nisus.com

So, having just made the jump to OS X, I decided to give Nisus a whirl (it's my standard word processor in prior versions of the operating system). I uploaded the 30-day demo and everything worked fine. When the demo expired, I payed my bones and expected to pick up where I left off. NOT!

Once the serial number was plugged in, the program immediately stopped functioning properly. It will not open a new document -- nor an old one for that matter. No palettes will come up. And worse still, I can't even get the Preferences to open! Nothin'. Nada. Nope.

Quitting and rebooting did not help. Restarting the comp didn't solve it. A second clean re-install did not fix the problem. I dumped the program prefs to no avail as well.

Any thoughts? Anyone? Help would be appreciated. I'm stuck until I can fix this problem...

Thanx!

-- ArttMann

Do you get any messages in the console or system logs?

What version of OS X are you using?

Do any of the menus operate?

Hey dshan! Thanks for taking an interest.

Funny you should ask about the console. It's chock-o-block full o' stuph. Here's some samples:

* * * * *


2004-03-28 17:37:07.036 Mail[435] *** NSRunLoop ignoring exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException' (reason '*** -[NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: attempt to insert nil value') that raised during posting of delayed perform with target 435da0 and selector 'performDelayedInitialization'

2004-03-28 17:38:46.412 Nisus Writer Express[462] Exception raised during posting of notification. Ignored. exception: *** -[NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: attempt to insert nil value

2004-03-28 17:38:46.448 Nisus Writer Express[462] *** -[NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: attempt to insert nil value

2004-03-28 17:38:52.800 Nisus Writer Express[462] *** -[NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: attempt to insert nil value

2004-03-28 17:39:01.563 Nisus Writer Express[462] *** -[NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: attempt to insert nil value

2004-03-28 17:39:09.965 Nisus Writer Express[462] col=<NSTableColumn: 0x4797130>

2004-03-28 17:39:10.024 Nisus Writer Express[462] *** -[NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: attempt to insert nil value

2004-03-28 17:39:14.400 Nisus Writer Express[462] Warning: TIFF image with unknown extra samples assumed to have unassociated alpha. RGB values have been premultiplied. Use tiffutil -cat to fix.


* * * * *

It runs on in this vien for some time (my attempts to make it work, I suppose). Then finally there's this:

* * * * *


2004-03-28 17:39:53.862 Nisus Writer Express[462] *** -[NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: attempt to insert nil value

*** malloc[1013]: Deallocation of a pointer not malloced: 0x102ef3c; This could be a double free(), or free() called with the middle of an allocated block; Try setting environment variable MallocHelp to see tools to help debug

2004-03-28 23:52:22.635 Mail[4951] *** NSRunLoop ignoring exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException' (reason '*** -[NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: attempt to insert nil value') that raised during posting of delayed perform with target 436050 and selector 'performDelayedInitialization'


* * * * *

As far as "system logs" go, I don't know how to access those. Please forgive a wet-behind-the ears newbie.

I'm using Panther 10.3.3.

As far as I can tell, none of the menus actually operate. You can select them and/or click on items within them, but they don't seem to actually do anything.

Any help or council would be greatly appreciated!!!

Yours,
ArttMann

Hi:

Have you modified any languages in the Language preference pane? Perhaps a custom language file has been corrupted. You can find your language files in your Library folder at:

Library/Application Support/Nisus Writer/Languages

If there are files in there, you probably defined some custom languages. This should not have any problems, but that is the only other source for bad files I can think of. If you continue having problems, please contact our support at support@nisus.com. We certainly don't want anything to break on you like this and we want to find out why it happened so we can try to make sure it will not happen again.

-Charles

charles wrote: Have you modified any languages in the Language preference pane? Perhaps a custom language file has been corrupted.

(snip)

Thanks for taking an interest Charles! I also got an email from Mark H. of Nisus, so I hope we can all get our heads together and figure this out. As I told Mark, I *specialize* (a-hem) in breaking software, so this is par for the course.

To answer your questions -- no, I haven't modified anything, and there's nothing in the Languages folder. With my luck, this is probably user error, though I can't figure out what I might have done (other than entering "ArttMann" in the License panel, instead of my proper name (which is what's on the credit card I used)). Could that have done it? Pretty strange if so...

Hmmmmm.

Well, I'm home very late from a job. Hopefully a good night's sleep will provide a flash of insight like: "Oh s*%$! I know what I did wrong. Whadda dummy..."

Thanks Charles.

ArttMann wrote:With my luck, this is probably user error, though I can't figure out what I might have done (other than entering "ArttMann" in the License panel, instead of my proper name (which is what's on the credit card I used)). Could that have done it? Pretty strange if so...

No. the name you enter for the license key should not cause a problem like this. When you added your license, did you select the "personal" or "computer" option? Do you remember?

As I said before, I don't think your license should cause any problems like this. I'm sure Mark can also help you.

-Charles