Backward compatibility with NW 6.5

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dburgwin
Posts: 3
Joined: 2004-09-12 07:42:02

Backward compatibility with NW 6.5

Post by dburgwin »

Hi,

My situation is that I have NW 6.5 on my G3 upgraded PB1400 (OS 8.6). This has been my main writing machine for some time. Now that NE2 can handle footnotes I would like to move documents back and forth from the PB to my desktop Mac, between NW 6.5 and NE2.

My question is what is the best way to move NE2 documents back to NW 6.5. In your testing does NW 6.5 handle NE2 rtf files well? Is the native NW 6.5 format the best one to bring into NE2? Or should I just avoid this procedure and keep NW 6.5 files in NW 6.5 and NE2 files in NE2?

Thanks,

Darryl
JimWG@mac.com
Posts: 20
Joined: 2003-08-25 13:12:33

Re: "Express doesn't render Classic docs"

Post by JimWG@mac.com »

Darryl:

Please review the topic "Express doesn't render Classic docs faithfully" before you proceed with caution.

I think it's vital that Nisus programmers understand that beta testers (their best unpaid cheerleaders) and "unofficial beta testers" (first purchasers) are not reporting Express anomalies from Mars but actual bugs. It would be a gross mistake to simply regard such reports as being eclectic once-in-a-blue moon occurrences which are mostly specific to writers and astronauts so we'll take care of it later. The bugs and abnormalities I and others are picking up in Express 2.0 are common usage situations, and to not address them as quickly as possible only hands champagne to the folks at Mariner and Word and Mellel. Believe it or not, most people will forgive an "Oops!" and a recall if it's done to rectify honest mistakes and oversights. There's no shame in admitting an error -- indeed, most respect you better for than putting the wool over their eyes.

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

Post by JBL »

Sadly I have to (partially) agree with James. In particular wrt interoperability of Classic and Express, Express does not correctly import even fairly simple (no graphics, tables, headers, footers, footnotes etc.) Classic documents. While Express has developed a lot, its ability to import classic documents hasn't improved at all as far as I can see. Nisus seems to have decided that it is more important for them to chase their larger market than to try to hold onto the loyal following from the Classic days. Lets face it, all the other products I use (from Microsoft, Adobe, ISI, Macromedia and ACD) released upgrades for OS X which open their old files and offered these upgrades at discounts of 50% or more from the new license cost. Nisus has chosen a different path. Contrary to James, it looks to me like NWE is progressing nicely for new users and that several years from now their decision to rewrite their code base in Cocoa may result in a stronger product than porting to Carbon would have. However, this decision and subsequent decisions by Nisus clearly sacrifice the interests of NW Classic users in pursuit of this goal. IMHO, interoperability of Classic and Express is not likely to ever be better than it is with Word, Mellel or Mariner.
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