Re: XyWin & bug vs. feature

[Robert Holmgren holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to note from "Bob Brody"  Mon, 20 Jan 1997

You're talking XyWin, I assume, and I'm talking Xy4DOS. Sounds like
they're different. E.g., I get little colored dots on the Ruler across
the width of the current column. In the case where column 2 stretches
from 45 to 65, if my cursor rests in column 2 data (albeit located
on or near the left margin) those twenty Ruler dots from 45 to 65 will be
livid green, while all the other dots in the Ruler are default blue. It's
neat. Moreover, it retains mode WG throughout the session, stable as a
rock. I just did JuMPs all over in a 300K doc, I've SEarched, I probably
have done most all the cursor movements one can do in the course of working
on this doc -- and no toggle. What toggles is SAve, and SAve alone. (Now,
it's true, I don't have documents that mix straight text and columns. Is
that what you've got? My intuition is, that mixing columns and straight
text is a no-no, and that you should fake the appearance of straight text,
by giving one column all the width, and reducing the other column(s) to
zero width, but not killing them in principle. Might work -- also might
not do a thing!)

My experience was that XyWin was/is extremely fragile with tables, and I'm
more likely to get a GPF than any other error. Especially on Whole-Row-
MoVes -- they drove me crazy. My wife worked throughout November in XyWin
tables, and she says, 15 minutes max, gotta shut it down and restart the
program. I dunno how she stood it. I gave up two years ago.

Boy, am I tired of this thread! I didn't invent this behavior, I'm
just trying to describe it, and explain my personal experience. (Great of
Tech Support and Mr. Frank to be so generous with their time, no?) I
really like the way WG mode works in Xy4DOS, what can I say? Solved an old
intractable problem for me (I never could see a whole record
simultaneously), and now I'm used to it. It's as if they designed it to
meet my need.

Here's a thought: What's the width of your page? Have you tried trimming
the width of your two columns, or zooming the page out, so that the whole
thing fits on-screen? Wouldn't that render Page-Line toggles moot? I
mean, if all you've got is two columns, and if you can see the whole
thing, Page-Line makes sense.

Plus, there may well be a switch for this toggle. Has anyone bothered
to look? Funny thing: often there is a switch, but until people know
what it is, XyWrite is just despicable. Appears the switch, and
XyWrite is great. About ten minutes ago, I looked at my
son's factory-made SETTINGS.DFL file (called XWSET.DFL in XyWin), and he
has about one-half or 60% the number of VAriables set in his file as I have
in mine. So -- you know? It's just possible ...

I wouldn't abandon all hope for XyWin quite yet. Last July, Steve Shaw
went to visit TTG, and posted an interesting msg about Xy5 aka SmartWords
(the next product). Here's some of what he had to say:

"My concerns about the long term viability of XW have been mirrored in many
comments on this list. I am pleased to say that this week my concerns have
vanished!

"I visited the TTG President Kenny Frank in order to discuss my information
strategies for a large project I will be undertaking at the National
Institutes of Health: establishing a WWW site maintaining current reviews
on all human proteins... During my meeting with KFrank, he outlined the
concepts of the new software they are developing, and showed me many parts
which are operational.

"I was enormously impressed by the creativity and vision reflected in his
comments and by the emerging TTG product. It is unlike any PC product with
which I am familiar, and therefore defies simple categorization. The
simplest description I can offer is that it is a text-oriented system which
introduces a wonderful amalgam of spreadsheet and database concepts. In
short it promises to provide new levels of control and structure into the
text-oriented tasks which many of us do. The model applications he used to
demo it was the generation of legal documents and letters regarding
transactions. It is sensational in the generation of a richly varied set
of logically-controlled documents. In addition, the underlying concepts
allow enormous diversification from this starting point. I'm in the
process of thinking through its implications for the way I handle my own
rather varied strategies of organizing scientific information.

"Lest this sound too congratulatory, I'll add some caveats.
1. I doubt that the full ensemble of elements in this product (including
web integration) will be ready before the end of the year. However, TTG is
talking about September as a target for the first release, which will
include the core elements.
2. This is not going to be a breakthrough for people who write one-time
pieces of a non-technical nature [although it will continue to serve them
well since it will feature a suped-up XW-stype text editor]

"If Xy/XW has been dying, then this product promises to be the Phoenix. It
looks to me like it will be worth waiting for.

"Steve Shaw"


Quote un-quote. That's a rather startling "review", when you think about
it. Not your ordinary word processor. In my view, the jury is out.
FYI...


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Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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