Reminiscences of Xywrite (Boston Globe, etc.)

[Daniel Say say@xxxxxxxx]

 2 of 36 mentions of "xywrite" in Lexis/Nexis database over
the past 20 months

     DATE: SEPTEMBER 2, 1999
    LIBRARY: NEWS FILE: 90DAYS

YOUR SEARCH REQUEST IS:
 XYWRITE

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   LEVEL  1...    3
         1ST STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
          Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company 
                The Boston Globe

           August 29, 1999, Sunday ,City Edition
SECTION: OP-ED; Pg. E7 LENGTH: 753 words

HEADLINE: Too good for Microsoft;
ROBERT KUTTNER;
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears
regularly in the Globe.
BYLINE: By Robert Kuttner
BODY:
  I compose my columns on a vintage 1985 word processing program known as
Xywrite, which is much beloved by writers. I still use Xywrite because it is
easier to use than any Windows word-processing programs, least of all the
voracious and execrable Microsoft Word.

  This is not just a case of old dogs refusing to learn new tricks or a
preference for the antique. Xywrite is simply a more efficient piece of
software.

  Operations that take five and six steps in Microsoft Word take one or two
keystrokes in Xywrite. For instance, you don't need to go into a whole other
program to "manage your files." You can do it right in Xywrite.

  All of which raises the intriguing question of why something cumbersome and
clunky would drive out something simple and elegant. I have several theories, of
which more shortly.

  Although Xywrite is ancient by computer standards, it has other very nifty
and sophisticated features. It allows you to create your own customized
shorthand, in which you type in an abbreviated word or phrase and the entire
phrase pops onto the screen.

  You can also keep up to 10 different documents open at the same time and
toggle among them with just one or two keystrokes. You can do the same with
Microsoft Word, but the process is clunkier. And with Xywrite, the program
doesn't presume to read your mind, and no idiot cartoon figure pops down to
offer to help you.

  As Rick Hertzberg of The New Yorker, another Xywrite fan, observes, with
Xywrite there are fewer steps between your brain and your prose.

  Since the essence of writing is composition and flights of insight, the last
thing you want is technology that slows you down in midthought.
                                   PAGE  3
            The Boston Globe, August 29, 1999

  So why is Word driving out Xywrite? My first theory is that the nerds who
design this stuff like to complicate it. Because software is capable of doing an
infinite numbers of tasks (that only one user in a million would actually want
to do), the geeks keep adding them to the program.

  The second is related to the concept of "planned obsolescence," a phrase
coined by the late social critic Vance Packard in the 1950s. Packard observed
that cars and other consumer durables were literally planned either to wear out
or to look hopelessly dowdy after a few years so consumers would buy new ones.

  Software makers keep designing new releases of perfectly serviceable
products not because of true consumer demand but because the vendor, mainly
Microsoft, needs to move ever more merchandise, which is "bundled" with the
hardware, imposed on the computer maker at the latter's expense, and force-fed
to the consumer who ultmately pays.

  This perverse complexity is a wholly new development in the evolution of
consumer products. Historically the first generation of a new product, like the
automobile or the telephone, required a high degree of technical sophistication.
As the product became mass marketed, it necessarily became more accessible to
ordinary civilians. By the 1920s, you didn't need to be a mechanic to be a
motorist.

  With computers, almost the opposite is happening. You need to learn a whole
level of technical skills to perform ordinary office operations. Some of this is
beneficial, since it raises the level of technical education of the work force
as a whole. But much of the learning is a sheer waste of time since it is soon
obsolete.

  The final and most pernicious explanation for the needless complexity is
Microsoft's efforts to monopolize software. With each generation, Microsoft
Windows (deliberately) becomes harder to use with non-Microsoft products. For
example, users of Word Perfect, a much better product, widely report that
mysterious incompatibilities creep in with each succeeding release of Windows.
The user eventually gives up and switches to the loathsome but hegemonic Word,
with its Biblical resonances.

  So I wish the Justice Department well in its suit against Microsoft. Among
the other remedies, the standard operating system should be made equally
hospitable to all software applications that follow necessary protocols. A
similar antitrust remedy was imposed upon AT&T so "foreign" (non-Bell) equipment
would work equally well with Bell's network.

  Some say Windows' dominance will be moot soon because the Internet will
effectively become its own operating system. But I fear that the odd tendency of
the clunkily complex to drive out the elegantly simple is hard-wired into this
way of life.

  Oh, well. Now to file this document with one simple Xywrite command. Ahhhh.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

LOAD-DATE: August 31, 1999
                                   PAGE  4
         3RD STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.

         Copyright 1999 Times Business Publications 
              Business Times (Singapore)

                 June 7, 1999

SECTION: Towards 2000; Pg. 18
LENGTH: 1044 words
HEADLINE: The way we were
BYLINE: Kenneth James
BODY:
  Microsoft Office 2000 Supplement

  We no longer write, we word-process, and what a process that's been. KENNETH
JAMES reminisces

  WE were a motley group back in the early 1980s, a merry mix of academics,
office workers, government types and a couple of precocious teenagers, all
hardcore enthusiasts united under the banner of the Singapore Microcomputer
Society. Meetings at the local YMCA were eagerly anticipated opportunities to
unravel the mysteries of the personal computer. They never failed to deliver.

