Express doesn't render Classic docs faithfully

Have a problem? A question? This is the place for answers from other Express users.
Post Reply
JimWG@mac.com
Posts: 20
Joined: 2003-08-25 13:12:33

Express doesn't render Classic docs faithfully

Post by JimWG@mac.com »

Greetings All!

I hope the following is actually due to the infamous flaws with 10.3.5 than Express beta itself.

I regret to say that on my initial dabbling importing my NW 6.5 teleplay formatted manuscript file (to Final Writer specs), Express fails to render a NW 6.5 manuscript accurately (either directly importing or via RTF), which generates a subtly oversized Courier 12, and later on in the document many paragraph settings somehow being corrupted (by page breaks?) into pages with "paragraphs" of five letter width; both flaws swelling a 123 page script to over 460 pages. What's important is a document using NW Classic's Courier 12 font is rendered differently than Express as a NW Classic document of 57 lines length becomes a two paged 80 line document in Express. I eyeballed the same document and believe the main problem appears is Express's space separation between the lines is off by a half point or two, (but I'm not the expert.) Express should fully match the text structure of the Classic page. Mariner Write 3.6.3 renders NW Classic documents (via RTF with slight header adjustment as would in most import cases) just fine, and someone in the Mac press is going to notice this irony.

Kudos on the new Nisus Thesaurus! I'd gladly pay for that!

I'm holding on to NW 6.5 for my manuscript work until Express gets its act together. I'm not in Mariner's camp because they haven't the allegiance to Macintoshes which Nisus has. I can't see why NW 6.5 couldn't have "simply" been ported over to OS-X without having to reinvent the wheel.

James W. Greenidge
dennisg
Posts: 73
Joined: 2004-05-16 07:51:28
Location: Seattle, WA

Post by dennisg »

Jim,

Regardless of what NWE 2.0 offers in the future, I think you'd be far better off using Screenwriter 2000 or Final Draft for teleplays. No standard word processor (including Mariner Writer, MSoft Word, or NWE 2.0) is going to provide "continued's" or "more's" and format the teleplay with the ease those two dedicated screenwriting programs can.
- Dennis

"Is that your little friend in the wood chipper?"
JimWG@mac.com
Posts: 20
Joined: 2003-08-25 13:12:33

Not looking for Final Draft

Post by JimWG@mac.com »

Greetings:

I was alluding to a rendering problem, not a features issue. I mentioned Final Draft because its formatting was the standard by which I created my manuscript's format and paragraph rulings by -- and NW 6.5 does it just great! No problemo -- except I can't move Nisus into OS X as well. There's a general problem here when Mariner Write 3.6.3 can render (via RTF) a NW 6.5 document's Courier 12 font and line spacing more faithfully than Express can. So I'm continuing with NW 6.5 in Classic mode till this quirk is resolved.

James Greenidge
charles
Posts: 481
Joined: 2002-11-26 11:40:35
Location: San Diego, CA
Contact:

Post by charles »

Hi James:

I think I have also responded to you about this offline as well. However, the reason you are seeing these subtle differences is because the way the font is drawn in Mac OS X versus Mac OS Classic is different. Unfortunately, these differences are subtle and vary for each font so there is no way that we can compensate for that. No matter what we had done to read NW Classic files, the result would be the same.

-Charles
Charles Jolley
Nisus Software, Inc.
JimWG@mac.com
Posts: 20
Joined: 2003-08-25 13:12:33

Rendering text fonts in OS-X

Post by JimWG@mac.com »

Charles & Co.

Please understand that 110% behind home-grown Nisus and I'm in no way contradicting you, but there MUST be a way for Express to render NW 6.5 font formats (via RTF) at least as well as a _non-Nisus_ Mariner Write 3.6.3 and Mellel does in OS-X, which is virtually perfect (sans translated paragraph ruler shortcut settings). I implore Nisus to focus this "can't translate within the family" problem because it's dynamite ad-wise. I do hawk Nisus in my circles, but often non-mag editor opinions/feedback overwhelm your best efforts.

James W. Greenidge
JBL
Posts: 170
Joined: 2003-04-25 14:33:59

Post by JBL »

I am experiencing similar problems and I don't really think they are all that subtle. I was under the impression that NWE would be able to import the styles from NW 6.5. This seems not to be the case. The result is the same misalignment of styles as with 1.12; paragraphs that should be centered are flush left and vice versa etc. etc. If anything the problem seems worse than 1.12, although I haven't had a chance to check systematically. I also had the problem with page breaks inserted at random. I am disappointed that you aren't taking better care of your long time customers.
charles
Posts: 481
Joined: 2002-11-26 11:40:35
Location: San Diego, CA
Contact:

Post by charles »

Hi:

If you are having problems converting your Nisus format files, please try submitting them to use via Send Feedback in the Help window. We certainly place a high priority on making sure that our longest customers can open their files!

-Charles
Charles Jolley
Nisus Software, Inc.
JBL
Posts: 170
Joined: 2003-04-25 14:33:59

Post by JBL »

charles wrote:Hi:

If you are having problems converting your Nisus format files, please try submitting them to use via Send Feedback in the Help window. We certainly place a high priority on making sure that our longest customers can open their files!

-Charles
Well, I have sent you guys half a dozen or so files since the initial public beta. The problem hasn't changed. I am happy to send you more, but my impression from your past comments is that you recognized the problem. At some point you said that this would likely be solved in 2.0 because the style of each paragraph would be imported. But styles don't seem to be imported. So before I send you more files, let me ask, is 2.0 supposed to be importing styles? If not, is that something that just didn't make it into 2.0 but will show up in 2.0.1? If NWE is going to be importing styles from NW sometime soon, hopefully that will fix this problem without having to track it down.
nisus1
Posts: 1
Joined: 2004-09-19 23:25:20

Post by nisus1 »

Quite frankly the import of NW Classic files into NWE 2.01 is a mess.

The text appears to come across, although the word and character count changes. Styles do not translate properly, fonts change apparently at random, font sizes fluctuate without apparent cause, font styles change, paragraph spacing disappears…

There is no reason I can find for most of the font and style changes, including italics that disappear, and changing font sizes. In many of the douments I'm importing the font is not defined in the paragraph styles in NWC, but it jumps to being set as Lucida Grande in NWE (and frequently overides the actual font set in NWC). The paragraph spacing moves from one line in NWC to one point in NWE.

I upgraded to NWE 2, on the promise of the import problems being fixed (having held off and stuck with NW Classic until now), and I'm more than a little disappointed. :( :x

I've used Nisus and Nisus Writer since version 1, and written well over a million words using it on documents large and small. A quick search of my work computer shows 2,400 NW files, and there are many thousands more that I've archived.

NWE must be able to import Classic files and maintain the basic formatting, styles and structure of the original document. While NWE is a worthy successor to the Classic version it's ridiculous that the past (and thousands of hours of work in my case) are inaccessible without major effort.

While the dreaded, and awful, current version of MS Word won't open all earlier Word file versions properly, it will at least open those of the immediately preceding versions with a high degree of accuracy.

Nisus is not Microsoft, I know, however I don't accept that this situation is tolerable. I don't mind if there has to be a translation utility, or I can't swap NWE files back into NWC, but I really, really want to be able to bring across nearly fifteen years of work into OSX without this mess!
Post Reply