Re: `power' v wp xyW (long!)

[LESLIE319@xxxxxxxx]

ANNIE FISHER RUMINATES:

> if each of those journalists had carefully
> weighed all the choices, gone to a store, and bought xyWrite! If they'd
> chosen a word processor in the '80s it would have been WP because sales clerk
> "experts"--relying on reviews directed to corporate buyers and relieved by WP
> toll-free tech support of ever having to offer any--would have advised PC
> neophyte friends to get WP. Since all their friends used WP, so would those
> journalists. Now they wouldn't even weigh the choices. "Word processor" = WP,
> unless you're real hep and get that maverick winWord.
> You have that exactly right, Annie.


> They use xyWrite because xyWrite's Atex roots gave XyQuest credibility with
> publishers. Publishers, not writers, bought xyWrite because it is a text
> editor. The word processing stuff is add-ons journalists use at their peril
> in the office--if they even know they're there, and they usually don't
> because they rarely read and may never see the documentation.
> Just so. You can write routines hooked to frames, or to
save/get keys, tell the users to just press alt+q or whatever,
and your ASCII files are, as if by wizardry, Quark Ready.



> XPL (and any supplementary language TTG may introduce) andthe tools Jim uses
> to configure xyWrite let editors do things with xyWrite that reporters know
> and care little about. Editors in the Prodigy newsroom upload xyWrite files
> to the service with an xpl program.

Sure. If this was the recording industry, the reporters would be
the musicians and the editors the sound engineers.

[stuff deleted]

> Now I'm gone, he's gone, the paper has switched to QuarkXPress, editors
> pre-"style" files with MacWord since its style sheets are so QXP-compatible,
> and last I heard a consultant was trying to sell the publisher on switching
> the reporters to Macs too. The decision, in any event, is his. When XyQuest
> ignored the PostScript publishing explosion, XyWrite and publishing lost
> their symbiotic relationship. > They _certainly_ did!


> Ken, I admire your candor on issues you choose to address

Me too.

[more stuff deleted]

> When the QXP revolution occurred XyQuest was in chaos, done in by IBM and a
> misconception--I believe--of what it had created. XyQuest made seminal errors
> in defining xyWrite as a word processor and not as a category-of-one
> user-programmable DOS shell/"text processor," a text editor with a full set
> of word processing features, making both a text editor and a conventional
> word processor optional--and in not naming it something like FrontEnd or
> dosPower that implied wide applicability, cultivating independents churning
> out modules like offline email readers, compiler front ends, file managers,
> specialized professional interfaces, etc. I gather, however, that XyQuest
> all but discouraged third-party development. Judging by an answer to a
> query a few months ago, TTG doesn't understand what an SDK is. (Meanwhile,
> third-party developers churn out QuarkXtensions and WP s/w peripherals.)
>

I often quote what George Vallasi used to say (George: do you lurk here?)
"XyWrite isn't a word processor. It's a kit from which one can
assemble a word processor." Truer words were never expressed.

> XyWrite should have been treated as open-ended and indispensable to every
> DOS user, something of a DOS counterpart to Windows. It of course deserved
> a tutorial as radically different as the software. (XyQuest was as
> delinquent with configuration info as TTG.

At least they tried, with the app notes, etc. etc.

> It took Herb Tyson's "XyWrite Revealed" to
> lift the veil, and it cost $5 less than that insulting XyQuest xpl
> pamphlet.)

Which pamphlet do you mean, Annie?

> The first time XyQuest read that lightning-fast-but-steep-learning-curve
> drivel it should have hired an expert to design an intuitive default
> keyboard.
> I guess people who think icons are easy think XyWrite is hard, and vice versa.

> With xyWrite positioned as a word processor and burdened with that default
> keyboard, as the menu'd cousins gained popularity inevitably XyQuest and
> the
> trade press, then TTG, saw xyWrite as a difficult if flexible
> menu-impaired
> word processor that--oh, yes--incidentally has ascii-base files, rather than
> as an ascii-base shell adaptable with a new module to every text-intensive
> situation. Just as XyQuest erred in regarding DOS WordStar, WP, and Word as
> the competition, TTG does in going after specialized word processor market
> segments instead of focusing first on what can be done with that ascii
> base.
> Right. There's still nothing like 3+ for editing batch files,
etc. Load the whole damn program on a floppy, carry it around,
fix batch files, Novell menus, etc. etc. And the ascii 27 shows
you exactly where the hard returns are, so essential in good
batch file writing.

[stuff deleted]
 > One trap I hope Ken and all subscribers avoid is thinking this list is a
> microcosm. The 'net is still academic at the core, and I see no particular
> reason to suppose that subscribers are typical xyWrite users.

Annie, I don't think there's any such thing as a typical XyWrite user.

%%Leslie%%