XPL in III+ and 4

["Carl L. Distefano" 70154.3452@xxxxxxxx]

Annie Fisher writes:

>When I inquired about the issue [Xy III+ XPL under v4] in my first posting
>ever to the list, the first subscriber who replied said, "I had a lot of
>XPL code under III+ which I ported (little by little, over a period of
>many months) to Signature, and thence to XyWrite 4." ... Period of *many
>months*? That doesn't make it sound like I'm overstating the problem. I
>can't spare that much time to test my own by trial and error.

I'm the "quotee" within that quote, and I'd like to elaborate on
that statement, as I do not subscribe to the "Xy4 as minefield"
metaphor. When
I said "ported", I meant "recoded to take advantage of the many
enhancements in XPL under Signature and Xy4"; I didn't mean to
suggest that my original code didn't *work* under Sig and Xy4!
On the contrary, most of it worked very well. The significance
of "many months" in that context was
(1) I have a *lot* of XPL, and (2) there was no great urgency to
the task, since most of the code *did* work. This doesn't mean,
of course, that other people's experience will necessarily be the
same as mine. Like unhappy families, each customized system is
customized in its own way, and it's hard to predict how any
particular setup will "react".

So I don't mean to minimize the differences between III+ and 4.
They are many and significant, and Annie's quite right when she
says that the burden of documenting them is TTG's, not ours. I
just wanted to make clear that
"making the transition" wasn't traumatic for me -- and need not
be so just because the III+ setup is heavily customized. My
personal bias leans very much toward upgrading, because I feel
strongly that the many advantages of
4 are well worth the trouble.

--------------
Carl Distefano
70154.3452@xxxxxxxx