Re: Possible activity heading towards XyWrite replacement

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Wally wonders ≪. . . do we have any idea this point in time how big the
user base is that still uses the XyWrite III+ and/or XyWrite IV (DOS)
products regularly? Not counting the NB folks, who are into NB because
of it's "scholarly" features, rather than for the more common reasons
that folks used XyWrite. Is it tens? Hundreds? Thousands? Are "we"
"it."? Also, do we know anything about the rate (and direction) of
change in the user base size?≫
We be them; though there may be other users who have not discovered the
forum. Stragglers do occasionally come forth. Hundreds at most--maybe
only scores, surely not thousands--, shrinking, getting older (balder
and deafer), and the torch is not being passed. I may possibly be the
only second-generation XyWriter: I was initiated into XyWrite by my
father (himself a technical writer in Silicon Valley for many years) and
inherited his original disks and manuals when he retired. I had
complained to him bitterly about the manifold failings of some other
GUI-product which shall remain nameless with which I had been
struggling, and he kindly introduced me to XyWrite; I have never
regretted it.
A number of us still use III+ (and I'm one of them), though we have
learned to keep our heads down at this forum as the Fourblers are
convinced that no one in his right mind would not take advantage of the
U2 package of improvements. My own reason for continuing to use III+ is
that PageMaker 6.52 has a good III+ import filter, but not a IV import
filter. XY serves me as a bulk input platform; I use PageMaker for all
layout and print functions (font and color control, foot/end notes, toc,
indexing, conversion to PDF format, etc.). Once in a while I do need one
of the IV/U2 functions (such as wildcard search/replace), so I flip over
to IV for that and then revert to III+ to continue. IV does have a
number of nifty functions, but I don't need them. Maybe if I took the
time to learn to use them and got familiar with them, I would stick with
IV and abandon III+. But that doesn't change the fact that PM hasn't got
an import filter for the IV-specific functions. So, before I change over
to IV for good and all, I would need to acquire and learn another layout
program (NB or whatever). As many others have pointed out, the effort
required to learn another program &/or user interface (whether XY IV or
any other) is one of the main reasons why people tend to stick with what
they know. Granted, the jump from XY III+ to IV is small, but the
corresponding jump from PM (which I know) to whatever would have replace
PM with a working XY IV import filter _and_ current printer drivers (NB
or whatever) would not be small. So for, me at least, III+ and PM
remains the combination of choice because it works and I know how to
work it.