Msg: Re: We should move en masse to Nota Bene

I am sticking with Xy IV in DosBox or Boxer on a Mac. I only need to bring things into Word when I'm ready to e-mail the final document. Word on the Mac imports Xy files easily as long as I specify that a conversion from MS-DOS text though I do have to do a search and replace in Word for certain foreign characters. Two windows in Xy are all I need. If NB came out in Mac compatible version and I could figure out how to use my Xy keyboard file and extensive, homemade macros (on which I rely heavily), I'd certainly try it. I am done with window machines, though I'm still loving my old Thinkpad running XP.

Lisa Kleinholz

From: Paul Breeze
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, December 21, 2012 12:53 PM
Subject: Re: We should move en masse to Nota Bene

Jon

I suppose as Carl suggested recently, we all have to make our own pact with the devil. XY4 is wonderful if you can live and work within it completely but if you have to deal with an outside world that wants work delivered in MS Word format and loves the internet, then life becomes much more complicated.

I agree that XY4 is extremely elegant and economical but I believe NB10 has the potential to become a simple, elegant solution too. I have already shifted to NB9 for virtually all my work and will probably adopt NB10 from now on.

It is going to be a struggle to maintain XY4 if one is going to move to new platforms. Personally I still use XP and see no urgent need to change but others obviously have good reasons for upgrading (at least I hope they do).

There is, of course, a certain satisfaction in the perversity of maintaining XY4, against all odds; I've tried various virtual solutions such as MS Virtual PC2007 and VWWare player to see what they have to offer. The former is certainly workable though I found things (though I cannot offhand remember exactly what) that turned me against it. VMWare player 5 provide a beautiful solution for running say Windows 98 or Windows 2000, both of which can be used to run XY very nicely but file sharing has to be managed via network tools which is cumbersome. DOS on either of them is much less satisfactory, too.

It is a lot of work, but maybe it can be done. On the other hand NB will also be a lot of work, but maybe at the end it too will provide a solution. It costs money, I think it is $99 for NB10 if you buy it at this beta stage, but all those $99 go towards paying the couple of programmers who are valiantly trying to bring XY4 into the twenty-first century.

Ah well.

Paul

On 21/12/2012 07:35, Jon P wrote:
> Let's cut to the chase.
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> I want to use XY4. I don't want to spend $$ for Notabene, particularly if it still needs to be tweaked.
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> My XY4 works in DOSBox, but limited to two windows and import from www to XY without export from XY to www.
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> I suspect that with some help XY4 would work in Microsoft Virtual PC 2007. XY is an incredibly elegant and economical program and the U2 additions make it phenomenal, eternal thanks to Carl and Robert, and TAMEDos has been helpful in the past.
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> The "upgrade" to Win 7 is via DOSbox and it works if you can handle only two windows and WWW-->XY import but not the reverse. There is probably ali also a solution via Virtual PC 2007k, which M$ has kept available.
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> http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/support/virtual-pc-2007.aspx
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> Windows 8...who knows?
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> JP
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