Introduction

["Dale Schultz" Dale@xxxxxxxx]

Hi

I have just joined this list and thought I would introduce myself.

I used XyWrite from version II+ through to the end. I used to live in South Africa
and when my brother got a PC he also got XyWrite. I soon leant the program and
introduced it to a number of people at the University of Natal where I was studying.
It gained popularity there and I eventually got it to be the standard word processor
on campus. I later joined the Computer Services division there and ran XyWrite
technical support on campus.

Then I saw that there was also a German version called Euroscript, produced by North
American Software GmbH in Munich, Germany. I was interested in working for Germany so
in 1990 I wrote to them and offered my services and they offered me a job. So in 1991
we left South Africa and worked for NAS in Munich for 3 years. I did tech support (in
German!) and worked on getting new versions and bug fixes etc ready for the European
market and a huge effort went into producing euroscript 7 ( = XyWrite 4) I did all
the technical stuff from bug reports through formatting and producing PostScript
files for the entire manual, retail box layout and typesetting, keyboard template,
etc... all in euroscript of course.

I visited XyQuest in the USA (as well as some other companies that we worked with)
and I noticed how much space there was in the USA compared to Europe and realized
that housing prices must be way lower and I was right. I could afford a house in the
USA, whereas in Munich I could not even afford even an apartment. I told my American
boss that I would like to work for NAS in the USA and do the same work there. They
considered it but decided against having employees on separate continents. I was keen
to go so my boss arranged a deal with XyQuest for me to work for them on condition
that my first job there was to get the German version of the Windows version
completed.

So in January 1994 we moved to the USA and I started working for XyQuest. My first
job was to modify the program that extracted all the translatable strings from an EXE
file and replace them with the translated strings. The program worked on DOS style
EXE files and had to be changed to work on Windows executables. The whole program was
of course written in assembly so it was a real battle for me to understand how to
make the changes. After that was done The Technology Group nonsense began. Kenny
Frank wanted to make legal software so we started working on a project called
SmartWords. This was a Windows product that used the XyWrite engine and would produce
legal documents based on embedded variables etc. I created the user interface using
Visual Basic 4 and Sam Cheung and Dave Erikson created some OCX libraries that
contained the XyWrite engine. It worked pretty well and was quite usable but Kenny
Frank kept adding features every week. Every time we added something he would think
of more so it was impossible to ship. Paychecks were often late or bounced and I got
fed up with it all and left in 1997 to work for Iris Associates (makers of Lotus
Notes) about a mile down the road. Iris was a subsidiary of Lotus which in turn was a
subsidiary of IBM. I am still at IBM and am no the 'go to' person for Globalization
testing in IBM.

I find it ironic that I am working for the company that effectively killed XyWrite
when they pulled the plug on Signature.

I still keep a copy of XyWrite 4 around for when I have to so some fancy global
changes on a file.

My resume mentions my XyWrite experience and so I occasionally get email from people
with XyWrite and euroscript questions. This week I got a snail mail letter with a
floppy disk and self addressed stamped envelope from someone asking for a printer
driver that he deleted ! That's a new one!  I do not intend becoming XyWrite tech
support but I will send the person the prn file...

Glad to hear that there are 172 people interested enough in XyWrite to be subscribed
to the list!

Cheers

Dale
(originator of dale.kbd)
http://dale.mixmox.com