Re: XyWin & bug vs. feature

[pienciak@xxxxxxxx (Pienciak)]

On Thu, 16 Jan 1997 16:36:44 -0500 (EST) Annie wrote:

>Robert: Your antagonism to continued use of "beloved 3+," as you put
>it--the sarcasm and challenges throughout your msg--introduce an
>element to this list that I find disturbing.
>
>Absent a presence here that demands civility, must we draw up sides
>on even this? xyDos 3 and 4 users have coexisted till now without
>animosity, although xyWin fans--subject to relentless disparagement
>of their OS of choice or necessity, constantly put on the defensive
>by people who never even tried xyWin--rarely hang around long. Are
>v3 users next? Is a cozy list exclusively for xyDos 4/Warp users
>even desirable?
>
>As far as I'm concerned, xyWrite is about choices, choices that extend
>to which version to use. Anybody else's choices are their own business
>and I respect them. No one tries to discourage others from switching
>unless simply reporting unhappy personal experiences with v4 can be
>so construed, and v4 enthusiasts also have a few of them. I criticize
>v4 but am as quick to recognize valid v4 advances like BX and memory
>management.
>
>Many of us use v3 again rather than still. We supported continued
>xyWrite development by buying v4, by shelving it instead of demanding
>refunds when we found it as hostile as Signature to v3 habits,
>by sticking with xyWrite then rather than switching to something
>trendy, and by not prejudging the new release.
>
>So what's your beef? Why such pique at folks simply for making
>choices closer to your own than those most PC users make, but that
>differ slightly from yours? 			--a
>
>============================= adpFisher  nyc
>
I cannot agree more. I started out a week or so ago simply
asking for a solution to reverse order printing because I
had the misfortune to be told it would cost $300-plus to
repair a well-worn Oki 400. Anyone buying an inkjet and
wanting to keep XY3+ is going to have to face my problem.
Many people have, as usual, offered a great deal of help,
including one gentleman who spent several hours trying to
solve my problem by writing and debugging a special XPL
program for me. In constrast, we have the ``in your face,
upgrade to XY4, stupid'' point of view. But I don't feel
stupid, because no matter how you look at it, there ARE many
differences between the two versions. After having spent the
last several days trying to get XY4 to work for me like XY3,
I am glad that I've been fighting as hard as I have to keep
XY3. I will sit with the XY4 manuals this weekend and try to
tweak XY4, but so far it has been an impossible task. Over
the years I have tweaked XY3 and maybe that is why getting
XY4 to run exactly like XY3 is proving to be difficult.
Perhaps an XY3 user who left everything in default would
have an easier go but I--so far--have not been able to get
the margins and the pages and the chapters and the page
lengths to print out exactly the same. And there is all this
extra stuff--do i want the left margin to show on the
screen, does the part of the page--top, bottom, and
sides--that cannot be printed on count as part of the
margins. STARTUP.INT sure doesn't look the same. It has all
sorts of weird looking codings. I've tried different
printing tables and I cannot get Italics to work. If I bring
documents over from 3 just to print in 4, I sure don't want
to have to go into each file and redo the italicized words
with menus and buttons. The simplicity is gone......Even if
I eventually find solutions to all of these quirks, it is
important to state that going from XY3 to XY4 is nowhere
near as simple as *hey, just make the switch already.* That
is bull. And no one should believe it for a minute. There
are many reasons why people have chosen to stay with 3+ and
a fear of change is not at the top of the list.

pienciak@xxxxxxxx