XyWrite
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XyWrite is a word processor for DOS and Windows produced by XyQuest in the mid 1980s and later by The Technology Group. It was the "official word processor" of the New York Times from 1989 to 1993.
Features
- Its file format consists of plain text (IBM437, or so-called "extended ASCII") with markup (within guillemets « »). This capability is useful for typesetters who need to convert various formats to LaTeX.
- Written in assembly allowing it to run faster than similar word processors [[Citing sources citation needed]]
- It has a flexible (if somewhat difficult) macro programming language (XPL) which. Users have written macros to extend XyWrite features (for example printing to USB devices).
- It allows free remapping of the keyboard to allow execution of complex commands with individual keystrokes.
- Commands can be typed in directly without the use of a mouse.
- WYSIWYG editing which ensures that the screen layout of documents look the same as the printed version [[Citing sources citation needed]]
History and current usage
After IBM canceled an agreement to create a new GUI version of XyWrite for DOS, XyQuest released the product as Signature. This version was buggy and slow and this eroded the user base [[Citing sources citation needed]]. A debugged version was released by IBM as XyWrite IV which did not increase XyWrites share of the word processing market [[Citing sources citation needed]].
A descendant of XyWrite called Nota Bene is still being actively developed, which is popular among academics, including many biblical scholars who use Greek and Hebrew characters in their work [[Citing sources citation needed]].
Thanks in large part to the work of users of XyWrite, the program is still very usable with Windows (or MS-DOS, and thus Linux). Even on Pentium and similar hardware, it remains noticeably faster than MS Word or OpenOffice. Despite these advantages in speed, XyWrite does not have as many features as Word or Open Office. For example, XyWrite is unaware of Windows ANSI or Unicode character sets and Nota Bene does not support languages (such as Chinese) that require double-byte characters.
See also
External links
- [Nota Bene] (corporate site)
- [xyWrite resources] by Diane Fischer (concentrating on XyWrite III)
- [XyWrite history] within Diane Fischer's site
- [XyWWWeb] by Carl Distefano and Robert Holmgren (concentrating on XyWrite IV)
- [XyWrite.com] A General XyWrite Resource by Brian Henderson
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