NisusWriter Pro

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midwinter
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Post by midwinter »

dshan wrote:Says the man with the banana...
It could be much, much worse.
Reiner
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Post by Reiner »

rmark wrote:
Reiner wrote:But anyway with the crossrefs-feature I still hope it will import Crossrefs from old Classic Nisus-documents correctly.
It will (and does).
Good news. I will test this feature as hard as possible ;-)
Anne Cuneo
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Post by Anne Cuneo »

I don't mean to pick on Anne, but let's get something straight, because I've seen this a couple of times. First of all, Leopard is a Universal Binary, so it will run on both PowerPC and Intel Macintoshes. That's the whole point of the Universal Binary. Even if NWP did require Leopard (which it probably won't require but will probably be enhanced by because it is a Cocoa application and it grows as Mac OS X does), it will still run on PowerPC Macintoshes. After an application is changed over to a Universal Binary (the process of which has been completed by work on NWE and, according to Nisus, NWP is built upon the core of NWE), it takes no more time to develop a PowerPC version than it does an Intel version. It is a checkbox in XCode.
Thanks Scott! I don't feel picked on, I just realize how ignorant I am about changing platforms. Fancy, just a checkbox difference!
I am all the happier now that contrary to rumors which said an Intel 12" was just about to be released, it wasn't ; I am ready to change neither my handbag (shoulderbag, let us say) nor my PB, so the Universatily (does the word exist) of NWP is really good news.
Anne
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SteveH
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Post by SteveH »

Fancy, just a checkbox difference!
I bet Microsoft and Adobe wish this were the case.

Just joking.
irev
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Post by irev »

I really don’t see how this could be a surprise to anyone. This recent post http://www.nisus.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1799 in which the contents were written back in 2003 stated it very clearly what Nisus road map was. The following is a quote from that post.

"Then he hinted about his long-term plans to have a second word processor, to be sold separately, that would boast even more features than Express. (Can you say, Nisus Writer Pro anyone?)"

I think having two versions is a great idea as long as both are kept current.
foobar
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Post by foobar »

I don't think anyone is (or at least I'm not) surprised or upset that there is to be a "Pro" product.

My concern is more with the fact that long-promised and oft-requested core word-processor features (like TOC and indexing) are now part of this new "higher-end" product with an unspecified cost and upgrade path, when one might have bought NWX anytime in the last few years with a reasonable expectation (or at least a justified hope) that these would be part of a forthcoming no-cost upgrade (like, say, footnotes were). If you search this forum for "TOC," as an example, you'll find statements from at least as far back as spring 2005 that this was a planned feature "high on the list" of things to add to NWX. So the idea that, in addition to this long a delay, we're going to need to add another infusion of dollars, is something that one might reasonably be a little unhappy about -- even if it's obviously not the end of the world, this is, for some of us, a reason to reassess whether we feel like re-committing to Nisus or moving to (e.g.) Pages instead.
Anne Cuneo
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Post by Anne Cuneo »

Foobar:
So the idea that, in addition to this long a delay, we're going to need to add another infusion of dollars, is something that one might reasonably be a little unhappy about -- even if it's obviously not the end of the world, this is, for some of us, a reason to reassess whether we feel like re-committing to Nisus or moving to (e.g.) Pages instead.
I am puzzled by this statement. What I need to work, is a word processor that does what I want and which does not cost so much.
I don't know how much a Word upgrade costs in the States, here in Switzerland it's over 300 Francs (~250$) alone, and about 500 together with Excell and Powerpoint. An upgrade. If you buy it for the first time, it's about 700 Swiss Francs, which is around 600 dollars.
You can have Nisus for 40 (FORTY) dollars. You can buy a family pack (3 different people using it) for 79$, which puts the licence cheaper than many shareware.
I am sure we shall be able to upgrade from Express to Pro for a comparatively modest sum. I shall do it whatever the price (and I already know it won't be THAT high), because I like what I use. and if I don't need the new features (in fact I do), I'll stay with Express.
I tried Pages, I tried Mellel, I tried Mariner, I tried gnuware, freeware, shareware. I stay with Nisus because I like it. A couple of dollars are not going to change that. Notwithstanding the fact that if you do not “re-commit” to Nisus, you'll have to dish out money anyway to buy a word processor.
Well, all this to say, it's not FIRST a matter of dollars, it's first a matter of needs.
I have all I need at my fingertips, Nisus is pleasant to look at, it's smashing. It has a French and German localization (I don't use them, but they are there), and it even integrates with the Canadian spelling-checker Antidote, which is the king of French spelling-checkers. I don't know what more I could ask for, beside a TOC and an index. ;-)
By the way, if this word processor is cheap, it's among other things because the Nisus team is small, has probably not much overhead, and that makes among other things for it being sometimes a bit slow to produce the things we want. Whatever they do, no word processor will ever have what everyone wants anyway. Look at Word: they try, they bloat - and using it is a real pain.
Anne
Anne Cuneo
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Post by Anne Cuneo »

