Contingency

[adryan]

G'day, all

I note David's posting today on the thread "Searching the forum is not possible anymore", and I'm pleased to see there is support for my desire to remain in contact with fellow users by other means, should these forums no longer be available.

I suggest we conduct this discussion in this thread I'm now creating on The Blank Page forum. In naming the thread "Contingency" I am trying not to dissuade potential customers from purchasing. Indeed, the point of this discussion is to see how we might continue using this outstanding software well into the future, regardless of what might happen at Nisus — or Apple, for that matter. Viewed in this light, this thread makes no judgement on the current situation at Nisus. In the event that Nisus continues as before, the discussion here should still have relevance, albeit at some possible future time.

So, as stated in the other forum, we here seek ideas for how to remain in contact, as well as ideas for managing our workflow, in the event that the Mac application ceases to be updated and these forums stop functioning.

Cheers,
Adrian

[adryan]

G'day, all

When it comes to a word processor, I for one intend to use Nisus Writer exclusively for quite some time yet. Although it still lacks a few features I would like to see, they are things I can do without. Nisus Writer Pro fulfills all my needs as it stands. The marvellous Macro Language affords us the possibility of modifying or expanding the capability of the software as the whim dictates.

The main problem is that of compatibility with future versions of the operating system. My plan here is to run a couple of partitions on my computer. (Recent versions of macOS permit the creation of partitions without the need to reformat the entire drive. Thank you, Apple.) One partition will have an operating system (probably Ventura) that I know is capable of running Nisus Writer Pro; the other will have more modern operating systems as and when they become available and I feel confident enough to install them.

Cheers,
Adrian

[David Sharp]

Hi Adrian,
I appreciate your desire to hold this discussion away from the main NWP forum in order not to scare away potential future purchasers of Nisus products. However I think it's misguided. You yourself wrote, only two days ago that “In the absence of any reply from Nisus, I think we can assume that something very serious is amiss.”

It's clear to me that Nisus has indeed become yet another zombie product, and that this situation needs to become more widely known. It's in no-one's interest to let the present stalemate endure.

We longtime users, and even recent adopters, need to be alerted in order to make plans to switch to a different product. Anyone who may be thinking of buying Nisus products in the near future should be warned that they may be heading into a dead end. We're not doing them a favour by trying to act as if nothing was wrong.
Finally, whoever is still in some way responsible for affairs at Nisus (if such a person exists) needs to know that we users are not going to fade away quietly. Indeed, there's always the slight possibility that a bit of publicity might inspire someone to inject some cash and get the show back on the road.

[And even in the extremely unlikely event that there's real work still going on at Nisus, and they've simply forgotten to keep communicating on their own forums, the folks there need to be given a wake-up call.]

For the above reasons, I think it would be a good idea to alert the folks at TidBits about these concerns. An article on their site could be very useful.

If you or anyone else can give me a convincing reason why I should not alert Adam Engst and his team, please let me know. Otherwise, I'm going to write to them in a day or two.

Best wishes, David

[adryan]

G'day, David et al

You're right, David. I'm very aware that Nisus represents someone's livelihood, so I thought it better to couch the discussion in terms of contingency planning (in a different forum), rather than continue to advertise this uncertain and hopefully transient situation as though the end were a fait accompli. Illness and fires are but two possibilities that could put dealing with Nisus matters lower down the list of priorities, and I would not like to think that the business was scuttled by its supporters when a comeback could be just around the corner.

Having said this, I do not see any harm in reaching out to the likes of TidBITS or Take Control Books (via an email to the proprietor, not a posting in a public forum) to see whether they can shed any light on the matter. We want to get information from them rather than feed them a (possibly erroneous) news item.

As far as prospective customers are concerned, there is no guarantee that any software one purchases will continue to be updated and work with future devices and operating systems. The same goes for its pricing and payment system. (I abandoned FileMaker Pro, which I loved, when updates became too expensive and offered little benefit to me.) Nisus Writer Pro is no different in this regard.

I am quite happy to recommend Nisus Writer Pro when run on Ventura. (It would be good to see what others think with respect to more recent operating systems.) I would even go so far as to suggest securing a copy while it is still available. After all, those of us here still reckon it's the best Mac word processor out there, right?

Cheers,
Adrian

[David Sharp]

Hi Adryan,

I've informed the people at Tidbits about the situation with Nisus, and from initial e-mail exchanges that they've shared with me the situation doesn't look good at all. As already reported in a thread on the main NWP forum, Martin is no longer working for the company and it's not clear whether anyone is.

We can wait and see whether Tidbits decides to publish something about the situation, but as far as I'm concerned, the hunt is already on for a replacement program.

Best wishes, David

[jeab]

There is no other word processor that can really replace Nisus. Noone here knows, of course, but is there no way to save it?

With Nisus, I feel that I can focus on writing rather than on the micro-interruptions, and I get reminded of this every day, whether it is when adjusting a style, when searching, when switching languages, or when employing automatic formatting via a glossary. For instance, when I had to adjust a character style last week, it took me 12 seconds in Nisus. Yes, I took the time. And I needed 30 seconds to do the same adjustment in LibreOffice, even though I knew exactly what to do.

