RE: Re.: Screen font...

["Carl Distefano" cld@xxxxxxxx]

Reply to note from "Michael Norman"  Sun, 23
Nov 2014 13:25:48 -0500

Michael,

> So I was wondering: has anyone, professional writer or
> professional whose trade depends on writing long takeouts, such
> as attorneys -- jury-rigged MsWord to behave similarly to
> XyWrite, or, more realistically, written up a whitepaper on how
> to strip the program of all the superfluous bells a nd
> whistles.

I did this with WordPerfect for Windows when that was the standard
at my office. Developed a macro with 150 or so common XyWrite-like
commands (both native and U2) to do formatting, editing, etc. It
made using WP-Windows fairly pleasant for this XyWriter. When we
moved to Word, six or seven years ago, my intention was to do
something similar, but I never got around to it. For one thing,
emulating Xy in WP was relatively easy, because WP, like Xy, uses an
in-line formatting scheme whereby formatting instructions take
effect at the point at which they're embedded in the document and
continue in effect unless and until changed; the structure of Word
docs is quite different. So I've got used to using Word's bells and
whisles to format documents in Word. Some of the simplest things are
maddeningly hard to do; but others, like creating and formatting
tables or inserting a picture in a document, work well and can't be
done easily, or at all, in XyWrite.

That said, I still use XyWrite intensively at work. It's my note-
taking tool, PIM, and command-and-control link to the Windows system
-- and, of course, unexcelled for composing text. Workaday stuff I
compose in Word or Outlook, but when I need to struggle with the
text, it's XyWrite all the way. (When I'm really stuck, I retreat to
the library with a sheaf of foolscap and a fountain pen.)

--
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxx