The future of Nisus Writer - A people's vision!
Posted: 2006-07-26 23:14:23
If the vision for Nisus Writer is be “the writer’s word processor”, what do we as “writers” want this “word processor” to look like in the future? Consider the fact that Classic is no longer an option on Intel Macs and it might not even show up for PPC in Leopard (I wouldn’t be surprised). In either case, Nisus Writer Classic days are numbered and NWE is the future for this company and its loyal customers. Therefore, I hope this thread might start a discussion about what Nisus Writer (Express) should ultimately look like, as a complete product for Mac OS X.
To shape a vision for the future of NW, we need to first consider the NW user base. I think there are five main groups of writers that use either the Classic or Express version of NW:
Academic writers: Nisus seems to have a strong group of academic writers who use and enjoy using NWC or NWE. Many of these people seem to have started with NWC and then, with their (eventual) conversion to OSX, consider NWE. However, NWE isn’t up to par with NWC in professional features and many of these users are starting to look elsewhere (i.e. Mellel).
Student writers: Some university students seem to use NW. In particular, students who study under profs that use and promote NW (that’s how I found out about this product). I also imagine some grade school educators and parents of grade school students purchase NW. Still, I think Apple’s Pages will likely dominate the grade school market and if profs stop using NW, they will promote what they use (i.e. Mellel).
Professional writers: NW is great for people who write articles, books, manuals, and other publication oriented material. The fact that most print publishers like documents in RTF format makes NEW a great workflow. NW seems well suited to people like Seth Godin, who think different and enjoy using a focused, stable, and professional word processor.
Casual writers: People who want a straightforward, easy to use, word processor that lets them focus on the task of writing. However, Pages will likely come to dominate this market segment, especially if version 3 adds more “word processing” features. This is the rumor, anyway (http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0607pages3.html).
Multilingual writers: An academic, student, professional, or casual writer who also needs special support for working with non-English languages.
With these key writer groups in mind, we need to consider the key features that they need, want, and most importantly desire in a “writer’s word processor”. As for me, I fit into both the academic and professional writer groups. And in terms of these writing roles, the most important features for me are:
User Interface: I like a simple, clean, and very usable interface. NWE does a pretty good job in this department. There still room for improvement, but it’s better than anything else out their in this area.
Performance: On today’s hardware, I think that a text processing application should be lightening fast and very stable, even with huge documents. NWE could really use some improvements in this area, with long documents in particular. I think that this was a big seller for NWC.
File Format: The most important element for all writers is protecting their work. Hence, I want my data stored in an open and standard format. Open in the sense that any application can easily read my documents now and into the distant future. Standard in the sense that exchange of, and collaboration on, a document not require anyone to export, or import from one file format to another (I want no fuss, no bother). NWE does a reasonable task of this now by using RTF -- a MS format for document exchange. However, in the future I hope Nisus might eventually make Word Open XML the default format. That is to say when Open XML (.docx) becomes an ISO standard and proves that it’s the leading standard. ODF is another option, but I don’t think it will be used as widely as Open XML. Either, way I want Nisus to use the most widespread, open standard as default. This is RTF for now and will likely be Open XML in the future. So it’s worth keeping an eye on stuff like http://openxmldeveloper.org/ and http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/.
Outlining/Document navigation: When I write, structure is important to me and I want my word processor to help me with this difficult work. I want an outline tool that allows me to easily create, view, navigate and edit the structure of my document. I would love to be able to move chapters, sections, tables, figures, and so forth around in my document easily.
Reference management: For scholars and university students, good integration with bibliography software makes writing research papers a lot more enjoyable. It would be great to be able to access, search, insert and manage citations to a bibliography database via a NEW palette. Integration with both Sente and Bookends would be good. As RedleX already has a Bookends + Mellel bundle, perhaps Nisus could explore a NWE + Sente bundle. I know that Sente has a new plug-in architecture, which would make integration an easy task. At any rate tight UI level integration between a word processor and reference management software is a valuable feature to me as an academic writer.
Styles: Styles are a nice way to keep my formatting organized. NWE does a fair job of styles, but things like auto titles, style groups and manuscript templates would be nice. Moreover, it could be easier to manage styles and move them between different documents.
ToC/index/cross-references: For someone who prepares manuscripts these are very useful features that save a lot of time.
Comments/track changes: Collaborative writing is becoming an important part of both academic and professional writing. This area could really use improvement and innovation in comparison to other packages out there. For example, a document comparison feature would be really nice and unique among word processors.
Layout control: This isn’t a big issue, but NW could use more refined layout controls, especially in terms of footnotes, endnotes, lists, tables, and graphics.
