RE: XyWrites 4 and 5 (was: RE: Dataviz and xyW)

["Frank Kenneth B." KBF@xxxxxxxx]

I don't want to start up a whole debate, but it's worth making the following
points:

1. Making XyWrite into a HTML editor is anything but a minor enhancement.
The fact that we use ASCII files is the least of it. XyWrite is a
line-oriented editor. Its publishing/newspaper heritage dictated very
sophisticated composition oriented to calculating line breaks precisely, and
most of its processing is devoted to that page-line orientation. HTML on
the other hand, has no real concept of line composition. In addition, the
nature of HTML's nested and "end" command structure is very different from
XyWrite. There are a number of other significant differences between the
technologies. Many of the structures in XyWrite have no counterpart in HTML
and vice-versa We have looked at this from time to time, and actually done
a little preliminary work. If we ever to move into this area it will most
likely be XML, but it will require a major effort.

2. Effectively marketing any mass-marketed software product today is very
costly-- in the multi-millions of dollar range. There must be a reasonable
expectation of a payoff to justify that sort of investment, and that just
isn't there in this market. Corel, with WordPerfect's huge install base and
major resources can't make it, and that has nothing to do with the quality
of their product, which is every bit as good (or bad) as Word. IBM couldn't
make AmiPro or Star Suite successful, and the Star product is by all
accounts quite good. The other little editor products people refer to may
or may not survive the long term, but at best they support the few people
who are devoted to them, and wouldn't be a worthwhile investment from a
business point of view.

What we are doing is attempting to use the XyWrite technology to enable
development of intelligent documents containing some expert's knowledge on a
wide range of subjects, which we hope other, less expert customers in a
variety of markets may pay to use over the Internet or in Windows desktop
products. This is new technology, and we see this as having far greater
potential than selling a more or less traditional editor product in a mature
market.  Because a capable editor continues to be a component of our
system, however, we are happy to make it available to those relatively few
users who may value our development work. If it should turn out there is a
big market for that editor we'd be thrilled, but don't bet on it.

K.

-----Original Message-----
From: rrr@xxxxxxxx [mailto:rrr@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 1999 9:24 PM
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: XyWrites 4 and 5 (was: RE: Dataviz and xyW)



> Sorry, Ken, if you're offended, but this is my
>belief. And this is especially true about the
>fantastically GROWING market for INTERNET/HTML
>editors. With what I consider to be a minor
>addition, your product would run circles (it
>already does) around the current set of HTML
>editors.
>Dick Giering

I often wonder about it. XY and HTML formats being so similar --
shouldn't it be phantastically simple to turn XYwrite into the
HTML editor par excellence?

--Rene von Rentzell, Tokyo 
--"It is astonishing that those who spent decades recounting the
--'lessons of Vietnam' have themselves failed to heed those lessons."
--J.Schlesinger "I didn't inhale." B.Clinton