XyWrite & the future

[Dr John Gordon (jgordon@xxxxxxxx)]

Some comments for Ken Frank:

I understand the difficulty of deploying limited resources. I also
understand that making a wrong decision may mean the end of
the product and/or the company. Consider things, however, from
my position: as former head of a moderately large academic
department I have advised on and made decisions about the
purchase of computer software for the past 7 years. In all
decisions I gave my support to XyWrite. Our department has since
1988 bought multiple copies of XyIII+, Signature, Xy4 (with Orbis
and Ibid) and XyWin. We have done so despite the Faculty strongly
urging us to go 100% Macintosh and 100% Microsoft Office. We
made the initial decision to purchase XyIII+ on the basis of its
strength as an editing and publishing tool. Xy4 and XyWin are still
superb editors but they have lost ground in other areas and are no
longer at the leading edge for preparing copy for printing.

Today I am working out what we will do when the next issue of
our journal is finished and we will have the chance to change
software. Here are the options:
1. Stick with existing XyWrite and run under DOS/Windows & OS2.
This is workable but basically means status quo.
2. Stick with PC architecture and buy cross-OS software such as
Describe. To my knowledge Describe is the only current option
which will run on Windows 3.1, NT, 95 & OS2. Advantages with
Describe: low cost, at present, and designed from the ground up as
a postscript wp. Disadvantages: Have to persuade colleagues that
they should switch to another wp they have never heard of.
3. Buy cross-platform, heavy duty DTP software. FrameMaker is
the choice here. It is avaiable for the Mac, Unix, & Windows and
Windows NT and OS2 versions are scheduled for year's end.
Advantages: Covers the platforms and should be up to the task.
Disadvantages: Hugely expensive compared to other choices
(about US$700 compared to US$120 or so for XyWin and US$50 for
Describe). This is a big negative since we would be able to buy
one or two copies only. Then we would have one or two people
only who would learn to use it.

At the moment I am, reluctantly, leaning towards option 3. As an
OS2 user of XyWrite I would love to see an OS2 version of XyWrite.
If that is not to be, then it is my bad luck. What we will not be
doing here is switching to Win95. We will stick with OS2 as long as
it is supported and then switch to either the PowerMac or WinNT,
if we need to, one or two years from now. In the meantime we
will not be buying XyWrite for Win95. Once we leave the product
behind it will be hard to come back to it.

A final point: to whom do you as CEO give credibility? Someone
saying "We love your fossil (XyIII), but we are not going to buy
your current product (XyWin)" Or someone saying "We've bought
your current product (and all previous ones) but we won't buy
your next product unless it works on multiple OSs" ?

Best wishes,
John G.

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J.L. Gordon
Department of Anthropology
The University of Western Australia
Nedlands, WA, 6907 AUSTRALIA

fax: +61 9 380 1062
tel: +61 9 380 2850
email: jgordon@xxxxxxxx
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cc: jgordon@xxxxxxxx