KimTwemlow wrote:I'm new to Nisus and would like to ask what is probably a tactless question ... How regular are updates?! Are we talking about a month or two ... a year?
Everyone seems to want Comments, for example. Might we get that improvement quickly and then other, more esoteric changes over time? How does it work?
Anyone care to hazard a non-binding, just-for-kicks, broad, ball-park, take-it-with-a-pinch-of-salt time-line?
Kim,
This is by no means official, but if history serves us, Nisus has been very good at developing meaty updates. One look at how NWE evolved from 2.0 to 2.5, and from 2.5 to the proposed 3.0, and you should get an idea of what you can expect from these guys.
Although, to be fair, I think Comments and/or Track Changes warrants a full version update (as opposed to a point release), and I think we should probably not expect it in NWP 1.5, although anything is possible.
This discussion has been going on for some time now, and I haven't had the opportunity to add my own feature requests, so here they are. I should warn you beforehand that most of them have been mentioned already, but I thought it can't hurt to add my voice to the chorus.
* improved graphics handling
Give the user more control over graphics (their exact size, the amount of padding etc.).
* "Fields" à la Word, or "live headers"
It would be very nice to have this feature, especially as part of a template, where you could for instance have a text in a particular style on the first page, say, a heading, show up automatically in the header of subsequent pages.
* paragraph borders
I'm not sure how other users feel about this, but I really like the use of paragraph borders. I am particularly prone to adding paragraph borders to headers and sometimes even footers; there are a couple of awkward workarounds (right now, I use a table in the header), but of course none of them can of course replace the real thing.
* comments
I especially like the nice implementation of comments in Pages. I've never used comments in Word because they clutter the screen and the document itself in a way that really hurts the eye. Apple has shown that this feature can also be presented in a rather nice UI, separately from the main document.
* split document windows
I believe this has been a feature in Nisus Writer Classic, and I would really like to see it in Nisus Writer Pro at some point in the hopefully not too distant future: the ability to split a document window, i.e. to show two parts of the same document in one window. This is usually done by a divider line, which separates the document into two "distinct" windows, each with their own scroll bar.
I'm sure there are many other features, but I can't think of any right now. Maybe I'll add a few more over the next couple of weeks as I'm about to start my first major writing project with Nisus Writer Pro. That being said, the brave folks at Nisus should be praised for their efforts, and of course for the absolutely stunning result of said efforts. Nisus Writer Pro is a superb word processor that already does almost everything I need it to do, even in its 1.0 release. Once again, thanks for delivering such a great piece of software!
edited because I remembered another feature that I would really like to have.
Last edited by mrennie on 2007-08-20 06:17:50, edited 3 times in total.
[I have reported several bugs and anything about feature requests herein already.]
I would agree that the NWP interface is pretty clear and obvious, much more so than Mellel. However, Mellel seems to be the more robust of the two by far and has much better document rendering on-screen.
Things I would like to see improved/fixed in NWP:
- The style sheet view is funky. The preview text is not adequate to really give you an idea of what the style will look like in actual use. Pages does this quite well. I don't know if adding another drawer for styles or a separate window/palette would be better. But, being able to see the style actual in use in the actual document window is much better than the current "view" arrangement.
- Images/placed graphics should have at least the same level of control as one gets in Pages '08. This would include borders, padding, resizing with actual quantitative values, etc.
- Consistency between menu items, the toolbar display, and OS Font "palette". This is most likely a bug. Mellel is probably the best at handling fonts compared with all others (TextEdit, NWP, Word). Pages '08 is pretty good at this with its new format toolbar.
- Though I agree with others that Mellel's interface is rather off-putting (compared with nearly all other word/document processing apps), it is about the most robust in its implementation. The Mellel developers seem not to have just relied on the built-in "Text Services" widgets/code of OS X, like most other apps do, and have extended or made their own when the OS-provided widgets/code is less than ideal (kind of like how the Panic developers wrote their interface object code because of design flaws in OS X). In summary, please don't be lazy and just use the OS-provided widgets/objects/code when you should really extend them or write your own to make things work better.