So, here’s a start to what could be a very interesting thread. I encourage everyone to share what group, or groups, best fits you as a writer, and what features are most important to you? The Nisus guys seem to be very open to feedback and I think that this discussion would be a helpful to them in their planning for NW and Nisus.
To shape a vision for the future of NW, we need to first consider the NW user base. I think there are five main groups of writers that use either the Classic or Express version of NW:
Academic writers: Nisus seems to have a strong group of academic writers who use and enjoy using NWC or NWE. Many of these people seem to have started with NWC and then, with their (eventual) conversion to OSX, consider NWE. However, NWE isn’t up to par with NWC in professional features and many of these users are starting to look elsewhere (i.e. Mellel).
Student writers: Some university students seem to use NW. In particular, students who study under profs that use and promote NW (that’s how I found out about this product). I also imagine some grade school educators and parents of grade school students purchase NW. Still, I think Apple’s Pages will likely dominate the grade school market and if profs stop using NW, they will promote what they use (i.e. Mellel).
Professional writers: NW is great for people who write articles, books, manuals, and other publication oriented material. The fact that most print publishers like documents in RTF format makes NEW a great workflow. NW seems well suited to people like Seth Godin, who think different and enjoy using a focused, stable, and professional word processor.
Casual writers: People who want a straightforward, easy to use, word processor that lets them focus on the task of writing. However, Pages will likely come to dominate this market segment, especially if version 3 adds more “word processing” features. This is the rumor, anyway (http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0607pages3.html).
Multilingual writers: An academic, student, professional, or casual writer who also needs special support for working with non-English languages.
With these key writer groups in mind, we need to consider the key features that they need, want, and most importantly desire in a “writer’s word processor”. As for me, I fit into both the academic and professional writer groups. And in terms of these writing roles, the most important features for me are:
User Interface: I like a simple, clean, and very usable interface. NWE does a pretty good job in this department. There still room for improvement, but it’s better than anything else out their in this area.
Performance: On today’s hardware, I think that a text processing application should be lightening fast and very stable, even with huge documents. NWE could really use some improvements in this area, with long documents in particular. I think that this was a big seller for NWC.
File Format: The most important element for all writers is protecting their work. Hence, I want my data stored in an open and standard format. Open in the sense that any application can easily read my documents now and into the distant future. Standard in the sense that exchange of, and collaboration on, a document not require anyone to export, or import from one file format to another (I want no fuss, no bother). NWE does a reasonable task of this now by using RTF -- a MS format for document exchange. However, in the future I hope Nisus might eventually make Word Open XML the default format. That is to say when Open XML (.docx) becomes an ISO standard and proves that it’s the leading standard. ODF is another option, but I don’t think it will be used as widely as Open XML. Either, way I want Nisus to use the most widespread, open standard as default. This is RTF for now and will likely be Open XML in the future. So it’s worth keeping an eye on stuff like http://openxmldeveloper.org/ and http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/.
Outlining/Document navigation: When I write, structure is important to me and I want my word processor to help me with this difficult work. I want an outline tool that allows me to easily create, view, navigate and edit the structure of my document. I would love to be able to move chapters, sections, tables, figures, and so forth around in my document easily.
Reference management: For scholars and university students, good integration with bibliography software makes writing research papers a lot more enjoyable. It would be great to be able to access, search, insert and manage citations to a bibliography database via a NEW palette. Integration with both Sente and Bookends would be good. As RedleX already has a Bookends + Mellel bundle, perhaps Nisus could explore a NWE + Sente bundle. I know that Sente has a new plug-in architecture, which would make integration an easy task. At any rate tight UI level integration between a word processor and reference management software is a valuable feature to me as an academic writer.
Styles: Styles are a nice way to keep my formatting organized. NWE does a fair job of styles, but things like auto titles, style groups and manuscript templates would be nice. Moreover, it could be easier to manage styles and move them between different documents.
ToC/index/cross-references: For someone who prepares manuscripts these are very useful features that save a lot of time.
Comments/track changes: Collaborative writing is becoming an important part of both academic and professional writing. This area could really use improvement and innovation in comparison to other packages out there. For example, a document comparison feature would be really nice and unique among word processors.
Layout control: This isn’t a big issue, but NW could use more refined layout controls, especially in terms of footnotes, endnotes, lists, tables, and graphics.
So, here’s a start to what could be a very interesting thread. I encourage everyone to share what group, or groups, best fits you as a writer, and what features are most important to you? The Nisus guys seem to be very open to feedback and I think that this discussion would be a helpful to them in their planning for NW and Nisus.