My major need would be change tracking. Pretty much all my writing is done with collaborators. It makes things hugely easier when I can use change tracking to see what kind of changes my collaborators are suggesting and be able to cancel them if I don't agree with them. I really hate Word so I would switch apps like the wind if I could find a reliable word processor that has change tracking.
Let me also jump in.
Some requests that haven’t been made yet.
1. LINE CURSOR. This underlines the line your cursor (I beam) is, and moves up and down as your cursor does. It makes much easier to find where your cursor is on the monitor. This feature can be found in a editor “LightWayText”. Very very handy.
2. Front End. Front end where you can open and manage several of Nisus documents, that are, may be in one folder. When writing long documents, you can split them up in several different files, keep these in one folder, and open, edit, manage them. There is a program called “Alepin” that handles simple RTF files but the feature is limited.
Some other thoughts.
- More tight integration with Bookends, as request by Craig Turner. A discussion is going on in Macintouch, many people is interested in bibliographic softwares. I am personally a fan of Bookends, but the integration between Nisus is not as tight as between Mellel. There is even a script in Bookends for Nisus that is not working in recent builds of Nisus (worked before). Sente, another bibliographic soft is also getting closer with Mellel. This means that many people having references may go for Melle, not for Nisus, even you can still easily scan Nisus files in those softwares. It would be another good selling point.
- Tracking changes (comparing two documents), full screen mode, many features from Nisus Classic and a lot of other mentioned would be great.
My list of things I use every day in NWC but missing in action on NWE:
- mail merge, or at least file include (what I use mail merge for--assemble chapters into a book)
- invisible text style; allows me to keep html markup in a document and still print it WYSIWYG
- macros; ability to record same
- ability to compare two documents
I'd also like to be able not to have a header/footer at all--set space for same to zero.
Without at least the first two, I have to keep classic running. How after Intel?
nspy wrote:Without at least the first two, I have to keep classic running. How after Intel?
Well, will you really be buying a MacTel the instant they come out? The full transition for most of us will take some time (not unlike the switch from NW Classic to NWE, in some ways).
This could be good for you, I suppose.
I really think that Nisus will have made NWE even more indispensable by the time the Intel switch is in full swing.
Just chiming in to say that the current reasons I -- and the other academic writers I know -- can't use Nisus Express are lack of TOC and indexing. These are the most important features for long documents that are missing, and ought to be there already.
When I look at my list, I feel like crying out: My, oh my, how similar to what Nisus Writer Classic aready had are my requests! Anyway, please Father Nisus X-mas bring me:
- finding the cursor exactly where I left it when I reopen a document
- soft hyphenation (I write in French, and some of the automatic hyphens have a way of being strange)
- cross-references
- pre-packaged macros
- TOC and indexing
AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST, BECAUSE I AM A SECURITY FREAK, and sometimes not so well organized when I stop writing something
- AN AUTOMATIC BACK-UP in another location, determined by me. It saved so many almost-lost texts in Nisus Classic, that I think of it every day, even now.
I associate myself to the other writers in asking for the different things thy mention which become compelling when books have from 100'000 words on.