Re: XY-4 and OS/2 Experience

[nsivin@xxxxxxxx (Nathan Sivin)]

Harmon:

Maybe I didn't make myself clear. I have no trouble running DOS applications
in DOS, and prefer them. I am now forced to use Windows with WordPerfect in
order to get Chinese input, since the character sets in the DOS Chinese
programs are unsatisfactory. I have tried various other Windows programs, but
find them inferior to the DOS versions, since I am interested in speed and
customizability, not gooey traits.

What I want to to is run WordPerfect for Windows without running Windows. If I
can't run it in OS/2, there is nothing I need to do that I need OS/2 for.
Since neither WP nor the Chinese input program will have an OS/2 version in the
foreseeable future, the only feature that concerns me is the ability to run
Windows programs more stably than Windows does. I do not object to using OS/2
for DOS programs, but when I tried out 2.1 the advertised speed advantage was
negligible. Besides, the 66MH machine I have, while barely adequate to run
Windows graphics program, is as fast as I could hope for for my main word
processor, XyWrite, and other DOS programs.

If I understand what has been said so far, I may as well wait until the full
version of OS/2 comes out, and then find out whether it has any advantage for
running Windows programs.

-- Nathan Sivin
History and Sociology of Science
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia PA 19104-3325