By the way, “whois nisus.com” tells that the domain will expire on 2025-07-07. It was last updated on 2024-06-17, so I guess we will know a few weeks prior to the expiry date if it gets updated again.

[Amontillado]

I hope for the best. Nisus Writer was my first real word processor on my Mac. I got a Mac to run the full version of Scrivener, then discovered Nisus and its Navigator pane would do what I needed Scrivener for. A note-taking app handled my "research folder", as Scrivener would call it, and compiling was a matter of choosing the style set I wanted.

If it isn't in the cards for the current Nisus team to carry it forward, a buyer must be found. It would be a crying shame to see all that development work fade away.

Besides, friends don't let friends write in Word.

[Vanceone]

Could someone track down Martin at Apple and ask him for contact information for whoever is left here? He might be willing to share, privately, some info to one or more of the "super users" here.

I would really hate to see Nisus go; it's one of the last programs still running from the earliest days of the Mac.

I wonder what they would want to sell the company / code base.

[MacSailor]

Some weeks ago I had some problems exporting from NWP to .docx so I sent an email through the support page at the Nisus website, and I even got a reply with suggestions what to do to fix the problem.

Today I sent another reply to ask if there are still people working full time at the Nisus at Solana Beach. Hopefully I'll get an answer soon.

[Þorvarður]

I even got a reply with suggestions what to do to fix the problem.

I guess that must have been at the end of March. Är det korrekt?
Just curious, who exactly was it that replied?

[MacSailor]

I even got a reply with suggestions what to do to fix the problem.

I guess that must have been at the end of March. Är det korrekt?
Just curious, who exactly was it that replied?

Helt korrekt. I sent my first email to support on 22 March and received a reply on 28 March. The reply was not signed with a name, but just like this:

Hello,

Please try restarting your Mac. That may fix the export issue.

Nisus Software Support
Solana Beach California

[Þorvarður]

Please try restarting your Mac. That may fix the export issue."

When having problems, restarting your Mac is always a good idea … !

To me, this looks like an answer from an autopilot/robot.

[David Sharp]

Hi all,

It's clear that the Nisus site, of which these forums are a key part, is already running on autopilot and may therefore simply stop working at some point in the coming months.

Unless someone with deep-enough pockets—and good intentions—takes over the company, there'll be a need for some kind of communication structure independent of the Nisus.com domain to allow useful discussions to continue.

As I don't have enough technical knowledge, or enough time, to maintain an outdated and no-longer supported software package indefinitely, my main concern is likely to be how to choose, and migrate to, an alternative product to NWP. With great regret, of course.

I don't have enough experience of this kind of situation to know what kind of communication structure would be best. But I'd sure like to know about it if it happens.

NB: I don't know if Tidbits is going to publish anything on this situation. I wonder if at some point it might be worth raising it in their discussion forum.

[Amontillado]

Whatever you do, don't migrate to Word. Despite popularity, it's a train wreck.

I wrote a Word document with a numbered table of contents recently. Automatic numbering isn't actually a direct feature of tables of content or heading styles. You have to Frankenjoin headings and numbered lists.

That was easily broken. I kept having to re-invent the TOC setup.

Mellel is said to have a steep learning curve, but I've found that not to be the case. It's a dream to use, once you discover that auto-title is almost just another word for header style.

I feel like a traitor mentioning it, but I'm really looking forward to Mellel's announced focused mode. That will be, as I understand, where it looks somewhat like Scrivener. Click on a entry in the navigator pane, see just that subdivision of the document with each subdivision separately enabled or disabled in the output.

Hopefully, this is all academic and Nisus 4 is nearing release.

[Bob Stern]

Here's the information I've been able to uncover:

The owner/founder of Nisus is Jerzy Lewak. According to <https://www.truepeoplesearch.com/find/p ... 66uuu442u9>, which often is out of date, his home telephone in San Marcos, California is +1-858-755-4667. I called that number 2 weeks ago and left a voicemail message reporting that the forum search was broken and requesting release of the forum admin password so we could update the phpBB software. No response.

I also received no response to an email to former marketing VP Mark Hurvitz <rebmark@gmail.com>. He had last emailed me from this address in November 2022.

I also received no response to a LinkedIn direct message to Martin Wierschin <https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-wierschin-a868526/>. I did not try contacting Martin via any of the contacts listed at <https://www.truepeoplesearch.com/find/p ... 0n9lurn80u> because I felt that was too invasive of his privacy.

Does anyone know how to contact Dave Larson? Assuming he is not working for Apple, he would be at more liberty than Martin to maintain Nisus Writer if Jerzy Lewak were willing to release the source code to him.

However, I see no incentive for Lewak to continue paying a programmer to update Nisus since income from new licenses must be negligible, and I expect it would be too expensive for us users to collectively pay a programmer.

Alternatively, if Lewak were willing to release the source code, it's possible that a useful subset of incompatibilities with future MacOS updates could be resolved by simply recompiling the software with the latest version of Xcode, which would not require a deep understanding of the Nisus Writer code.

Besides Adam Engst, Joe Kissel might be a good person to contact, since he worked for Nisus in the early days, wrote "The Nisus Way", and used NWP to write his Take Control books.