- I would add my vote for "running titles". I would also like to see provisions for variables, as well. By variables, I mean both things like "current section name/value" and user-defined variables, such as text snippets/strings.
- I have been using two row tables to creation captions for "figures". This works fairly well, though it would be nice to have something prebuilt specifically for this purpose and to include the capability for auto-numbering.
- I would also like to see some form of versioning and change-tracking added. However, I think it's is unreasonable to think that anyone can collaborate with others on any real-world projects using different apps (e.g., NWP and Word) and expect to simply open documents in both apps and ever see the same thing. There are just two many variables, such as document dispaly/rendering, font differences (especially between Mac and Windows), etc. to ever make this a highly productive way of working.
- NWP's support of RTF is currently pretty flakey. I wonder if NWP just uses some OS X provided RTF code/library, or whatever, but it doesn't seem to be as robust as it should be. This tends to contradict the impression that because NWP uses RTF as its native file format that it is highly compatible with Word, etc. Perhaps, the current implementation is buggy or not robust, or doesn't handle less than perfectly formatted RTF files (which is a programming "no no" --- apps should always write highly conforming or strictly compliant files and be able to read less than strictly compliant files --- in other words, write conservatively and read forgivingly to/from a given file format).
- As someone else also mentioned, the tools drawer doesn't open wide enough. It wouldn't hurt to look at what Pages '08 does well and emulate it as appropriate (provide the same functionality).
- The customize toolbar option should provide a "Fonts" icon in addition to the Color icon. The current tools drawer isn't really adequate to show fonts well in its current incarnation.
- The tools drawer is currently too limiting. It is nice as space-saver, but creates an obstruction to better ease-of-use by lumping all controls into the drawer "scheme". Users should be able to see more tools if they wish. Having to click tabs to switch "palettes" in the tools drawer is rather inefficient and limits what tools/options are available/viewable at a given time. And, having a tool drawer specifically attached to each document window seems really inefficient and has got to be the worst aspect of NWP. Why repeat the same interface elements on every document window?
NWP version 1 is a good start. Hopefully, there will be a lot of bug fixes soon. Thanks.
D-Mac wrote:I have been using two row tables to creation captions for "figures". This works fairly well, though it would be nice to have something prebuilt specifically for this purpose and to include the capability for auto-numbering.
There is another workaround for this, by using list styles. You can read about this in NWP's help file, under the heading "Use list styles to automatically number figures, tables, etc.".
D-Mac wrote:The tools drawer is currently too limiting. It is nice as space-saver, but creates an obstruction to better ease-of-use by lumping all controls into the drawer "scheme". Users should be able to see more tools if they wish. Having to click tabs to switch "palettes" in the tools drawer is rather inefficient and limits what tools/options are available/viewable at a given time. And, having a tool drawer specifically attached to each document window seems really inefficient and has got to be the worst aspect of NWP. Why repeat the same interface elements on every document window?
You can do this with consummate ease! Just drag the palettes you want permanently visible out of the drawer and on to the desktop. They dock together, size themselves to be neat ... they are there whether a document is open or not and they survive updating the app, certainly through point changes.
Edited: And I disagree about this being the worst aspect of NWP. I don't want all the palettes cluttering up the desktop, just the ones I'm accessing all the time. So I have the font, paragraph and list tabs there, with the drawer showing the styles palette. I don't need to see the tables palettes, or the page/section layout palettes all the time, but they remain very easily accessible through the tabs in the drawer. Those palettes that reflect specific things about a given document can remain in the drawer attached to that document; those palettes that are universally applicable can be put on the desktop.
Not only can you custom put the palettes you want on the desktop, you can also customise what appears in the various tabs in the drawer. And then there's the fact that the drawer is hide-able at the click of a key combination is another plus.
The combination of the drawer and palettes on the desktop is to my mind one of the greatest interface strengths of NWP.
D-Mac wrote:I have been using two row tables to creation captions for "figures". This works fairly well, though it would be nice to have something prebuilt specifically for this purpose and to include the capability for auto-numbering.
