Re: Hello to Xywrite mailing list

["..." yesss@xxxxxxxx]

Hi, Michael. Welcome to a *very* elite club.

If you've already tweaked a xyW kbd file, you should do
fine. I can't imagine that you won't be able to duplicate--
or improve upon--any WordStar shortcut keys you use, or
reproduce that famous magic diamond WS users are so
inexplicably fond of. ;) XyW3 came with a WS emulation
kbd file; not sure whether xyW4 does too. v4 is strongly
committed to CUA, but you needn't be locked into that--
or anything else. You can put absolutely anything on
absolutely any key.

xyW4 customization documentation is adequate or better.
Expect to spend a lot of time with the Customization Guide,
not because customizing is arduous, but because you have so
many options to consider. Expect to spend even more time if
you customize your kbd extensively. The Command Reference
misguidedly references by default.kbd placement with no
mention of the associated func, so you must keep referring
to the Customization Guide. What IBM (which called the shots
then) considered the appropriate func for, say, ShiftF12
may have nothing to do with what you've placed there.

Yes, you can transfer blocks back and forth between win95
and xyDos, although the process is awkward unless you
ordinarily run xyDos in a box (no more awkward, I imagine,
than transferring blocks between Windows and any dos app).
Easier, I find, to keep xyDos full-screen, open the file
with the wondrous NoteTab, and grab the block there.

Get xyDos 4, not xyWin. Unless the developer is perpetrating
a hoax, a bargain-priced beta xyWin5--officially, the
SmartWords editor--should ship someday, maybe even within
our lifetimes. No manuals, but XyDos4/xyWin documentation is
virtually the same and we have no reason to believe that it
won't apply equally to the beta SW editor. xyWin4 feels like
a win3.0 app--or is it win2? The SW beta is expected to fix
only its worst flaws. There's a lot to be said anyway for
having a xyW that's native to Windows, but you'll be glad
you have dos and Windows versions. (I much prefer xyW3 to
xyDos 4 myself, but the most compelling reason to choose v3
over v4 is a highly customized v3, something you don't have.)

One xyWrite feature you may appreciate is the undocumented
xlate command, a substitute for call or edit that strips the
significant bit from WS (and other) files, eliminating the
need to convert to ascii with WS. ... Ciao. 	--a

======================================= adpFisher  nyc
	xyWrite 3 supplements !xyWise and !xyWiz +
	Wolfgang Bechstein's seafaring adventures:
http://www.escape.com/~yesss/
=======================================