XyWrite

Pronounced "zy-write." A venerable text editor and word processing program used extensively in the newspaper and magazine industry throughout the 1980s as well as by professional writers around the world. Developed by XyQuest, Inc., Billerica, MA, XyWrite was the most user-customizable word processor ever developed, offering a remappable keyboard, customizable menus and a complete, although cryptic, programming language that could be used to perform any function on the text. XyWrite was the first DOS program to provide complete typographic control over the page layout.

Like HTML and XML
XyWrite generates ASCII text and uses embedded tags for formatting and labeling similar to HTML and XML. The tags are normally hidden, except for a triangle symbol, but can be easily revealed when required (see example below).

From DOS to Windows
XyWrite III Plus was the last DOS version from the original line, and a Windows version was later created (see XyWrite for Windows). XyWrite 4 for DOS evolved from Signature, a graphics-based version intended to succeed IBM's DisplayWrite, but that alliance never came to fruition. In the early 1990s, XyWrite products were acquired by The Technology Group, Baltimore, MD, which closed its doors in 2001. See Nota Bene.

XyWrite Format Codes

To this day, all the text in this Encyclopedia has been maintained in XyWrite III Plus because it offers complete control over the user interface. XyWrite files are easily converted to HTML and XML because XyWrite is tag based, although the codes and delimeters are different. In the bottom image of this example, the tag contents are revealed.