XyWrite

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These pages, especially the XyWWWEB? page enable you to recreate Xywrite 4 for DOS and use it under 32 and 64 bit Windows 7, 8, 10 under the auxiliary program vDosPlus?, from vDOSPLUS.org, vDosPlus? (formerly vDos-lfn), a free general-purpose non-gaming DOS emulator running on Windows, based on vDos and DOSBox. vDosPlus? is designed to run non-gaming DOS applications in all current Windows versions.
These pages, especially the XyWWWEB? page enable you to recreate Xywrite 4 for DOS and use it under 32 and 64 bit Windows 7, 8, 10 under the auxiliary program vDosPlus</nowoki>, from vDOSPLUS.org, <nowiki>vDosPlus (formerly vDos-lfn), a free general-purpose non-gaming DOS emulator running on Windows, based on vDos and DOSBox. vDosPlus? is designed to run non-gaming DOS applications in all current Windows versions.

 XyWrite III+ and IV are very slick WordProcessors written in 8088 assembly language.

 Author:   XyQuest
 Homepage: 
 Family:   WordProcessorFamily MsDosEditors
 Platform: MS-DOS
 License:  Commercial

Quite useful as a text editor as well. Extremely fast -- just hold down the page down key to watch it fly through text!

Supposedly, related to the ATEX typesetting system.

This text editor/word processor is no longer sold.

Its descendant is NotaBene: http://www.notabene.com/ (which is still sold!)

It includes:

It can also produce clean ASCII files, suitable for use by compilers. Thus, it can perform as TextEditor.

XyWrite has really enthusiastic fan base, as described in this article in Salon magazine: http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/08/25feature.html . Check out these fan pages:

These pages, especially the XyWWWEB? page enable you to recreate Xywrite 4 for DOS and use it under 32 and 64 bit Windows 7, 8, 10 under the auxiliary program vDosPlus</nowoki>, from vDOSPLUS.org, <nowiki>vDosPlus (formerly vDos-lfn), a free general-purpose non-gaming DOS emulator running on Windows, based on vDos and DOSBox. vDosPlus? is designed to run non-gaming DOS applications in all current Windows versions.
Personal Note: Back in college, My roommate (JohnAllen? and I -- RonPerrella) used to write programs using XyWrite as the TextEditor. In particular, John wrote lots of 8086/8088/NecV20? assembly language programs using XyWrite. It certainly was able to do the job.
As I recall, XyWrite was related to ATEX, and a XyWrite session looked a lot like what an ATEX user at a terminal would see. It was intended to be a package comparable to ATEX that could run on a PC.

I've sometimes described XyWrite as "a programming language designed to manipulate text, wrapped in a clever word processor disguise." XyWrite was based on a macro language called XBL, and could have custom commands implemented in XBL. (The head of the XyWrite user's group in NYC was VP of an editorial production house, and spent most of his time writing XyWrite code to do processing on manuscripts sent to them by publisher clients.)

The user interface was implemented in the XyWrite Help system, and was also customizable. (Indeed, one reason why Nota Bene still exists while XyWrite doesn't is that Nota Bene's default configuration was a lot easier for new users to master than the one shipped by XyWrite.)

The lead developer wrote in Assembler on an original IBM PC with a 4.77 mhz 8088 CPU well after "fast" AT machines based on 25mhz 80286 chips were the norm. He figured that if it performed acceptably on an original PC, it would fly on something more powerful.

--DMcCunney


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