Re: Windows vs DOS XyWrite vs the future?

[Jimmy C Diecker diecker@xxxxxxxx]

This is primarily a thank you to all who replied publically and privately to my
request for information about running XyWin under OS/2.

I'd especially like to thank Jeff Ramsay and whoever 74603.761@xxxxxxxx
is--both TTG staff--who quickly and courteously gave me some feedback. I'd
given up trying to get any response from TTG by telephone two or three months
ago, and to say I was (pleasantly) shocked is not too strong a word for my
reaction when I got their online replies. It makes a world of difference in
one's feeling about a product when such occurs.

The general consensus is that OS/2 is indeed a better platform on which to run
XyWin (and XyDos). One person who replied to the list (he didn't sign the
message, but I think it was Steve Crutchfield) noted that he was a beta tester
for OS/2 Warp and that it improves greatly on an already excellent product.

So I'm looking forward to giving it a try, if for no other reason than that it
will be nice to know that when XyWin goes down the whole system won't go with
it.

Finally, the replies seem to indicate that a major part of my problems with
lockups (and Protection Violations) may indeed have to do with my being a heavy
mouse user with WyWin. As I explained to one correspondent,
I've by default become the "computer person" for several people in my
organization. I'm the only XyWrite user; everyone else is pretty evenly divided
between Word 6.0 and WordPerfect 6.0a. So I get pulled into working with both
regularly. As a result, I've gotten into the habit of using a mouse for
everything, except for those XyWin commands for which one has to use the
command line.

Once when I did get through to TTG earlier in the year about lockups and the
support person found out I almost exclusively used the mouse, the gist of his
advice was that XyWin "looks like a Windows program, but forget about that and
use the command line if you don't want lockups and protection faults."

I'm not averse to doing so, but I'm so used to using the mouse now (and really
don't see that using the mouse is intrinsically inferior to--or slower
than--than using the command line) that it's going to be difficult to change my
habits.

At any rate, thanks again to everyone--and especially the TTG staff--for their
useful comments.

Jimmy Diecker
Latin American Institute
University of New Mexico-Albuquerque diecker@xxxxxxxx