Desired NWP1.2 Features

Everything related to our flagship word processor.
kcheney
Posts: 33
Joined: 2007-01-03 10:12:13

Re: Desired NWP1.2 Features

Post by kcheney »

One of old Nisus's features I pine for was the ability to search a lot of docs at once and then see all the results with each showing a line of the text found surrounding the search term. This was very useful! I am experimenting with iVerbum for this but it wants to make big indexes and that seems unnecessary.

I also liked the ability to embed one document in another, not as a mere clickable link but as a resizable document. It even updated when the original changed, as I recall.
Dirk_Barends
Posts: 42
Joined: 2006-12-14 09:09:51

Re: Desired NWP1.2 Features

Post by Dirk_Barends »

kcheney wrote:One of old Nisus's features I pine for was the ability to search a lot of docs at once and then see all the results with each showing a line of the text found surrounding the search term. This was very useful! I am experimenting with iVerbum for this but it wants to make big indexes and that seems unnecessary.
Yes I do miss that too, but the macros "Find (and Replace) in All Open Documents"
in the Nisus Writer Pro Macro Repository http://nisus.com/pro/macros/
sort of does that...

Dirk Barends
kcheney
Posts: 33
Joined: 2007-01-03 10:12:13

Re: Desired NWP1.2 Features

Post by kcheney »

Dirk, Thanks for the tip about the macro. It would be useful for some things but lacks two of the features I found most valuable about the Classic "Search all selected docs":

1. Not necessary to open docs to be searched, just select in the "Catalog" (a more capable version of today's Doc Mgr)
2. View all results in a single window with selected text---if search term is "fossil" you could see (with search term colored)--
…he is just an old fossil," said Nancy.
…if there are no fossils of this intermediate form…
…these trilobite fossils are located in the Museum of Natural History…
…Metzger's study of early human fossils found indications of…

and then click on the one(s) that you want to see, to open the docs. Very quick, and broad use. You could tell, e.g., if you actually had a copy of the material you were remembering, could see how much you had containing any search term, quickly navigate and evaluate. Now I use DevonThinkPro for this and am looking at iVerbum (but it has to maintain an index, additional MB used). DTP is an outstanding research and information organizing tool, but in this specific case (unless I have missed something) only returns a clickable list of document titles (of what's stored within it) that contain the search term. No text excerpts. It does rank the found items according to its very amazing AI's estimate of relevance, but I like text excerpts better. More specific, quickly scan and see a lot.

So I continue to list this feature as one of the Classic features I yearn for. I don't want to turn Nisus Pro into a research organizer but I can hope that its search capacities for its own docs become as good as they used to be 15 years ago.
kcheney
Posts: 33
Joined: 2007-01-03 10:12:13

Re: Desired NWP1.2 Features

Post by kcheney »

Has anyone mentioned the lost ability to tile and stack windows?

I have tried hard to find some easy to use add-on for OS X that will do this in all apps and my inability to do so makes me wonder if something about OS X's handling of windows precludes it.

Expose is not a substitute because the windows are not functional, you can't work in two windows alternately and have both visible, since you are not in the app but in Expose. And you cannot arrange the windows as you wish, as to size and location.
kcheney
Posts: 33
Joined: 2007-01-03 10:12:13

Make a new 1.3 features thread??

Post by kcheney »

Nisus folk,

Should we start a new thread here "Desired NWP 1.3 Features" ?

There are, naturally, a lot of wishes in the 1.2 thread that were not granted when 1.2 came out. Do you still look at this thread?

Any comments on what we can look forward to in 1.3?
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