However, the changes IBM had insisted on were a liability where the III Plus user base was concerned. Following mixed reviews and poor performance, it was later improved and renamed as XyWrite 4.0.
When a prospective new alliance with Lotus did not materialize, XyQuest regained the marketing rights to the software and resticker the ready-to-ship Signature packages pasting over the IBM logo.
īut on the eve of Signature's release, IBM announced a strategic decision to withdraw completely from the desktop software market, shocking XyQuest and leaving Signature in limbo. DisplayWrite would be discontinued at the same time in favor of the new software. Publicized in early 1991, the agreement envisioned as a marriage between XyQuest technology and IBM marketing, the product was to be called Signature, and would ship for MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows and IBM OS/2. Working under an agreement signed in June 1990, XyQuest devoted nearly all of its development resources to revising Erickson's XyWrite IV to IBM's specifications, including IBM Common User Access-style menus, mouse support and a graphical user interface. The turning point for XyWrite came in the form of a disastrous near-partnership with IBM, which was seeking a modern replacement for its venerable DisplayWrite word processor. By February 1991 it still hadn't shipped.
Its most successful product was XyWrite III Plus, which attracted a devoted following among professional writers.Īnnounced in September 1989, XyWrite IV promised a lot to users, it entered beta-test after a year in November 1990 hoping to release by year end. XyQuest was founded in June 1982 by former ATEX employees Dave Erickson and John Hild. It supported the standard Windows' True Type fonts along with Speedo fonts.
Version 4 (or Signature) has full WYSIWYG graphical editing capabilities including on-screen display of bitmaps and Bitstream Speedo fonts.Two files may be opened on the same screen for easy comparison of changes a XyWrite command will do the comparison automatically, putting the cursor on the location at which the two files first differ (from which the user can move to the next difference). Up to nine files can be opened for editing at one time in separate "windows" that allow quick copy-and-paste among several files.Commands are usually in simple English, such as "Save," "Print," and "Search," or their shorter versions, such as "Sa" for "Save" (commands are case-insensitive). Commands can be typed in directly on a command line, without the use of a mouse.Plain-text, editable configuration files allow easy customization of the keyboard-for remapping keystrokes and for execution of complex commands with individual keystrokes-as well as customization of what is loaded on launching the program.Users continue to write and share macros extending XyWrite features (printing to USB devices, for example). It has a flexible macro-programming language (XPL) that offers many advantages for quick search and replace, copy-editing and reformatting of raw text.XyWrite is written in assembly language, allowing it to run faster than word processors written in a higher level language.A plug-in for ANSI characters is available. This capability is useful for typesetters who need to convert to various formats, e.g., LaTeX. Its file format consists of plain text ( IBM437, or so-called "extended ASCII") with markup (within guillemets: « »).