WELCOME BACK

[DAVID AUERBACH]

Hi, welcome back. I agree with the underlying sentiment of your message--
whatever goes on internally these days at XyWrite it seems that most of us who
labor in the XyWrite vineyard, helping novices, writing using XPL programs,
finding bugs, creating workarounds, compensating for their marketing, etc. are
feeling more and more shut out. It is interesting to find out, via this board,
that they are not just picking on me; I figured that maybe since I wasn't
supervising a newspaper office of 90 that my track record as assiduous beta
tester and xyprosyletizer had become irrelevant. But noooo, they're treating
everyone the same. I am hopeful thoughh that IV will be fairly modular so that
the worst of the GUI stuff can be offed and that the heart and soul of lean and
quick Xy will remain. I know how we all feel out here, but I am still
mystified as to the etiology of their attitude. Is it just that they've grown
to an awkward size;
is it that they don't know how to handle inter-departmental communication, are
they vastly understaffed, do some key people lack imagination, did they hire
some ex-CIA type to run marketing and customer relations??? Oh well, they
probably won't lose me as a user. By the way, I sent you a message a long time
ago (just before your trip I guess) about having difficulty incorporating your
comandline parser (handling wildcards and other exotic beasts) into my stack
routine. It should have beeen routine but I got very odd results--crashes,
e.g. I've been so snowed under with committees, research and teaching that I
havent' had time for important stuff like the ultimate version of stack. If I
can't fix it soonI'll send you a call for help (If I can I'll send you the
fixed version and some amusing story of what went wrong.)