* Crossposted from: R-XYWRITE
Steve Hayes is replying to Sonja Duvenage, who wrote to Steve Hayes on 14 Jan 
97  19:56:00:
 SH> SD> I'm interested to hear why editing in WP6.1 is such hell. From
 SH> SD> the wordperfect conference it is clear that you are no fan of
 SH>wordperfect.
 
 SH>Basically because it requires too many keystrokes to manipulate text.
 
 SH>If you're simply writing something, like a letter or a memo, or even
 SH>a longer document that doesn't need major changes, it's fine.
 SD> I work in a law firm. It is said that WordPerfect was developed with
 SD> the  legal profession in mind. Commercial departments edit text quite a
 SD> few  times before the final draft is ready. WordPerfect 5.1 was a dream
 SD> to  use. WP6.1 for windows took a while to get used to. I agree with
 SD> you on  the key strokes but one gets used to it after a while. I fly
 SD> through the  strokes and use a lot of short cuts.  Unfortunately now,
 SD> just as I feel  comfortable, we will be going Microsoft ALL the way and
 SD> we will be  changing over to Word :-(
Yes, WordPerfect was designed for lawyers, and I would recommend it for most 
legal offices.
 SH>But it's not an editor's editor, and I'm an editor.
 SD> I'm a secretary. That's the difference. It's my companion through out 
 SD> the day. 
One of the differences between WordPerfect and XyWrite is in redlining. We do 
all our editing in redlining, and in WordPerfect it is cumbersome in the 
extreme to do redlining "on-the-fly" - it takes 10 times as long.
WordPerfect does do redlining after the event, with the "compare document" 
feature. That is quite adequate for most legal documents, where most changes 
are quite minor. But it doesn't work so well when editing academic texts. If 
you change an ambiguous word or phrase, and then three pages on find 
something which throws new light on the meaning, you can't go back and 
restore the original, unless you are doing on-the-fly redlining. And if you 
make big changes - rearranging whole paragraphs or sections, then "compare 
document" just shows a total mess. 
Since we started using WordPerfect as the "university standard" there has 
been an increasing tendency to go back to the clutch pencil and hard copy 
editing, and let the secretaries or typesetters key in the changes - all the 
"technological advances" of modern word processors are taking us back to 
where we were 25 years ago, with hot metal type.
 
 SH>I've tried, several times, to use it for my own writing, and I've
 SH>always ended up converting it to XyWrite for anything more than a
 SD> Have never laid eyes on the proggie. From what you and Ric has said it
 SD> must be ancient.
Yep, my version came out in April 1987, takes up 172k of disk space, and 
hasn't been bettered by the 15Meg monsters you buy today. Word and AmiPro do 
on-the-fly redlining, after a fashion, but they can't delete deletions. If 
XyWrite could get it right 10 years ago, why can't the others?
Keep well,
Steve Hayes
E-mail: steveh@khanya.bbs.co.za
   WWW: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734
--- WtrGate 0.92 gamma Unreg
---------------