Midwinter
dshan wrote:

Says the man with the banana...


It could be much, much worse.
Gosh, Midwinter, I had a peek. Is THAT how you swim?
Anne
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xiamenese
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Post by xiamenese »

Anne Cuneo wrote: I am puzzled by this statement. What I need to work, is a word processor that does what I want and which does not cost so much.
Anne, I am more than puzzled, I am utterly bemused! As Juliet would say, "What's in a name? ..." and to quote the bard again "... full of sound and fury and signifying nothing." I really don't see why it should concern any of us long term users whether they want to call it Nisus Writer Express 3, Nisus Writer Pro, Nisus Scrivener or whatever ... They have built an upgraded version of their software to include TOC, indexing, text flow round graphics, bookmarking, multi-page footnotes and a number of other features that people have been clamouring for. We either upgrade because we need some or all of those features or if we don't need them it's up to us to decide whether to upgrade or not.
And gosh, they're going to charge! I can't remember at what point in the development from 1 to 2.7 it was, but I'm pretty sure I remember paying an upgrade fee somewhere along the line. Software companies need income ... somewhere along the line they need remuneration for all the work they have to do in upgrading their software and if they always dumped it all on the shoulders of first-time buyers, the new users'd soon be paying Micro$oft/Adobe type prices and there'd be precious few buyers. Crrrraaassshhh!
And golly, it's taken so long! Since spring 2005! Of course nothing else has happened in the NWE world in that time ... what version were we all using in Spring 2005? I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't 2.7. So someone started asking for TOC in 2005 and Nisus might have said it was on the agenda ... it was on the agenda ... that doesn't mean it therefore had to be absolutely at the top of the agenda. And then of course, since 2.7 came out sometime in the middle of this year, nothing has been happening ... they've been sitting round twiddling their thumbs? Oh what's this? A new version, TOC, indexing, bookmarking, text flow around images ... nothing was happening during that time?
Given all the hot air that was flying around anyway, I have the feeling the guys at Nisus were wise to keep what they were doing under their hats. If they had told us they were working on TOC, people would have been howling about why not change-tracking, and if they had said they were working on change-tracking, there would have been howls about why not TOC.
Anne, I'm with you ... what I want is a word processor that does what I really need--and hopefully will eventually do all I think I want--and which, most importantly, which I enjoy using. If it doesn't cost an arm and a leg, that is a real bonus. What the company want to call it ... I couldn't care one jot!
Mark
midwinter
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Post by midwinter »

Anne Cuneo wrote:Midwinter
dshan wrote:

Says the man with the banana...


It could be much, much worse.
Gosh, Midwinter, I had a peek. Is THAT how you swim?
Heh. Sometimes. (Why is there no emoticon for "coyly"?). And as an aside, Anne, I wish my French were better; I'd love to read one of your novels.
JBL
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Differentiation of Express and Pro

Post by JBL »

One thing I am a little confused about is what the target market is for Express vs Pro. The way I see it, if it is a feature that only confuses my wife, my mother and my boss, it probably belongs in Pro (and not Express). At the same time, if it is a feature my wife, my mother and my boss can't do without, it belongs in Express (as well as Pro). Using that criteria, it seems to me that Express has a bunch of Pro features (non-contiguous selection, styles) while it is missing some basic features (text-wrap, widow and orphan control). Unless Nisus plans on including some of these features in Express, it seems like everyone is going to end up needing Pro. What do you guys think could/should differentiate the Express version from the Pro version so that both would have a niche?
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scottwhitlock
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Post by scottwhitlock »

SteveH wrote:
Fancy, just a checkbox difference!
I bet Microsoft and Adobe wish this were the case.

