Re: Be not the last to set the old aside

[TBaehr@xxxxxxxx]

In a message dated 7/9/98 02:53:10 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
lb136@xxxxxxxx writes:

> do people hereabouts use XyWrite because of all the good
> things it does, or do they use it out of some cranky pride in not
> upgrading, or (worse) because they fear the new?

I'll speak because I do *not* use XyWrite regularly any longer. I've noticed,
from various postings over the years, that folks use XyWrite because it works
and does what they want it to. Some use it pretty much out of the box; others
customize quite a lot; still others extend its limits into new operating
systems, coax it to do PostScript printing, or write macros that the original
authors of XyWrite never dreamed of. Yeah, some of us like to tinker, and
that's part of the fun (it got me a job at Xyquest!). But the main thing is
that it does the job. I've used it for personal correspondence (still do), a
church bulletin with a basic form and stuff that changes every week (still do;
the import text feature is great); heavy-duty linguistic research (combing
4-meg files for patterns using a search-and-grab macro and many other
things--got laid off); a newsletter (found something better); 10 years or so
of elementary school textbooks and workbooks (freelancing days are over).
Others are managing research projects, law offices, etc., because _it does the
job_. It's worth keeping things that "do the job": Like my '87 Toyota. Like my
65-year-old Dunhill. Like my unlosable, infinitely repairable umbrella. Like
me.

Cranky pride? Cranky folks would be just as cranky without XyWrite, I suspect.

Tim Baehr
tbaehr@xxxxxxxx