Re: XyWrite and TeX

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from "Martin J. Osborne"  on
Mon, 25 Apr 2005 22:18:26 -0400


> The question is, does it make sense to recommend XyWrite to a newbie?

No.

I think there are a few niches, which used to constitute most of what we call
"writing", but don't anymore, that do suit XyWrite. For pure creative or deep
concentration writing, looking at that black screen, utterly without
formatting, can powerfully focus the mind (I find the desktop immensely
distracting when I'm trying to think). Just you and the words. I remember
when I first started using WordPerfect, every time I typed two spaces, it
reduced them to one. Two consecutive CAPITAL letters, it would change the
second to lowercase. So maddening (and WP for DOS became, in its late
incarnations, _very_ interesting -- I mean, those folks put serious money and
talent into creating WP-DOS, and it shows -- it's a classy word processor, with
a superb compiled macro language in v6.x, and tons of power). At least XyWrite
doesn't try to be smarter than you are. I think XyWrite is a pretty good text
editor too, e.g. as an alternative to Emacs. And I think for user control, you
can't beat it. But it really is intended for "pure" writing only, and that
puts it at a modern disadvantage. Not to mention the hoops you have to jump
through to interact with today's equipment. Or the deprecation of DOS by M$.

The second big factor is that users today can be utterly ignorant of computer
innards and get away with it. Woe to the XyWriter who doesn't know something
about operating systems, DOS, peripherals, interfaces. That's I think the
biggest single change in the computing environment, versus the 80s and early
90s (right up until Windows 3.x): the enormous surge of ignorance, and also
forgetfulness among those who once knew.

So no, I would never recommend it to newbies. Why waste their time? They're
not going to tolerate the difficulties for long.

Our band is dwindling.

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Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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