There is another workaround for this, by using list styles. You can read about this in NWP's help file, under the heading "Use list styles to automatically number figures, tables, etc.".
That's very useful, thank you for pointing it out (I've still got to work through the user guide ... my poor printer ...). However, I'd prefer not to have the 'Figure x.' section separated from the rest of the caption by a tab. Is there any way around this? I'm guessing not since a bullet is followed by a tab.
mrennie wrote:There is another workaround for this, by using list styles. You can read about this in NWP's help file, under the heading "Use list styles to automatically number figures, tables, etc.".
That's very useful, thank you for pointing it out (I've still got to work through the user guide ... my poor printer ...). However, I'd prefer not to have the 'Figure x.' section separated from the rest of the caption by a tab. Is there any way around this? I'm guessing not since a bullet is followed by a tab.
I'm afraid there isn't. Or if there is, I have not been able to find one. I agree, this is not too pretty, but it works as a temporary solution until captions become a feature of Nisus Writer Pro. Nisus folks, please consider this a feature request!
D-Mac wrote:I have been using two row tables to creation captions for "figures". This works fairly well, though it would be nice to have something prebuilt specifically for this purpose and to include the capability for auto-numbering.
There is another workaround for this, by using list styles. You can read about this in NWP's help file, under the heading "Use list styles to automatically number figures, tables, etc.".
Wow! Thanks to mrennie and WolfUK for those tips. I knew about the list feature, but I hadn't seen the bit about moving palettes out of the the tools drawer.
If the palettes tip works well, then that solves most of my issue with the tools drawer... I'll scan through the manual again...
mrennie wrote:There is another workaround for this, by using list styles. You can read about this in NWP's help file, under the heading "Use list styles to automatically number figures, tables, etc.".
That's very useful, thank you for pointing it out (I've still got to work through the user guide ... my poor printer ...). However, I'd prefer not to have the 'Figure x.' section separated from the rest of the caption by a tab. Is there any way around this? I'm guessing not since a bullet is followed by a tab.
I'm afraid there isn't. Or if there is, I have not been able to find one. I agree, this is not too pretty, but it works as a temporary solution until captions become a feature of Nisus Writer Pro. Nisus folks, please consider this a feature request!
You can't get away from having the tab (as far as I know) but you can set the tab to a very small gap in the Style Sheet.
Cheers, Geoff
Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher
"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com
greenmorpher wrote:You can't get away from having the tab (as far as I know) but you can set the tab to a very small gap in the Style Sheet.
Hi Geoff,
I was wondering about that but I couldn't see where to set the tab value for the bullet. I've actually done this manually now in my document and will keep an eye on the spacings as I add and remove lit items.
Go to the Lists palette, click on the ltitle drop down menu labelled "Style" and at the bottom you will see "Edit List Styles". Click there, and it will switch to the Style Sheet with all the List Styles selected. (They are at the bottom of the Styles menu on the left.
Go through had adjust to your heart's content. Don't forget that if you make the tab space really skinny, when you get up to double figures, it will default to the next tab space so in your skinny tab style, you need to add a second skinny tab behind the first to maintain the small spacing when that point is reached.
Or click on "New List Style" instead of Edit and create a new style.
Cheers, Geoff
Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher
"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com
Thanks Geoff. What I hadn't realised is that you set the tab stops in the paragraph style and not in the list style.
Turning this back into a feature request discussion, it would be lovely to have a list of tab stops rather than just having them on the top ruler. Perhaps the list could be added to the Paragraph pallet.
Will someone please join me in requesting an actual page number count in the lower left of the NWP window? Currently, the number shown is the "virtual" page number, i.e. the page number inserted by the user, which is not always the same thing (thanks to un-numbered opening pages, differently-numbered appendices, etc). It's pretty useless when it comes to giving instructions to the printer.
I hate to drone on about it but I'm afraid that the good folks at Nisus will forget about the problem if I'm the only one clearing his throat and raising his hand!