  Most of us were neophytes then, but we learnt quickly because those who knew
shared their knowledge willingly. No-one thought it strange that government
types and bearded researchers with PhDs would sit like schoolchildren and listen
attentively while a 16-year-old kid with thick spectacles and buck teeth
expounded eruditely.

  For some of us, though, the attraction of the PC was a specific one. We loved
to write. And word-processing (WP) on the PC -more exactly, word-processing with
a program called WordStar from MicroPro International -was a revelation.

  WordStar provided the first real word-processing experience for millions of
people around the world. Yes, there were other word-processors, mostly for the
Apple or CP/M systems popular with hobbyists; these usually needed a separate
program to print the text output. We had also heard of The Electric Pencil,
which merged the printing function into the main program.

  But in Singapore, as it was in much of the PC-infiltrated world, WordStar
ruled. This ground-breaking program had been available on CP/M home computers as
early as 1979 in the US. But it was the PC version, released in mid-1982, that
soon dominated.

  WordStar was a marvel of tight coding. The whole program, including its
overlays -we'd call them DLL's today -fitted on a single 5-1/4-inch 360-kilobyte
floppy disk, with space to spare. On booting up the program, the user would be
immediately assured by an onscreen menu that took up the top quarter of the
screen. You used control keys to navigate the screen and for many of the
commonly-used functions -Control-A to move the cursor one word to the left,
Control-F to move it a word to the right, Control-Y to erase a line, and so on.
                                   PAGE  5
          Business Times (Singapore), June 7, 1999

  And you always remembered your first time: the thrill of exploring wondrous
new features, the wonderment when you moved blocks of text around, the
frustration when the system froze, the anti-climaxes when the dot-matrix printer
refused to reproduce the text on the screen and instead spewed out empty pages
or weirdly formatted text. But finally, the ecstasy of seeing the final product
exactly as you envisaged it.

  Well, almost exactly, since NLQ (near-letter quality) was the best that your
dot-matrix printer could muster. And there it was, the first article you could
truly say was all your own work, with the title exactly centred and bolded,
author's name in italics and text right-justified. You were well and truly
hooked.

  After a while even WordStar showed its limitations and among our small group
of WP devotees the search was on for the Holy Grail of word-processing. It
helped that we worked at a research institute which saw a constant flow of
writers, many of whom brought their favourite WP programs with them. We tried
them all: WordPerfect, which put its functions on function keys but not in any
intuitive fashion that we could perceive; MultiMate, which mimicked the popular
Wang dedicated word-processing system and scored high marks for simplicity of
use; Microsoft Word, which in its infancy was also less than intuitive; a whole
host of WPs offered as shareware, a couple of which were pretty good.

  Ironically, our favourite at that time wasn't a full-fledged word-processor.
It was the WP module of an "integrated software" package called FrameWork from
Ashton-Tate. Our institute had bought FrameWork along with its very first
personal computer, an IBM PC XT with a black-and-white monitor and a 20-megabyte
hard disk. It was an instant hit.

  FrameWork included different software applications in a seamlessly integrated
program. A document was made up of "frames", each of which could contain text, a
spreadsheet, graph or database table. The frames could also be collapsed to form
an outline, a wonderful boon to researchers who needed to write lengthy papers
made up of multiple chapters and sections.

  Then came XyWrite (pronounced (ZAI-write), courtesy of an airline pilot
friend. He had discovered this WP during one of his sojourns in Bangkok and
couldn't wait to demonstrate it to us. Its great strengths were its speed and
its ability to handle very large documents. And in a sharp departure from other
WPs, it used a command line at the top of the screen to activate its functions,
somewhat like good old MS-DOS. You'd type "new" or simply NE at the command line
to create a new file, or RM to set the right margin. But it was really a
XyWrite spin-off that set our academic pulses racing. XyWrite was at heart a
computer language that wasn't too hard too master and with some practice the
user could customise it to his heart's content. One American PhD student did
just that, creating an "interface" or front end that made the program much
easier to use. It proved such a hit with his friends that he set up his own
company, licensed the XyWrite engine and marketed his customised version,
calling it Nota Bene.

  Besides the much friendlier interface, Nota Bene also included an excellent
text database and superb documentation. It quickly won a big following in
academic and research circles and remains popular in this niche market to this
day.
                                   PAGE  6
          Business Times (Singapore), June 7, 1999

  Today the WP landscape has changed dramatically. Microsoft Windows has
replaced MS-DOS as the dominant operating environment. WYSIWIG, or What You See
Is What You Get, is exactly that with Windows' graphical user interface, to the
detriment of the DOS-based WPs. Only WordPerfect, now owned by Corel Corp, and
Lotus Corp's excellent Ami Pro, now renamed Word Pro, provide any kind of
competition to Microsoft's all-conquering Word.

  Word processing has come a long way indeed. Formatting a complex document is
no longer the fearsome challenge it used to be. Those days are long gone. But it
was fun while it lasted.


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

LOAD-DATE: June 8, 1999