable.

> From the start, I think, Xy was the writer's and editor's tool
> of choice, and it remains that.

Agreed. But I am nervous about it's age, which is why a contingency plan
would be nice. But, even if my plan works, it'll be awhile, so it's clear
that XyWrite will continue to be with me for some time.

By the way, do we have any idea this point in time how big the user base
is that still uses the XyWrite III+ and/or XyWrite IV (DOS) products
regularly? Not counting the NB folks, who are into NB because of it's
"scholarly" features, rather than for the more common reasons that folks
used XyWrite. Is it tens? Hundreds? Thousands? Are "we" "it."? Also, do we
know anything about the rate (and direction) of change in the user base
size?

Wally Bass