Hi again laurenmg,
I'm no expert in the field of data formats. There are people here that know much more about this than I do, and I hope they will chime in soon.
I would like to point out to you as a new forum member that it may take several days (and sometimes longer) until people here find time to respond. So don't be disappointed if it takes a while.
laurenmg wrote:Its a bit of a deal breaker really, as it seems rather risky for NWP (and there users) by staying with a redundant format and not future proofing their product.
What do you mean by "redundant" ? I can't see why it should be redundant. Do you perhaps mean "obsolete"?
Given that Apple and Microsoft no longer support "rtf" files
It depends on what you mean by "support". I skimmed through Wikipedia articles about RTF today in several languages, but I couldn't find anything about that the days of RTF are counted. It may not be actively developed anymore (?) by Microsoft, but—in the usual sense of that word—I would say both Apple and Microsoft do support RTF files.
Apple's standard text editor, TextEdit, uses .rtf as standard format. RTF is also the default format for WordPad in Microsoft Windows, and Scrivener uses .rtf, if I remember right. But it's true, not all aspects of RTF are equally well supported. Apple's text engine doesn't support footnotes in RTF, for example.
Be it as it may, I have always found RTF the most reliable format when exchanging documents between word processors on the Mac as well as for cross-platform purposes.
Both .doc and .rtf, although still widely used, are nevertheless yester-year products.
Perhaps I have overlooked something, but
what features exactly are there in .docx that you need and .doc and .rtf can not provide?
From my point of view, it's not so much the data format that's of primary importance here. Much more important are considerations such as:
1. What kind of documents do you intend to create?
2. With whom will you be exchanging your documents, and what kind of word processors do they have?
I have tried all word processors for the Mac, and for my purpose NWP wins hands down. NWP is the only program that enables me to structure and do regular tedious formatting on the fly (with macros). It's the non plus ultra program when it comes to cleaning up text and reformat it in no time.
I believe Nisus' decision to offer a 14-day trial is a serious miscalculation which I'm sure backfires on the company. It's absolutely impossible to get adequate feeling for all the immense power NWP has in just 14 days.
The
"Nisus Writer Pro User Guide" explains fairly well all elementary operations, but the real power of NWP lays in the glossary, the unparalleled, multilayered search engine and the macro language. Many features and operations you can do are not obvious to the beginner, because these features can't be found in the menus. Out of the box, NWP can't compare two documents, for example, but with a macro you can achieve this in an impressive way. There seems to be hardly anything you can't do with a Nisus macro, and on this forum there are some REALLY good and friendly macro writers who are ready to assist you if you need help.
For someone about to choose a word-processing system, a key consideration must be for that system [1] to be upgraded on a regular basis, [2] which not only provides best service, but in turn [3] gives confidence that the company (Nisus in this case) is robust enough to be around long term.
[1] NWP is not upgraded on a *regular* basis, but I think that applies to most other Mac word processors too, more or less.
[2] Nisus has excellent support service, and you are always dealing with concrete human beings whom you can write to directly (not these awful, anonymous web tickets that so many software companies have).
[3] There is a long thread about this topic here:
http://nisus.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5709