Re: A Win95 question

["Richard G. Minutillo" rgm@xxxxxxxx]

I guess when one of the developers of XY4 just dismisses the ability of
XYWIN to handles all of the fonts and printers that Windows handles,
including postscript, ATM etc., then maybe we have a clue about why
XyWrite bit the big one. If you don't understand how the role of font
technology and graphical representation has changed from the days of DOS
to today, then you can't be expected to produce a competitive word
processor. That is the market, by the way: word processing, not text
editing.

I have noted that while many of the participants in this list apparently
use XyWrite for specialty writing work and groove on its speed and
excellence as a text editor, and on its obscure but powerful macro
language, there's not a lot of talk about typesetting. When I bought XY4
years ago I was pleased to see that it could at least handle postscript,
but daunted by the near impossibility of adding support for new
postscript fonts. The idea of 'approximating' screen appearance with a
few generic fonts (speedo at that!) was already nearly ludicrous.

These days it's word processing, and that includes presentation, not
just editing. A lot of folks on this list apparently write academic
material which is meant to be presented looking as if it were 'typed'
anyway, but for most of the general world of computer users out there, a
word processor which cannot handle the full choice of available fonts
for presentation will never cut it. That's why I've struggled on with
XYWIN for all these years, and that's why I hope there will be a
SmartWords soon, although why anyone would want to attempt to develop
commercial software for an audience as hostile as the people on this
list is beyond me.

Richard Minutillo
rgm@xxxxxxxx