New NWP user, trying to leave Word, couple of questions

[don_kessinger_cubs]

Hi all,

I'm currently trying the demo version of NWP and really liking it. I'm a bigtime Mac Word power user, I've been using it for 20 years, but Office 2008 is such a disaster I want something else. I'm hoping this is it, I remember the Nisus little word processor from years ago, so I'm really happy to see this product has been revived. I am using Leopard 10.5.4 FWIW on an Intel Mac.

Two questions so far I could not find answers to in the NWP documentation, and a 3rd general question. I'm hoping someone can fill me in.

(1) Please tell me that somewhere in NWP is the ability to use a keyboard combo (or a clickable button) to repeat the previous action; specifically, I am looking for the analog to the cmd-Y function in Word. This is important to my sanity!

(2) How can I change the default text font? In Word, when you pull up the text attributes box from the menu, there is a button that allows you to apply the current font attributes as the default for all future documents.

(3) Does anyone have experience with any 3rd party font menu organizers used with NWP? I have a LOT of Type 1 fonts activated/deactivated with Linotype Font Explorer, I have used Fontcard (and years before that, Adobe Type Reunion) to bring sanity to Word's Font menu for using my fonts. With NWP, the Font menu only shows the family name, not the individual typeface styles within. The individual styles DO show up in the listbox submenu in the right-hand-side drawer, but this listing is very short until it starts scrolling (about six fonts) and of course, is not WYSIWYG. For a font family with dozens of substyle faces (e.g., Univers), this makes using the listbox time consuming and impractical. I CAN of course use cmd-T and simply access Apple's font listing, which is larger/better, but still not WYSIWYG.

Thanks, and so far, looks like a great product. If Apple adds some additional firepower to Numbers, I can be done with Microsoft products once and for all.

[Agnostus]

Hi!

Unfortunately I have no answers to your questions 1 and 3, but I think 'repeat last action' functionality was discussed some time ago in one of the forums here, but I don't remember exactly and what has happened since then.

To change the default font you need to edit the 'default document':

open preferences and select the 'New File' panel in the toolbar. There, open the 'advanced' tab. Click on the 'Edit Nisus New File...' button. A blank Nisus document will appear, which you can adjust to your liking. To change the default font, just select the font you wish. You can do more; you can even create a set of styles to be available in all future documents. Also, adjust window size and other window parameters as you wish (you can for instance set the navigator to visible, etc.). Once you are done, save the changes and close the document. The next time yo create a new document, everything should appear according to your settings.

Best wishes,
Martin

[martin]

The other Martin has covered question 2 I think, although I will mention that to just change the default font you don't need to click the "Advanced" button. You can work entirely from within the "New File" preferences. Of course, the advanced editing does allow for other customizations, as Martin has helpfully suggested.

As for your other questions:

1. We don't have this feature- my apologies to your mental health.
3. Third party font menu organizers are likely to be ineffective in NWP. This is because we had to replace the default Apple font menu to add our own WYSIWYG feature. So unless a font menu manager specifically targets NWP, it won't work.

[don_kessinger_cubs]

OK, thanks for the replies so far. Changing the default doc format was easy, and I figured how to at least increase the size of the font styles listbox, so that's better though less than ideal. I can live with it. Not having a repeat action capability is a downer though, I'll have to figure a way to make that work for me somehow.

I have beat my head for nearly an hour on this next issue though, so one more help for now would be appreciated. I use paragraph borders all the time, primarily overlines and underlines. I see that it is not a function in NWP, but there ARE tables, so I can make this work. Simply put my text in a table and choose the border sides I want. Problem: if I select my text and convert it to table, or I insert a brand new table somewhere and put text in it, and then go to the tables tab in the drawer to deselect those borders that I do not want......nothing happens. The click icons are highlighted or not as I select/deselect the borders, but nothing happens to the table in the document. Similarly, if I select the text in the cell to be centered vertically, again, nothing happens to the table cell, although the menu gives me confirmation that I have changed the alignment. Why is this occurring?

I don't need a paragraph borders capability per se, but I need to be able to make table borders function as my workaround.

[martin]

Here's how to alter table cell borders:

1. In the document select the table cells you want to modify.
2. In the "Table Cell Borders" palette, under "edges to modify", toggle the buttons so only the edges you want to change are highlighted.
3. Also in the palette, under "options", make the border changes you'd like to see.

As for the alignment issue: make sure there's no unwanted whitespace characters in the cell. You should also check the paragraph spacing and ruler idents.

[NisusUser]

1. In the document select the table cells you want to modify.
2. In the "Table Cell Borders" palette, under "edges to modify", toggle the buttons so only the edges you want to change are highlighted.
3. Also in the palette, under "options", make the border changes you'd like to see.

What if I can't get this to work? It's as if the borders are somehow locked. I am using tables inside of text boxes, but then I tried tables directly on the page and got the same results. Can anyone point me in the right direction? I did send a sample file to Nisus via feedback, but it's still early in NisusLand, and I've not heard anything from them.

I'm using NWP 2.0.2 on Mac OS 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard).

Thanks.

[martin]

What if I can't get this to work? It's as if the borders are somehow locked. I am using tables inside of text boxes, but then I tried tables directly on the page and got the same results. Can anyone point me in the right direction? I did send a sample file to Nisus via feedback, but it's still early in NisusLand, and I've not heard anything from them.

I replied to your email from earlier today directly, but I wanted to post a summary here as well:

You don't actually have any tables outside those text boxes (in your main document area). Your document may appear to have tables, but it is really just a bunch of formatting, tabs, and floating text boxes that happens to look like tables. If you turn on "show invisibles", this is more clear.

So, where do those border lines come from? Well, if you click on one you will notice it becomes selected (see the blue handles/boxes at the line endpoints). That means the lines are actually floating shapes/graphics. If you select one, you can press the Delete key to remove it.

As for the table cell borders inside the floating text boxes, I included some screenshots in my reply that should walk you through the process step-by-step. Let me know if you continue to have trouble.