Contingency

[David Sharp]

The information I've been able to gather, via an e-mail exchange with Adam Engst at Tidbits, points to the same conclusion: Nisus is moribund.

The fact that it's taken me half a morning to access this forum today, due to repeated connection failures, may or may not also be a sign of that.

On the main NWP forum there's a thread entitled "Is Nisus moribund?". I'm going to update that (if the gods of the internet, or the phantom of Nisus, allow me to).

Very briefly, I'm looking urgently for the least bad replacement for NWP. Usability and features will be key criteria, but not the only ones. The fact that a software program is backed by a company of reasonable solidity, with more than just a single person replying to messages, will be another. For the latter reason, I'm tempted to switch to Apple's Pages.

I also plan to post a message on this subject on the Tidbits talk forum.

[MacSailor]

It’s sad news if Nisus is going to disappear. Really sad news.

From now on I will use Mellel as my primary word processor and Pages as my backup. NWP will be used as well, as long as it will be working in the upcoming macOS releases.

Nisus Writer Pro, together with Mellel (and less often Pages), has been my main writing tool(s) for the last 20+ years.

[Amontillado]

Nisus was my voice for a long time. I strayed to Mellel, but I've always been fond of Nisus.

I have no association with Mellel. I'm independently writing a guide to Mellel styles and related features. If I end up selling copies, I will give plenty of them away, too, including to anyone here. I suspect I'm at least a couple of months from completion.

If any are interested, watch thirdreef dot wordpress dot com. That's a pretty inactive blog. I'm not selling anything. You won't see much there. I'll post availability there when I'm finished with my guide.

I hate to see Nisus go. Mellel is very good, and I consider it future proof for my purposes. I wrote a mail merge utility in Python that reads a Mellel master document and produces merged Mellel documents. I asked for no support from Mellel's developer. The file format is about as transparent as it gets. If I can read and create Mellel documents without Mellel, it's future proof for me.

Pages is great - but weak, particularly if you're used to Nisus. You can't swap style sets. The desktop publishing mode is a cool alternative to word processing. I use Affinity Publisher, but I can see Pages might do everything I need. Pages is a lot less quirky, as far as I've seen, than Affinity. Pages styles are too weak for my needs.

Is there a discord server, mastodon thingy, or other gathering place for Nisus fans? It would be a shame to see everyone scatter like spacefarers in Bradbury's Kaleidoscope.

[Amontillado]

Taking a wild guess on near zero evidence, I wonder if the machine (or virtual) this web site is hosted on has either filled its disk or exceeded storage quota and can't write log messages. It may have to time out on logging on each page fetch.

A wild and terribly unfounded guess, of course.

[Amontillado]

Another wild guess - somebody did some maintenance on the forum. Everything is zippy now. I hope this is a good sign.

[adryan]

G’day, all

It was great to see the posting by Joe Kissell in the “Is Nisus Moribund?” thread in the Nisus Writer Pro forum. Many years ago I had a copy of The Nisus Way and I have since purchased many of the Take Control books. So thanks for all that, Joe.

I like the idea of making Nisus Writer Pro open-source and floating it on the Internet to give it a chance of survival — assuming Nisus is on the verge of abandoning it altogether, which alas seems quite likely.

I have already said that I intend to continue using NWP for as long as I can, running it in a separate partition if necessary in order to preserve compatibility with a known version of the operating system. To this end, I have downloaded a pristine NWP installer, in case I ever need to reinstall the entire application for some reason. I would recommend other users take this precaution also, while the Website is still operational.

If I were forced to use another word processor, I would probably use Pages. However, I would need to attempt to circumvent its deficiencies by employing one or more of AppleScript, Terminal and BBEdit. Grep is essential, and I like BBEdit’s implementation of it, especially when it comes to multi-file find-and-replace.

When considering alternatives to NWP, one might think laterally and construct documents using HTML and CSS, preferably using something like BBEdit. You don’t have WYSIWYG, but I’m quite used to flicking back and forth between code and a Web browser. This approach allows sophisticated formatting, but it may fall down when it comes to pagination and page referencing. (I haven’t investigated this issue.) At present, BBEdit lacks non-contiguous selection, but I don’t find it essential and perhaps Bare Bones Software could add it at some stage. Note that BBEdit is AppleScriptable.

We still have the problem of maintaining contact with one another, in the event that these forums are no longer available. Time appears to be running out, so I would be interested to hear other people’s thoughts on this.

