!T1_TNT

And what of     beta SmartWords,     the sorta-32bit     phantom successor     to xyWin 4?    

Not-vaporware dept:    

xyWrite's legendary architect Dave Erickson has invested in and is "working with" NotaBene as well as pursuing a number of other interests, NB president Anne Putnam announced to the xyWrite list on 17 August 2001. After the IBM debacle, Erickson continued till earlier this year as chief engineer at TTG.

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SmartWords' most conspicuous break with xyWrite is a shift from the IBM extended character set to ANSI. File filters convert some chars, but (unlike NoteTab) SW doesn't toggle the sets with a key press. Executing dir commands lists dos dirs; VB 32bit dialog boxes generate lfn dirs. TTG CEO Kenneth Frank commented to the xyWrite list that comparatively the SmartWords editor and the NotaBene product are "functionally very similar" and from the command line are "more or less the same." But "Nota Bene has done more with the interface as it relates to certain functions," e.g., NotaBene has "enhanced the dialog boxes for certain commands, like column tables, and added other academic related functions. Because of what [TTG uses the SmartWords] editor for, many of those dialog boxes are not important to us. I really haven't compared the products at a level of detail to be able to give you a rundown, but for basic word processing functions we use SmartWords as it is all day every day with no problem."

NotaBene also supplies any and all an nbWin demo, downloadable from its site, or by smail as a $10 CD. ... An active NotaBene mailing list has flourished for many years independent of the company. Msg:

sub notabene [your real name]

[Some notes I wrote after a belated immersion in nbWin and xyWin compare them to NoteTab. It will be very interesting indeed to see what develops with Dave Erickson involved directly in NB. Lobbying for Unicode support, e.g., has been intense. --a | 17 August 2001]

Other resources  

• !xyWise owes much to Herb Tyson's "XyWrite Revealed" (a/k/a The Book), Carl Distefano, and Robert Holmgren. The Herb, alas, long since left xyWrite behind. At xyWWWeb, Holmgren and Distefano offer a staggering and popular inventory of Warp-tilted xyWrite 4 xpl. They also have some dos NotaBene and unsupported xyW3 stuff; caveat: when they use that stuff themselves, by their own harrowing accounts xyWrite 3 behavior becomes unacceptably aberrant.
• James Eibisch's xyWrite 3+ xpl programs.
• xylist founder Nathan Sivin's archive at Penn, maintained now by list owner Carl Distefano, includes xylist archives and significant menu-driven xyDos 4 xpl by ex-XyQuest xpl programmer Tim Baehr.
• If you use or yearn to use post-IBM dos xyWrite and you format what you write for an office printer, or if IBM is in your portfolio, you'll find the xyWrite mailing list (subscribe xywrite) congenial.



Not xyWrite, but ...

• For an interesting browse (or if you're dissatisfied with your file mgr), visit xyWrite user Robert Orndorff's site.
• For a good time call (oh, all right ... or if you are, e.g., dissatisfied with your browser) xyWin user Peter Evans's imaginative, goofy melange of information useless, useful, and otherwise.
• The patron saint of xpl programming has moved on to new interests, software and beyond: "Herb Tyson is a singer, songwriter, and musician, whose songs spill into a number of different categories, including folk, country, pop, soft rock, and blues."

xyWrite
and
Windows 

---

"Even Microsoft cautions that Windows 2000 is not for everyone. [...] The MS-DOS prompt is gone, and the DOS high-memory management system sought by most DOS applications is absent as well. [...]

"My two DOS `legacy' applications, Lotus Magellan (a disk-management utility) and Nota Bene (a word processor build on the ancient 1983 XyWrite program), installed and ran fine under Windows 2000 despite dire warnings they were incompatible.

"On boot-up, I still get warned that the programs are trying to write to disk in an unsupported manner. I just click `Ignore' and everything runs fine. I'd like to be able to get rid of that warning message, however.

"Although MS-DOS is gone, Windows 2000 has a `Command' prompt that will run DOS programs from a command line in a `virtual DOS' window. As with Windows 98, DOS windows are not resizable, but can be displayed full-screen by hitting ALT-ENTER.

"The `Command' prompt is buried in Windows 2000's `Accessories' menu, a move that suggests Microsoft would just as soon you abandoned those old DOS applications. We DOS diehards are a stubborn lot, however, and will give up our DOS applications when they uncurl our cold, stiff fingers from our keyboard.

