Orbis And Other Stuff

[Robert Holmgren]

Dear SysOp:

I recently received two parcels: Orbis for XyWrite, and the seven disks of the
XyWrite v4.014 bug fix. For these, many thanks. Unfortunately, the Orbis disk
reports bad sectors, so I'm returning it to Baltimore for replacement
(INSTALL.EXE won't load, and I can't get a DIRectory of \ORBSAMP). And I sense
deeper problems in the offing. I was able to run ORBINST.EXE (or whatever it's
called -- OrbisInstall); I figured I didn't need the XyWrite v4.013 that comes
on the Orbis disk, because I already possessed higher version v4.014. But
OrbisInstall choked on Xy v4.014 ("unknown XyWrite version" I think it said)
and halted installation. Neither does "Text-Base" appear anywhere in the Menus
that come with v4.014. What's going on? How do we get the bug fixes *and*
Orbis? Why isn't v4.014 (and the associated MNU/DLG/HLP files) written in a
manner that interfaces with Orbis?

These problems are compounded by the "secret" compression method employed by
the Install programs. Maybe this is a superior installation routine, as XyQ
claims -- but I could do without it. It's impossible to surgically copy a
file, or to compare old and new versions, and then be done with it. What's the
advantage of a secret compression protocol? It isn't a copy prevention device
-- so what purpose is served? Straightforward operations that formerly took
one minute now take many minutes. Moreover, we don't know what's available on
the disk, because we can't obtain a genuine directory of the packed files on
the disk. INSTALL requires us to supply exact filenames -- but we have no
means of knowing what files are available! Lacking which, we have to do a
complete reinstall -- endangering customized files! Surely this is ridiculous
and illogical. If XyQ must compress, why not use PKZIP or LHARC or something
more-or-less in the public arena -- as formerly you did? (Fact is, PKZIP
Shareware v2.04g deflates EDITOR.EXE to 408K, versus your compression method at
485K -- hardly a compliment to the outfit that wrote INSTALL.EXE!)