The best word processor on the market:

Have a problem? A question? This is the place for answers from other Express users.
minux
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Joined: 2005-01-28 09:54:45
Location: Washington D.C.

The best word processor on the market:

Post by minux »

Hello, everyone.

Last week, my temptations proved enough for me to do it--I am now a real, licensed user of Nisus Writer Express. I have been experimenting with it for sometime now. If one traced my NW lineage, it would take them all the way back to when the product was first released on the beloved “classic-mac operating system”. It was not until recently that I thought it had matured enough to be “powerful enough” for productive work. It is now my favorite word processor on the market, and I find myself using it more than AppleWorks--I never thought that I would be willing to give up AppleWorks.

I thank the Nisus Writer Express development team for delivering such a wonderful, exciting, and friendly product. It feels like I’ve been using Nisus Writer Express for most of my life. When I don’t use it, I’m always tempted to say, “forget it”, hop into Nisus Writer Express, and finish my work there. Unfortunately, this is a world of egotistical, lackluster, and tasteless giants of software who can not comprehend the “mac thing”--even Apple and the mac community seem to have a problem with this now.

Nisus Writer Express is simply the way writing should be.

Yours truly,

Michael
Yours truly,

Michael
charles
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Post by charles »

Thanks Michael! We love to hear from people who like our products, especially on these forums. Please be sure to let us know if we can do anything else to make Nisus Writer Express a better product for you.

Cheers,
-Charles
Charles Jolley
Nisus Software, Inc.
blurble
Posts: 11
Joined: 2004-10-13 01:09:27

Post by blurble »

I recently wrote a medium length document in NWE and everything went just fine. I missed bulleted lists, but I could live with that. It was so much more enjoyable than any other word processors that I considered writing a forum topic like the one that started this thread. Everything was fine and I wanted the folks from Nisus to know that I appreciated their product.

However, I then started on a new document that required a number of long tables. Unfortunately the experience was not so positive. After several crashes, and several less serious but annoying bugs, I am not nearly so positive.

Given that these are representative of the two document types I usually write, I can see a cycle of joy and depression in my writing future.
charles
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Post by charles »

Hi Blurble:

I'm sorry you have experienced some problems with Nisus Writer Express! Please make sure you send us bug reports when you experience crashes. Use "Report a Bug..." in the "Help" menu and include any sample files if you can. We are nearing a new release in the next few months so hopefully we could deliver you any bug fixes quickly.

Also, we are added bulleted and numbered lists for the next release, so that should make at least one type of document easier for you! :)

Cheers,
-Charles
Charles Jolley
Nisus Software, Inc.
minux
Posts: 7
Joined: 2005-01-28 09:54:45
Location: Washington D.C.

Post by minux »

Hello, Charles.

I thank you for the open arms.

I have two things that I’d like the Nisus development team to do: when one hits the “end key”, I’d like it so that the cursor would move to the end of the document, and not just the screen; and though this is nowhere as important, I’d like the Nisus team to either develop a t-shirt or a poster that showcase the Nisus logo, and make them available to Nisus customers. The latter would allow us Nisus fans to show our support.

Just those two bits, friend.

Yours truly,

Michael
Yours truly,

Michael
charles
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Post by charles »

Hi Michael:

For me the end key moves the window to the bottom of the document but it does not actually place the cursor at the end. Is that what you mean? We probably should change that behavior.

Good idea about the t-shirts...we are actually going to do that.

Cheers,
-Charles
Charles Jolley
Nisus Software, Inc.
minux
Posts: 7
Joined: 2005-01-28 09:54:45
Location: Washington D.C.

Post by minux »

Hello, Charles.

Yes, that is exactly what I meant.

Awesome news about the t-shirts!

Keep up the great work!
Yours truly,

Michael
Ryan
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Post by Ryan »

Yes, I was sorry I didn't pick up one of the t-shirts at Macworld Expo. :(

Ryan
www.r-blog.com
WattsM
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Post by WattsM »

Hm. Isn't it normal for Mac applications to use Home/End to just scroll to the top and bottom of the document without moving the cursor, and Option-Up/Option-Down to move the cursor there, too? I think those keys are used for by-paragraph movement, though, aren't they.

