Re: Windoze questions

[Myron Gochnauer GOCH@xxxxxxxx]

My 2 cents:

I seem to be almost alone in actually *liking* XYWin. It is
pretty buggy, though. I'm hoping version 4.12 will correct many
of the problems.

I also own (yes, really own) WP 6 for Windows. I am a law professor
(on sabbatical this year). Last year when I was teaching I used
WP for three things: pretty graphics, class handouts which were
to be printed landscape with two logical pages side by side on
each physical page, and placing study notes for students on own
computer network. For everything else -- lecture notes, memos,
letters, research, etc. -- I found XYWin perfectly adequate, and
much more efficient. This year I am working on a book... I
haven't even booted WP. I use XYWin for all of my writing and
editing, and XY4DOS to access to IBID.

WP, Word (I own version 2.0b) and AmiPro (I own version 3) are
all competent, powerful, relatively bug-free (compared with XYWin
4.11) and feature-laden. They're also pretty and fun to play
with. But as a XyWriter since 1984 I find them all terminally
frustrating when I'm trying to get something done. None can be
customized to the extent XyWrite can (especially the keyboard),
and all make editing embedded codes difficult. WP allows you to
"reveal" the codes, but you can edit them like XyWrite -- e.g.
changing footnotes to endnotes requires a fairly complicated (and
slow) macro instead of simply doing a CI from FN1 to FN2. Word
hides all of the formatting codes in the paragraph marker, and
you only see the results. For a XyWriter that is difficult to get
used to, especially when things have gone wrong but you don't
know why.

The only feature that has tempted me to use Word is the ability
to access the *same* copy of file in more than one window (not
different copies). That makes editing a long document much
easier!

I'm sure you can get used to these other programs. And they *are*
more feature-laden. But unless you actually need one of those
features that XyWrite doesn't have, XyWrite will probably be a
much more efficient writing instrument for you (as a XyWriter to
begin with).

Myron