re re XyWrite 3+ vs Xy 4 for DOS

[OkAnnie@xxxxxxxx]

:   I think you are underrating XYDOS for graphical tasks.

Nathan: You are undoubtedly right. I used v4 only briefly because
of the sloppily documented function redefinitions and because
xyDOS's graphical mode is non-essential to me: I've used my
PostScript interpreter's screen driver for a preview since
shortly after Xyquest, instead of releasing the graphical xyWrite
4 it demo'd publicly in early '89 or '90, took that fateful
stroll down the garden path with IBM. And I feel as you do about
wanting to write and edit on a nongraphical screen.

Reading xylist postings makes me realize, however, that my take
on xyWrite is skewed. I just don't think of xyWrite as a word
processor, and never have.
The first few years, I used it exclusively to format raw text
with complex layouts to be printed on another system, much as you
did with GML. I learned
XPL (pre-Tyson) writing a system that translated xyW codes and
added extensive MCS/PV coding. The only graphical preview was on
MCS unix machines four floors away and my "printer" was an
imagesetter at the same location; error tolerance was zero.

To me, xyWrite is a programmable command-line DOS shell/text
editor, a nearly universal front end for my niche
dirty-little-secret graphical word processor, for QuarkXPress,
for my PostScript interpreter, and my C compiler, and as an
offline reader programmed to sort and display what I collect
online. I laughed when I read a letter to PCWeek a few years ago
from a space industry engineer mocking a writer who'd warned
readers not to use a word processor as a programming editor. He
was using xyWrite with C the same way I was. But I think it's
more accurately a text editor with word processing features that
may be used or ignored. I have a PS 600dpi laser printer and a
tabloid-width inkjet now for proofing, but I've programmed for
months at a time with no printer at all and never missed it.

I'm confident that v3 and XPL can handle whatever I throw at them
next; it probably will be something else I couldn't have
anticipated when my v3 was new in '87. The only way the chameleon
shows its age is incomprehension that partitions can be bigger
than 33mb(!). Once again, awed thanks to those anonymous Xyquest
wizards, and hats off to Herb Tyson for demystifying the arcane.
--Annie

====================== annie fisher | nyc | okAnnie@xxxxxxxx