Re: "... hope?"

[Harmon Seaver hseaver@xxxxxxxx]

Carl L. Distefano wrote:
>> The new, renamed Xy is said to be for Win3.x, which doesn't support
> long filenames. Moreover, the thrust of new development (as I
>
  I don't think the two are mutually exclusive -- an app can be smart
enough to deal with unix and os/2 filenames without being able to run on
those systems.
>
> If Unix is your current environment, why not just find native tools
> that do what you need to do? You can't make DOS/Win software do Unix
> tricks!

  Yes, that is the very question, isn't it? But after nearly 10 years
of XY, making a change isn't the easiest thing in the world. Even a year
ago, I would have said that come what may, XY would serve my word
processing needs well into the 21st century, even if I never bought
another upgrade. Once upon a time, the speed difference simply precluded
any thoughts of another wp for serious writing. Running 32bit OS's on a
586 system with 32meg of RAM makes that pretty well irrelevent. The
customizability was another major factor, which seems to be fading
rapidly as well. So it's more a question of deciding, first of all which
replacement to choose, and then dealing with the task of learning and
customizing a new tool to come as instinctively to hand as XY.
  And that's not easy, I know, for I've played around with other
editors, bought them even, such as Describe, and in the end kept hitting
the XY icon when I needed to write, because I was more productive that
way -- but lately I find myself wasting a great deal of time because of
my use of XY.
  I guess it was the news of the new freebie port of Starwriter to
Linux that really set this off. If a little startup company like that
can put out a product from scratch that takes the European market by
storm, immediately produce a windoz version, an OS/2 version, a win95
version, and now a free Linux version -- without, mind you, having the
ultra fine base of something like XY to start with -- and even Word
Perfect can market both an OS/2 and Linux (and other unixes) version,
and if most of the other editors I try seem to have little problem
digesting internet documents from whatever sources -- what's the problem
with making XY equitable?
  But I guess you're right, Carl -- it probably is essentially
hopeless, and we might as well face the fact and get on with the job,
eh?

--
Harmon Seaver hseaver@xxxxxxxx hseaver@xxxxxxxx
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"Facts an' facts, an' t'ings an' t'ings: dem's all a lotta fockin'
bullshit. Hear me! Dere is no truth but de one truth, an' that is
de truth of Jah Rastafari."  -- Sir Robert Marley, 1978
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Copyright, Harmon F. Seaver, 1996. License to distribute this post is
available to Microsoft for US$1,000 per instance, or local equivalent.
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