Cheers,
Adrian

[xiamenese]

I too hope that there is some way NWP can be kept going, as, to me, it is the best traditional word processor by a long way. The only one that ever came close for me was Microsoft Word 5.1a, back in the 1990s! That said, like Tacitus, for a long time now I have been doing all my writing in Scrivener using NWP for final polishing. For that it is macros, one in particular, that have been the key.

I came to realise that I was using the Scrivener-NWP combination very much in the manner of Markdown, where the styles in Scrivener were merely a kind of mark-up that the NWP-macro would use to produce the final layout.

With that in mind, I have been exploring using Markdown/Pandoc directly through Scrivener and more recently have been working with Typst, a much less impenetrable alternative to LaTeX. Scrivener can also compile directly through Typst, so I think, looking forward, that that is the direction I am going to be taking, and NWP will be relegated to only short documents. If Nisus is not maintained and becomes unusable as MacOS develops, then Mellel or Pages will suffice as a replacement, though it will be a sad day if NWP disappears.

Mark

[David Sharp]

Adryan writes:

I have already said that I intend to continue using NWP for as long as I can, running it in a separate partition if necessary in order to preserve compatibility with a known version of the operating system. To this end, I have downloaded a pristine NWP installer, in case I ever need to reinstall the entire application for some reason. I would recommend other users take this precaution also,

This idea appeals to me, and not only because of the possible demise of NWP. As it's beyond my modest technical abilities, I would be extremely grateful if some kind soul could point me towards step-by-step instructions on how to do it.

[Amontillado]

Is running Nisus independently of the company practical? I've never looked to see what kind of traffic runs between Nisus Writer and license servers.

Nisus may need to phone home on reinstall to verify the license key. As of today, it can still check for updates.

Pages is pleasant. As a word processor it's not even close to Nisus, but it also has desktop publishing features. The export to epub is very clean, as I recall.

I think opening a native Nisus document in Pages loses styles and images. I don't know if that's universally accurate. It's what I've seen.

Docx export from Nisus appears to be friendlier with Pages. Quick tests preserved the styles. Some details were lost, such as the following style.

[adryan]

G'day, David et al

Actually, you only need to create a new partition if you're using a much older version of macOS. For recent versions, you just create a new APFS volume, which is much easier: you don't even have to restart the computer afterwards. Apple provide clear instructions in their Support article titled "Use more than one version of macOS on Mac":–

https://support.apple.com/en-au/118282

The same article has a link to another article which shows where you can download macOS installers. The first article then proceeds to tell you how to install your chosen version of macOS on your new APFS volume.

Cheers,
Adrian

[adryan]

G'day, all

As reported by jeab a few weeks ago (viewtopic.php?p=40971#p40971), Whois states that the Nisus domain has been renewed for another year, which injects an element of hope in this uncertain situation. However, the persistent lack of any recent input to the forums from an official Nisus person still gives cause for unease. It seems I am not the only one concerned that these forums could yet disappear without warning and the much-valued contact with participants be lost forever.

Many years ago I conducted my own forum devoted to a totally different field. People from all over the world sent me email messages for incorporation in the forum. Nisus Writer played a key role in the software system I developed to manage the process. If things come completely unstuck at Nisus, and no other options are forthcoming, it is just possible I might be persuaded to host a Nisus-related forum on my own Website. Server capacity might eventually be a problem, as I would not like to incur any additional costs. But it could at least offer one possible solution to our potential problem.

If anyone else shares my concern and wishes to participate in some sort of fallback scheme (whether along the lines of what I have suggested or along different lines entirely), I invite you to send me an email message with an appropriate email address for contact. I would only use the resulting list to maintain communication amongst us in the event that the current Nisus forums ceased without warning, and then only up until an alternative forum became operational.

In order to minimize instances of my own email address on the Web, I won't give it here but instead refer you to my Website at https://www.adrianryan.net/ where you will find it on the home page. There is no need to forward me your email address until the current Nisus forums become defunct (if they ever do). But you may wish to make a note of my email address now in case you find yourself in need of it later.

I emphasize that hosting a replacement forum on my Website is for me a last resort. But at least the possibility may go some way towards easing the consternation prevailing at present.

Cheers,
Adrian

[David Sharp]

Many thanks for that, Adryan. I've bookmarked your website.

If we do have to set up a fallback scheme, I'll be happy to participate. My website address is in my profile, and provides an email link.

Best wishes, David