Re: how to get back deleted material?

[mje@xxxxxxxx]

[Leslie Savan:]
> I tried autosav*.tmp, came up dry. In practical terms, though, it's no
> longer urgent, because (surprising myself) I rewrote the piece from memory.
>
> My Xy3 does automatic backups; the problem is that I somehow deleted the
> backup as well as the current file. But in the future, I'll try your
> suggestions.

   Sorry to hear that it didn't work, Leslie.
   A data recovery expert might have been the best (if most
expensive) solution. I find that it's practically impossible to
reconstruct any writing from memory - even if I still remember most of
the points I originally made. Somehow writing about ideas seems to
expend the energy I put into them, and when I reconstruct it, all the
ideas might be there, but the words don't flow smoothly, and I have to
force them. When I write something the first time, it's almost like
I'm channelling something I don't have direct control over, whereas
the second time I have to consciously put all the words together, and
it ends up sounding really limp and forced - even if it conveys the
ideas in a literal sense.
   With a bit of luck you don't have this problem, and were able to
reconstruct it as well as the original.
   I wouldn't know about XyWrite's own backup system. I originally
joined this list maybe 10 years ago with high hopes that XyWrite would
be my ideal word-processing program - and actually managed to buy a
copy from a member of the list - after deciding I couldn't bear the
thought of working with the Windows programs more easily available. I
still suspect that XyWrite meets the description I once read of being
"the best word-processor in the world", but read of all sorts of
problems members of this list had tweaking it to work with Windows,
and seem to have decided it was all too difficult.
   I haven't capitulated with the Windows-style word-processors:
for years now I've been using only plain-text files with something
like WordPad or NotePad. I seem to be a bit paranoid about adopting a
highly complex, proprietary, secret word-processing format such as
Microsoft's.
   It's a bit like trying to use reel-to-reel tape recorders. For
many years I persisted with them, vowing never to use cassettes. But
I eventually capitulated - but I now use neither reel-to-reel nor
cassettes, nor digital - I don't do sound recording at all now; and if
you read various posts on the Reel-to-Reel Yahoo group, you find
people even more dedicated than I was, real die-hards who persist with
this medium - but you also get to read the enormous problems they have
maintaining their machines and making them continue to work in an era
when everything's digital, spare parts are unavailable, and so on.
   I reluctantly began to get the feeling that using XyWrite
nowadays might be a bit like that. I suppose many here might disagree
with that.
   I'm so sorry about it - I really miss all that old DOS software,
which has the status of nostalgia for me now - the best of it has an
economical elegance approaching aesthetic beauty, in place of the
inefficient, unreliable, snail-slow bloatware you get instead now -
but it seems too much of a headache to keep the older programs going
now, especially since I'm only slightly adept with the technicalities
of computers.

             Regards,
             Michael Edwards.