Re: Floppy disc images

[Myron Gochnauer goch@xxxxxxxx]

Thanks!

Fortunately, I have an already-installed version of XyWrite that I’ve been migrating from
computer to computer for decades.  What I wanted to try again was my old, archived version of
Borland Sprint. If I recall correctly, it was a program with a small core and a hugely expandable
set of macro-like add-ons. I haven’t used it since about 1990… hence my current
curiosity.

The only other “thing”/program/system in the word-processing world that uses the
small-core-and-vast-addon approach like XyWrite is TeX, the markup-language system used in math and
the sciences. It shows what can be done if a core is perfected under the control of one person and
the ‘frozen’.

I don’t know how TeX itself operates, having used only the system as elaborated in LaTeX, but
it is written at such a level that it can be instantiated in/on many different operating systems. I
would love to see XyWrite rewritten in a similar.

XyWrite was originally written with DOS Assembler (‘machine’ language, anyway),
probably for the sake of speed and compact size. Since it is an editor and/or word processor, and
not some kind of heavy-duty neural network or image editor, with today’s computers we no
longer need it to be inherently machine code. XyWrite has a finite number of core functions
(including XPL) and connections to the computer’s facilities (discs, RAM, input and output
devices), all of which could be specified ‘abstractly’ (i.e. without dependence on
specific hardware or operating system). Or is this just the pipe dream of a humanities professor
whose programming experience collapsed after Turbo Pascal 2? :-)

Myron

P.S. Somewhere in the XyWrite archives is a description of Dave Erikson’s development
strategy. It was reported that with every possible new extension he would ask something like,
“Is this core or ____?” (The blank was something like “extension” or
“add-on”.) Does anyone remember the exact quotation?


> Perhaps an easier way to accomplish this is by installing Win31DOSBox by Edward Mendelson:
http://www.columbia.edu/%7Eem36/win31dosbox.html
> It supports virtual and real floppies (virtual in drive A: as files in the A-DRIVE folder, real in drive B:).
The system has a separate DOS prompt what you can use bypassing the Windows 3.1x part after it has been installed.

> Kari Eveli