RE: Hang This (Wikipedia entry on XyWrite)

[Bill Troop billtroop@xxxxxxxx]

Oh, so all is needed is a teensy XPL routine to get the column
number (va $cx) then put that into the 
Not quite. Because it's not the column number. It's the absolute
position of the printer (whether it's the WYSIWIG screen printer or
the real printer) when it encounters the ix or im command. In other
words, the command is,
indent from here, no matter where I am, no matter what font I'm in,
no matter what size of font I'm in, no matter what line spacing or
line leading I'm in, etc. etc.

in other words, when I say indent from here, I mean from _here_!
No contemporary program I know of other than Quark has it, and most
people who use Quark don't even know the feature exists. I'm
beginning to doubt my assertion that it exists in Quark - - I must check.
Yet to those who have been trained to use it on past systems, it's
extraordinarily useful, a wonderful example of getting the computer
to do all the thinking so that you don't even have to come up with a
value or think of coming up with a value. For a busy WP operator or
typesetter, it's a huge time-stress-saver.
It would be interesting to know why it never got into XyWrite - -
because it is one of the things that made perfect Atex to XyWrite
conversion nearly impossible.