"It was not the old programs, in fact, but the most recent ones that gave me problems. [...]"
-- "Faster, easier to use, but don't expect Windows 2000 to have new look"

[This DOS diehard went to hell and back to continue using win95 instead of the win98 that was preinstalled on a new notebook. 98lite lets you wipe MSIE off your hdd and out of your registry, but it can't get MSIE hooks out of the win98 kernel. Ultimately, I failed to attain a kernel not infected by hooks to a browser I don't use. The late win95 release I ended up with creates three ineradicable MSIE subdirs--one of them lfn with spaces in the name--that early win95 lets you delete. My attempts to permanently erase MSIE registry entries fail, as does the 98lite utility that claims to rid the win95 registry of MSIE entries, I suppose because of small victories before I ran it--e.g., I have no \Program Files. Calls to that subdir are directed to \msDrek. (My experience is that MS won't allow a win95 subdir with no space-free lfn subdir names. If you rename \Start Menu, win95 creates a new \Start Menu. win95 hasn't made me any fonder of lfn than when I first encountered them back in the early '80s in my first dos word processor.) My lone satisfaction is that MSIE itself remains uninstalled. Apps that require MSIE? Too bad for them. --a | 14 july 2000]
 
[That satisfaction is about to go down the tubes now that it's become nearly impossible to buy many peripherals that aren't USB (especially cameras). I've picked up a Partition Magician to get dual-booting in anticipation of reinstalling win98; I'll boot to it on occasions when I absolutely must use USB. Otherwise, being forced to use Mac win98 VirtualDOS has removed any doubts that win95 was the Windows release with my name on it. --a | 30 june 2002]
 
[Given the vise MS has put a captive market into, let me note, happily, that the folks who brought us 98lite are still at it. It's taken them this long to whip the insecure, vandal-magnet XP into almost-ready lite form, which is pretty scary, but the product promises a lot of control. When finished. --a | 30 august 2003]

xyWrite made other dos file managers superfluous, but under win9x xyW's lack of lfn support (aside from SW VB dialog boxes) requires a supplemental 32bit file manager unless nbWin or Windows Explorer meets your needs. I've used PowerDesk and I've used Total Commander. Even though PD is prettier and can be had as freeware, Total Commander (thanks, Joe Solla!) is comprehensive. If you're used to PD or Explorer, give yourself some time to get comfortable with Total Commander's homely interface. Powerhouses aren't glamorous. Take time to study configuration options; keyboard help suggests the depth. Although totalCom defers to Norton Commander purists with some dumb key assignments, you can remap all functions:

Did you know you can copy the current item from the clipboard directly to whatever is displayed in full-screen dos xyWrite? Yes, full-screen (probably works with xyW-in-a-box too). Ctrl+Esc->Esc->Tab->cursor-right to the Windows taskbar xyWrite object->Shift+F10 (OR right-click the taskbar xyWrite object)->Edit->Paste. The win95 in the PC I'm using right now won't accept e->p kbd shortcuts, alas; Edit->Paste require use of a pointing device, but when you Alt+Tab to xyWrite you'll find the clip right there on your screen.

<SIDEBAR>

When I installed win95, a friend offered three words of advice: right mouse button. My own distilled Windows advice applies to any app you use much: learn the hotkeys. If you don't already know what a placid experience Windows can be when your hands aren't shuttling constantly between kbd and mouse, try turning your mouse on its back.

* Ctrl+Esc unfurls the Start menu. * Alt+Space opens an app's control menu. * Alt+[underscored initial] displays other menus    (yeah, duh, but just do it); * type underscored initials on the menus; * tune in the hotkey info that's often there. * Alt or Esc exits menus. * Ctrl+Tab cycles tabbed panels    when dialog box options are several. * Alt+Tab cycles open apps.

The culprit is the shuttling, not the mouse. In an inherently graphical app, the keyboard becomes the obstacle. If you must move your hand off the pointing device to use a hotkey, the hotkey ceases to be a shortcut. Except when using graphics apps, the only time I touch a pointing device is to get to icons in the system tray. Pointing devices integrated in keyboards seem like a real good idea as long as the device isn't so far from the alphanumeric keypad it might as well be detached. </SIDEBAR>

I was probably the last win95 user to struggle with DUN, but just in case you've never experienced the joy of troublefree hands-off log-on I must mention a little-known freeware utility that ended years of weeping and wailing around here over the failure of highly praised ineffectual solutions. I'm eternally grateful to the indefatigable gadfly Helmar Rudolph for steering me to NetLaunch. To log on, I need only type e on the xyW CMline and tap my <!xyWiz> key, or Alt+S Enter in Total Commander to execute the first item on my start menu. After that, NetLaunch automates the whole process, including (if they weren't loaded) loading my browser and NoteTab (that clipboard-capture feature is quite handy while surfing). (If you use a pointing device with win9x you also can tap the icon in the system tray.)