Re: DreamWords [was: pipe dreams]

["R Tennenbaum"]

If people are hating this, this is the last from me, I promise (I will
try to reply to Shawn separately in a different thread sometime).

>> Very good points. Tim, your not missing much. XyWrite is an outstanding
>> editing tool. In particular, it is fast, clean, easily customizable,
>> powerful, and has those two marvelous features, the command line and the
>> expanded/visual view modes. But Leslie, we're not just talking about
>> emulating XyWrite. Here are a few thoughts about what XyWrite is missing.
>
>Shawn:
>
>But I believe Rafe _was_ talking about precisely that, an emulator,
>and my reference to Borges was addressed to Rafe's point.
>
>For those of you who haven't read the Borges story I offer a second
>analogy: I have read somewhere that a remake of Psycho is being filmed.
>This time Anne Heche gets to take the shower. This is an endeavor that,
>at least to me, seems perfectly pointless, except as a way to capitalize
>on the Actress of the Moment.

I think there are two ideas of "emulator" here, and I never used the
word in any case. There's no need for a new Psycho (though it must be
said Gus van Sant's not a bad director so maybe the idea isn't
completely without merit as some sort of exercise). And can we please
stop running to the metaphor cupboard every we discuss computing?

In any case the idea wasn't to supplant Xywrite (though it would be
nice to have an alternative) which is a great program, does anyone
think I don't believe it is? The idea is a purely hypothetical one to
furnish a marketable alternative to the one monolithic wp application
that's taken over. The thinking is: text mode has nothing to be
ashamed of, therefore why must it be relegated to the museum of
cultural artifacts. It's not an alternative to Xywrite but a word
processor -- I dunno, for my grandchildren? Of course, Xywrite WILL
find (HAS found) itself in that museum for as long as it imitates(d)
Word, which it's basically doing if it's going the 32-bit gooey Win
way.

The discussion does not, perhaps belong on this list, I would leave it
alone if others did. 

>However, since _you_ have raised some interesting points, I'll
>intersperse some comments below.
>
>> 1) An interface which integrates more naturally with a GUI operating
>> system.
>
>This is precisely what Smart Words will do.
>
>> The XyWin interface is not a fully integrated windows interface.
>
>No.

This begs the entire issue, in a way. The more I've used computers,
the less enamored I am of gui applications. Unless you're doing
something immediately visual --
illustration, music composition. While I will grant there are some
things for which "drag and drop" are nice: well, personally I feel for
the most part GUI is a concession to idiocy. Certainly a writer's word
processor doesn't NEED gui controls, even if it has a gui view.

Look here, if you haven't got enough brain that you can't remember

	cv /oblivious/frightened/ XC

and you really think that Ctrl-F or whatever it is and
filling in the forms is faster or more intuitive, then you need Word.
However if you understand that the time it takes to write a one-line
macro in a pretty simple programming language, especially since
punching the scroll lock key will record what you're doing anyway, will
be repaid a thousandfold, then you don't see the need for gui tools.
GUI view, perhaps.

>> The taskbar icon doesn't
>> work as expected. At heart XyWrite is a DOS program.
>
>Quite so, and many here seem to prefer that.

Yes, agreed. But the reason we prefer it isn't tied to DOS per se.
It's tied to DOS because DOS is economical, efficient,
character-driven, and sensible. Oddly its architectural defects have
been preserved by Windoze9X (that nasty quartet again, windoze gates
microsoft m$ -- I love'em) and these accidental virtues abandoned.

>> The ideal editor
>> would be a native GUI program, albeit with powerful command-line
>> functionality available.
>>
>Any GUI functionality will slow down the system, I would imagine.

Yes, again. Shawn, your ideal editor would be natively GUI, but not
mine. In fact there's nothing the matter with the idea of Xy4 and its
three modes of display, except that Graphical mode is so poorly
implemented. Funny thing is, when you think about it, raw HTML:browser
:: Xywrite:graphic view.

>> 3) Extensibility and Usability with other tools. In the dream editor you
>> could create a new menu or a new set of dialog boxes with corresponding
>> commands, hotkeys,

(I assume you know you can do this in Xywrite).
>
>For those GUI-ers among us, yes; for the rest of us, ho hum. As for
>hotkeys, maybe it's just me, but how many hotkeys can you remember?
>Especially after a long day spent at the computer, which seems to cause
>other parts of the brain, such as the old memory banks, to cease to
>function.

Keyboard programming gives them to you anyway, what's the point?



>> In general, it is difficult to integrate
>> XyDOS with other tools. As an example, I run TeX frequently, which
>> involves compiling an ASCII document with formatting into a binary file
>> and then launching a viewer to look at it. I would like to be able to set
>> a hotkey which does this whole sequence with one simple CTRL-t. XyDOS
>> can't handle doing those things from a macro.

Not under Windows, but incidentally with Holmgren/Distefano's Xy-OS/2
tools you may. Lots of support for Unix in OS/2, btw.

>I'll bet our magnificent minister of education, Sir Robert Holmgren,
>knows how to do _that_!
>
>> 4) User-friendly macro language, with a full set of flow-control
>> structures (if/then/elseif, while, for, foreach, switch, procedures which
>> take arguments and return values, recursion, etc.), and the ability to
>> define new commands -- to extend the macro language itself. It is
>> difficult to extend XPL itself, and as powerful as it is there are some
>> very unfriendly things about it.
>>
>
>Good one!

Well, look if it's Visual Basic you want, you're back to square one,
IMHO, the wrong one.



-RT