🚀 go-pugleaf

Now that my name has come up in this collection of reminiscences on the List,
I am tempted to put in my two bits' worth.  Cora and I started in 1982 with
Perfect Writer on a CP/M Kaypro, and stayed with that until Kaypro unwisely
ditched Perfect Writer for WordStar.  We thought about leaving CP/M for DOS,
tried a program that was a hybrid of both, and then began to hear tell of a
new DOS wordprocesor called Nota Bene, produced by Steve Siebert, recently
a graduate  student at Yale.  What finally decided me was an article about
NB in the Yale Review, written by Edward Mendelson, who has consistently
praised the program in PC Magazine ever since.  We came in with NB 2 at
some date in 1986, so anybody with version 1 certainly predates us.  Almost
at once I was convinced that NB was THE wordprocessor for academics, and
began proselytising for it.  This university had already injudiciously opted
for WordPerfect, and there was no persuading them to add Nota Bene as well.
But I had more success with colleagues, both in the Dept. of Philosophy and out
of it.  When Deborah Reumann out of the blue invited me to rewrite and
update the Tutorial booklet, I had to decline, confessing that I had never
opened it; but I countered with the brash suggestion that I would like
instead to tackle the Customization and Programming Guide.  She to my
surprise agreed, and I was stuck with a job for which my only qualification
was enthusiasm; my then total ignorance of any programming language has
even now been modified only to the extent that I have learned a little
about XPL, thanks to generous coaching by Itamar, J-P, and, more recently,
Mary, all of whom have visited us here.  They may want to disown the help
that they have given me, but they are not to be believed.  I have made
many other friends on this List, especially Dorothy Day, Ed Yadzinsky, Mervyn
Bennun, Roy Harris, Paul Bodin, and Tony St. Quintin; others are not
mentioned only because, sadly, old men forget.

Tony Woozley
cad2m@virginia.edu