Page Width Anomoly

[Andrew Glass]

Dear SysOp:

Ordinarily in the XyQuest family of word processors, local margin settings
should take precedence over the default settings or the values that are
declared in the initial settings file. XyWrite 4, however, deviates from this
convention in the way in handles PW (Page Width), which, I believe, is a new
feature. A local setting for PW will be ignored *unless* that setting appears
as the first item in the file or, at least, unless no ASCII characters appear
in the file aheaµ?·f the format-setting triangles. Consequently, if one
requires a wider page and one"AØso needs some text to appear before one sets
the wider page, then the change must be made in the SETTINGS.DFL. Otherwise,
the darn thing won't work. A practical aspect can be readily seen in a
CONFIG.SYS file that extends beyond the normal 80-column limit. Longer lines
will wrap if one uses a "REM" statement ahead of the margin markers. This does
not occur in Signature, on which XyWrite 4 is closely modeled. Perhaps you can
make XyWrite conform in the next release.