Just joking.
:)...That was why I was very careful to say after the app was made Universal, a process which can be anything but easy, especially when one has to deal with legacy code that stretches back as far as Photoshop and Word...Nisus has already done that work, though, with the Classic file format seemingly being the hardest part (or that's what the blog said anyway)...
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craigminah
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Re: Differentiation of Express and Pro

Post by craigminah »

JBL wrote:One thing I am a little confused about is what the target market is for Express vs Pro. The way I see it, if it is a feature that only confuses my wife, my mother and my boss, it probably belongs in Pro (and not Express). At the same time, if it is a feature my wife, my mother and my boss can't do without, it belongs in Express (as well as Pro). Using that criteria, it seems to me that Express has a bunch of Pro features (non-contiguous selection, styles) while it is missing some basic features (text-wrap, widow and orphan control). Unless Nisus plans on including some of these features in Express, it seems like everyone is going to end up needing Pro. What do you guys think could/should differentiate the Express version from the Pro version so that both would have a niche?
Yeah, makes no sense to me either. I am hoping they simply keep one or the other.
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Patrick J
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Re: outline

Post by Patrick J »

JBL wrote:On the screen capture it looks like the left drawer has an outline view. That is perfect for me. I don't know why it didn't make it onto the list of features they highlight.
To me that looks like a "Document Map" like in Word. I hope so as I very much like the Document Map in Word.

From my perspective the Nisus Writer Pro upgrades are absolutely spot on, it is hard for me to think of something that is missing that I personally see as "essential". However everyone had different needs of course.

As it has "floating graphics" this does suggest a graphics layer of some sort. I do think that a simple graphics creation ability would be nice for the future perhaps, and if so it would be good to do it as it was implemented in Nisus Writer Classic, such that you "switch" to the graphics layer and out of the text layer completely. The other very useful thing to have in a simple graphics capability would be "T bars". With these two things it would be a far better for graphics than Pages imho.

However I think the "missed out thing" that might be higher on many people's agenda would be mail-merge. This is not something that concerns me personally but I do feel that it is something many expect a word-processor to have.

I'm delighted to see attribute aware find/replace, thank goodness. Automatically updating styles would be very good to have in future imho.

Personally I am very glad indeed to see Nisus Writer Pro and it means that is has been worth my while sticking with Nisus Writer Express, working around its limitations and not going elsewhere.
Patrick
dshan
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Post by dshan »

I'm very interested in the new macro facility, it looks from the screen shots like you can embed Perl code inside menu macros, which sounds pretty useful but it's unclear if the old style Perl macros are still supported too (surely they must be?) and if they will now be attribute/style aware, etc. Any new AppleScript features?

Does Pro allow multiple windows for a document? That would be number one on my wishlist along with widow/orphan controls, which seem to be there. The lack of any mention of comment support seems to indicate that's not there yet, which is a pity but not the end of the world. I couldn't give a tinker's about ToC, indexing, or outlining (in my opinion outlining is, and should remain, outside the scope of a word-processor like Nisus, but better integration with 3rd party outlining tools would be a good thing) but I'm glad those who need them will finally get them.

My biggest concern is that the dreaded "feature creep" will overwhelm Nisus and destroy the very reasons I started using it - simple, small footprint, speedy, reliable, low cost WP for the masses, not large arcane feature sets and impenetrable user i/f that destabilize the whole thing while making it hard to use and raising both the resource requirements and price to Microsoft-like levels. WriteNow is the model to follow, MS Word and NW Classic are the approaches to avoid.
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