Re: XyWrite Development

[OkAnnie@xxxxxxxx]

:   I'll just jump in and address some :   of Annie Fisher's more
general points

Thanks, David. You make some interesting points, but I think we
use our computers in very different ways. I regard xyWrite as a
front end--a programmable DOS shell/text editor; that it can also
be used as a word processor is incidental to me. You've mentioned
that you don't use or need
Windows. My only alternative would be to buy a Mac because I need
to use graphics programs that are available only for those
environments.

Even with definitive documentation, I'm hard put to believe that
I could port all my xpl code in a couple of days. I use any
number of xpl primitives, and many utilities of up to, say, 5000
chars, often tied to my .kbd, but some of my xpl files are in
effect minisystems. One, e.g., is a set of chained files that add
up to something like 50,000 bytes and insert complex format
coding for another system. I can't even be sure that my macro
that searches and replaces xpl function symbols will work in v4
(a macro I wrote, I might add, without using string parsing,
although without "XyWrite Revealed" I couldn't have dreamed that
such a macro was possible).

As I've said, the very first xyWrite 3 file I wrote was a new
.kbd. I had been most intrigued in what I'd read about xyWrite by
the prospect of remapping a keyboard. Since unix days, I'd used
several text input systems and had some strong ideas about key
assignments. I found xyWrite easy to learn because from the
outset I was working on an intuitive keyboard. As a consequence I
never learned the default xyWrite keyboard and anybody else's
xyWrite is even now a new, terrifyingly unfamiliar app. And I
dove into xpl with a vengeance at once and have never stopped. I
had already written some rather energetic macros with another
(now-dead) DOS word processor's capable programming language, so
xpl wasn't an exotic concept. With its function changes and their
under- and undocumentation, v4 may simply have been delayed too
long for me.

In any event, since Kenneth Frank said that I was "really making
a mistake" in saying that sloppy documentation of v4 function
redefinitions makes porting masses of v3 xpl code hazardous, I
would like to see TTG answer the specific questions I asked about
whether v4 can now handle the v3 UD function and caps-required
{MDXX}s.  --annie

========================== annie fisher  nyc