Re: [Leica] Kaypro and Atex and Xy, Oh My!

["Bill Harting" <wharting@adelphia.net>]

Hi Peter,

I always thought the Atex keyboards, especially the old style editing
keyboards, were terrific -- they had a typewriter-like touch that seemed
natural to me, but apparently were not so to some others. The larger picture
of what became of the lawsuits was that the proprietary hardware began to
disappear -- where I worked PCs replaced all but editors' terminals, which
was partly a result of newspaper economics, partly a result of style, and
importantly, partly a result of the commoditization of computers. Word and
its brothers may be "powerful" but they are awkward editing programs, but
this meant little to info services departments that had to support their
quaint architecture.

bh
- ----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Klein" <pklein@2alpha.net>
To: <leica-users-digest@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2003 12:08 PM
Subject: [Leica] Kaypro and Atex and Xy, Oh My!


> Ah, those were the days!  When I started working in computers in the early
> 80s, PCs were not very affordable, and neither was software.  For my
> personal use, I picked up a used Kaypro bundled with, among many other
> things, WordStar, and was in hog heaven.  The Kaypro was a beautiful,
> industrial-strength machine.
>
> I rapidly got into search and replace arcana and began augmenting WordStar
> with ProKey macros. Even today, I still use a text editor (TSE) that has
> the basic WordStar Ctrl-key commands, and I programmed some of the two-key
> commands in--they're just in my fingers.
>
> I later went to work for Quicksoft, which made PC-Write.  The text-hacking
> skills I'd aquired on they Kaypro with WordStar became very useful when
> translated into PC-Write.  Brit Hume (now of CNN, then of ABC) and Jim
> Mitchell of WHAS-TV in Louisville used to call me frequently for tips on
> massaging all manner of alien files into usability.
>
> I then graduated to XyWrite III Plus, which was essentially Atex for the
> PC.  I liked it so much that I was still using it for my own writing three
> years ago. XyWrite was probably the best program for a text hound ever
> written. It had a powerful programming and macro language called XPL that
> was as arcane as Marc James Small's recent treatises on auto electronics,
> and I say that with the deepest respect to both.  What you could *do* with
> XPL!  I wrote programs to turn XyWrite files into Ventura Publisher files
> and back again, and created a sort of DosKey command recaller-editor for
> the XyWrite command line.
>
> I was saddened to read that in the early 1990s(?)there were a number of
> carpal-tunnel related lawsuits against Atex.  There were accusations that
> the keyboard was very bad, ergonomically, and it had lead to many
> injuries.  Does anyone know what the outcome of those suits were?
>
> XyWrite is dead, as far as I know, having been bought and ruined by IBM,
> and then sold to The Technology Group, where Ver. 4 was somewhat repaired.
> Too bad. There are still a substantial number of writers and journalists
> who use it, and its academic brother NotaBene.  But knowing XyWrite won't
> get you a job any more :-( Reaction to it today is sorta like Kyle's story
> of rockgrrrl model and the film camera.  Sic transit gloria mundi.
>
> --Peter
>
> Bill Harting wrote:
> > As you were leaving in 1990, I was just beginning to paginate with
> > Atex, after 12 or 13 years of editing with it. Creaky it was, but it
> > was a fine editing and production system.
>
>
> B.D. wrote:
> > It seemed so, well, 'modern' at the time...that being 1980...It seemed
> > pretty damn creaky by the time I left in 1990, but then I wasn't
> > involved in pagination or any of the fancy stuff, and for writing and
> > line-editing, it worked just fine - when it worked....(Of course if I
> > never again here the words "the system's down," it will be too soon.
> :-)
>
>
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