I mildly miss having the ability to move/select/transpose by word, sentence, paragraph and (I swear) clause that Nota Bene for DOS did. Tone little-but-neat feature from NB that I'd like to see imported is something like bookmarks within text for navigation of long documents, though.
minux
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Location: Washington D.C.

Post by minux »

It seems that you have answered your own questions, friend.

To get back to my point--and Charles’ point--it’s counterintuitive to hit the end key, use the mouse to go to the end of the document, then click the mouse to put the cursor there. Whether or not it’s a Mac thing--which it certainly is not--doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it creates more work for the writer.

Personally, I conduct my writing in a topic style. With that comes the excessive usage of the home and end keys. Instead of sitting down and simply writing, I write whatever I can, then “fill it in”--that’s not exactly how I do it, just more or less how I do it. Obviously, the use of the home and end keys makes my job a lot easier, but it still is not as simple as it should be.

I hope that gave you enough information to satisfy your “why curiosity”.
Yours truly,

Michael
Ryan
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Post by Ryan »

Interesting that you bring up the "by topic" way of writing, since that's the way I write as well, and yet there's no word processor out there right now (that I know of) that even begins to look for a way to address this approach.

I've been writing my own word processor with some nifty ways of visualizing and categorizing the topic-based writing process, but I'm too divided with my studies and jobs and other insanity in my life to really finish it any time soon.

Ryan
www.r-blog.com
WattsM
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Post by WattsM »

Well, there's a program I use sometimes in conjunction with Express, called Hog Bay Notebook. It's sold as an outliner, but it's actually much more than that.

Notebook's text editing features are essentially the same as Apple's TextEdit -- nothing extraordinary, but you get some nice basics for styling. The neat thing about this is that you can write separate 'documents' for every outline point, and use a feature called 'assemble document' to gather up sections into a single RTF document later if you wish. And, you get most of the power of a dedicated outlining program for organization, along with an extremely quick internal search engine (comparable to Orbis in Nota Bene, which is the only full-fledged word processor I've seen with the capability to do near-instant searches across multiple files and display results in a context window similar to the way NWX 1 did in its search results drawer -- a functionality I rather wish they'd bring back!).

I'm not entirely sure if this supports 'topic-based writing' the way you're describing it, but it might be worth checking out.
Ryan
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Post by Ryan »

Hm. That sounds very interesting. I'll download that and give it a try, for sure. The question becomes whether it's suitable for writers as opposed to just organizers.

By the way, for those who are interested (and too lazy to search with Google), the link is http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/ ... tebook.php .

Ryan
www.r-blog.com
English in Japan
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Joined: 2005-03-03 02:02:31
Location: Japan

Behaviour of End and Home keys

Post by English in Japan »

charles wrote:Hi Michael:

For me the end key moves the window to the bottom of the document but it does not actually place the cursor at the end. Is that what you mean? We probably should change that behavior.

Good idea about the t-shirts...we are actually going to do that.

Cheers,
-Charles
I also vote for changing the behaviour of the End and Home keys so that the cursor "moves with you" when you jump to "Home" or the end of a document. We have the "Page up" and "Page up" keys to shift the view without moving the cursor. (Make option-Page up and option Page down jump to the top or the bottom of the document without moving the cursor.)
WattsM
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Post by WattsM »

I'll be faintly contarian here and suggest not changing that behavior. :) The Home and End keys have historically always moved to the top and bottom of the document without moving the cursor position on the Mac, and while I know that's weird to people moving over from the PC, I've realized it's rather useful to be able to move the document's displayed area without moving the cursor.

I'd like to actually see key movements roughly like:

Code: Select all

          Up/Down   | Left/Right | PgUp/PgDn | Bksp/Del
--------+-----------+------------+-----------+---------
Option  |           | Word       |           | Word
Command | Paragraph | Line       | Pg w/curs | Line
Control | Scroll Ln | Sentence   |           | Sentence
...which would add 'nonstandard' bindings to control, but being able to recognize the sentence as a discrete unit would be a Good thing.
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