|
Myron, I got into this discussion to see if there is a modern need that would make it worthwhile to pull XyWrite into 2018. So far, there’s been a big mix of opinions. Personally, I’m nostalgic about XyWrite. I used to support if for my publishing clients. I’m also nostalgic about my job as a programmer at Atex where the editor was born.
From: xywrite-bounce@xxxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2018 8:07:22 PM To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx Subject: Re: A radical idea: a new XyWrite Sorry, but I have no idea why you would want to use XyWrite to support LaTeX.
If you think of LaTeX as a kind of text formatting 'language', XyWrite just happens to be an
especially good way of writing and editing things in that language. Combining XyWrite and LaTeX can
produce beautifully formatted books much more easily than trying
to do everything with Word or any other 'word processor'.
XyWrite was designed for fast, efficient writing and editing. LaTeX was
designed to produce beautifully formatted books and other output, no matter how technical the subject matter. Word was not designed for either of these things, but probably for office work. Not surprisingly, there are more office workers than
there are scientists, literary editors or print journalists, so Word has become the 'standard'.
It is not something I do at present, but years ago I used XyWrite (DOS) as my primary editor for
LaTeX documents for the simple reason that XyWrite's keyboard, menus and defaults could easily be
modified to make it very simple to use LaTeX formatting codes.
With relatively simple changes I could use familiar keystrokes for footnotes, emphases, section
styles, hidden comments, and, of course, all of the XyWrite ways of doing search-and-replace, on the
fly 'save/gets' or text macros, etc. When I was using a DOS
version of the LaTeX system, I think that from within Xy I could invoke the DOS LaTeX formatting
program and pass the Xy-prepared file to it. I know there were other XyWriters who did much
more sophisticated things to integrate, or at least connect, XyWrite
(champion editor) with LaTeX (champion format-and-print system). Any ASCII editor can create a file with LaTeX formatting codes in it. XyWrite was faster and more easily customizable than most, if not all, other ASCII editors.
XyWrite's raw speed advantage is probably no longer important, and may not have endured the evolution of hardware and programming languages. Most word processors and editors are certainly fast enough these days unless
you have truly extraordinary needs. But I don't know of any word processor or even programming editor that can be configured, tweaked and customized so easily and extensively as XyWrite. Programming editors seem most likely to be competitive
when it comes to customizability, and not surprisingly, many of these have rather ancient origins
in computer history. Anyway, why
not use XyWrite whenever you need an ASCII editor? Unless you must have constant feedback to make sure you haven't messed up the formatting (the best reason for WYSIWYG systems), why
not tweak XyWrite into a lean, mean, editing machine for LaTeX, MarkDown, LilyTeX or some other markup language?
Gee. After all these years, I still get excited about XyWrite. :-)
Myron
|