nisus.com

I write books. Big ones. In Classic, I kept each chapter as a separate file, then did a merge when it was time to send to the publisher. They want rtf, but neither the Mercury nor the route Nisus-Word-RTF work, and the large merged file cannot be converted without losing formatting by MacLinkPlus either. Graphics are also lost in most of these.

Now, I notice that the individual chapter files can be opened with all formatting intact in NWE, but the merged file loses most of the formatting. This suggests there is something odd about the classic merged files. So far, the only way I can merge is to open each chapter individually and paste into a master file in NWE, then paste in the graphics individually.

Also, in some books I maintain a combo file, with HTML markup in invisible format. Can't do this at all in NWE.

Surely there is a better way. Can't we have:
- better compatibility with classic so large merged files will be read correctly
- merge functions in NWE
- invisible format in NWE

Oh, and forget about telling me to keep the whole book in one file. NWE isn't as glacial as Word (5 minutes to repaginate) but its a turtle compared to classic. Large files are not feasible when editing, only when assembling.

Rick

I don't think this is just a problem with merged files. I have several large (~250 kB) files from NW Classic and they always open with the formatting screwed up. It looks to me like the styles get out of sync so that it starts applying the style of paragraph one to paragraph one, but at paragraph 50 it starts applying the style of paragraph 51 to paragraph 50 or something). Is this what you are seeing when you say it "loses most of the formatting"? Anyway, I download every new version of NWE hoping that it is fixed but it isn't. I have told the Nisus people that I refuse to buy NWE until it can open classic files. I hope that with the introduction of styles in 2.0 this will be fixed because they will be better able to keep track of the styles, because if they don't fix it I am stuck using TextEdit

The merged files, and I don't know what the size cutoff is, lose
bold
centering
are hazy about italics

yet keep ruler formatting.

However, MacLinkPlus, Mercury RTF, and Word conversion have similar, though not identical problems, as does cut and paste.

Hm...we will look into this issue of formatting being lost on large files and (hopefully) fix it for our next release. Thanks for letting us know about it!

-Charles

If you would like a large file to try it on, I could give you a copy of my latest novel to play with there. As a mail attachment it is 2M.

Rick

That would be helpful! Please send it to expressfeedback@nisus.com. Thanks!

-Charles

OK It is sent. Turned out to be only 1839K as a Nisus file. The 2M I quoted was as an RTF file pasted together in NWE from the pieces.

Rick