Home alone

[BOB BRODY]

Well, Vicki, I, too, would like to live in a flawless world, but I
don't. Computers screw up and software screws up. Rare, to not-so-
rare, it does happens. If that's gonna be an obstacle for you then I
concur, stick with pen and paper. (Besides, it always sounds worse in
these kinds of notes than when it really happens. It's like tearing
your shoelace when tying your sneakers. A perfunctory epithet is
quickly followed by a minor adjustment.)

RE Split screens you mentioned in another note: XyWrite lets you have
nine. If you mean simple screen splitting, XyWrite supports it (up to
nine windows of any size you wish). If you mean linked windows (whereby
the same document is split across a number of windows), XyWrite doesn't
support that natively and you'll have to run a macro to effect it.
Robert Holmgren wrote a macro for this but the name escapes me (I
renamed it to a command, LINK, that I execute whenever I want to link
the same document across multi windows. Microsoft Word supports that
very nicely (fast, seamless) but XyWrite doesn't at the core. It
requires a macro to effect. Let me know if that's what you mean and
I'll dig up the original name of the macro so you know which one to
download.) If, however, you mean simple screen splitting, the following
is a screen capture of what I've got up at the moment:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Remember the kid in Home Alone? He wakes up and   | Scratch notes:|
realizes he can do anything in the world, yet he's  | Cf. library  |
a little bit tenuous? Well, I'm sort of the same  |---------------|
way with computers.                 | Dear Dawn,  |
Just reading about your descriptions of Xywrite   |        |
and x Wordstar is enough to make me go back to pen  | Considering th|
6-C:\EM\VIK.REP------------------------------------------------------|
                           | IV. Police sta|
Well, Vicki, I, too, would like to live in a     |   based on c|
flawless world, but I don't. Computers screw up   | V. Central ch|
and software screws up. Rare, to not-so-rare, it  |---------------|
does happens. If that's gonna be an obstacle for  | INT. LAB - NIG|
you then I concur, stick with pen and paper.     |        |
(Besides, it always sounds worse in these kinds of  | Eli slips out |
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The command/status lines display filenames and window numbers but I
didn't capture that here (and compressed in from the right a few since
its otherwise 79 wide on my screen but I have to cut it in some for the
72 wide message upload. The currently active window is window #6 which
is this note and is why you see that number and filespec in the window
border. If I switch to a different window then only that window's top
border indicates the current window in use (# and filespec). Of course,
you can configure this for colors or highlight, etc., if that makes it
easier to see which is the active window (i.e., a default color or
highlight for the active window's border, or different colors for each
of the nine window borders if you wish via the BX default setting
discussed in the manual under Display Settings). But as you can see,
the first larger window is your note, below it is my reply, off to the
right are four windows, a notes-to-myself, a letter, an outline, and the
screenplay I'm currently working on. I can zoom in on any window,
resize/shape, etc. Admittedly, it takes an understanding of XyWrite's
windows support, but splitting windows is inherently supported. After
finishing this reply I will zoom open the screenplay and get back to
work (yeah, sure I will). 

RE: XyWrite making backups like Wordstar: I've lost touch with Wordstar
over the years. Howard Reich (Wordstar user) might be able to shed some
light so we can come up with a comparable situation for XyWrite if
doable. But care to give me some more details on what you want?
XyWrite makes a mirror .BAK of the last session. If you want your .BAK
to be a mirror of the most recent file, just use the DOS COPY command
and copy MY.DOC to MY.BAK. This can be implemented from within XyWrite
or from the DOS command line.  I'm not sure I understand the need for
that because you can just copy MY.DOC to whatever number of disks and
filenames you want, i.e., make copies of MY.DOC for safety backup.
(Note that XyWrite supports multiple saves to different drives, i.e.,
saftey saves, and will save the current file to each drive you specify
as your "save" drive(s), thus resulting in more than one copy of the
current file automatically for you, but you can do that with a macro as
well.)

Bob