Why?

[yesss@xxxxxxxx]

	The hard part of making the transition
	from 3 is to unlearn the fear and trembling
	with which you now approach files of more
	than a couple of hundred kilobytes. It takes
	a while for the realization to sink in that
	you can edit heavily-formatted files of 4
	Megabytes, and issue DIR commands on directories
	with thousands of files, without crashing.
	But take heart. Eventually, the sweaty palms
	and shallow breathing subside, and you begin
	to wonder how (and why) you've lived with those
	limitations for the last 10 years. That's when
	you turn around and "never look back".
	--Carl Distefano  http://users.datarealm.com/xywwweb/

Can we please have a little truth in advertising around
here? I'm not bionic, yet somehow manage to use v3
to edit v4 DLG and other >700k files without suffering
a panic attack.

I sometimes wonder if xyW4 early adopters even remember
v3 well enough to compare the releases; their responses
to v3 queries as often as not are incorrect, and their
recitation of problems they recall having with v3 a
decade or so ago don't match my experience of it as
an everyday user today. In the years they've used v4,
hardware and memory management have come a long way.
While v3 of course still operates only in conventional
memory, perhaps more conventional memory is available
to it now than when they ran v3 in their 386s.

There's a difference between bashing and simply
stating your preference and the reasons for it.
Surely no v3-basher thinks anyone enjoys having
his/her choice of software insulted repeatedly.
So what is the purpose of the attacks? When Carl
and Robert lead the drumbeat, I must wonder if the
subtext is an effort to convert this list--which
was founded, as I understood it, for all xyW users
--into a xyWWWeb service.

What purpose does the scorn serve except to drive
away subscribers whose needs differ from yours?
A directory with thousands of files is utterly
inconceivable to me: I care as much about whether
v3 lists such dirs smoothly as I care about whether
v3 plays RealAudio clips sweetly. No matter how
convinced one is that XyDos 4 is patently superior,
if it met even every xyWrite user's needs TTG would
be thriving as its developer.

Participating in a mailing list where you are
constantly put on the defensive is a sucker's game.
Who has time to respond to every dubious claim and
engage in juvenile my-version-is-better-than-yours
debates and you-said-this-no-I-said-that parsing?
Years of xyWin-bashing--usually by MSophobes who
never used it--have rid the list of many if not
most subscribers who use that release. If you want
xyW3 users to just go away too, have the courage
to say so up-front. If not, give us a break.

======================================= adpFisher  nyc