nisus.com

Hi,

I'm sending a long document to a collaborator, with my notes added as comments in NWP. My collaborator is using OpenOffice, and it cannot say my comments. In fact, I cannot see them either if loaded in OpenOffice Mac.

I tried with the wordprocessors and text editors I have, and it seems that only Scrivener is able to correctly recognize Nisus' comments. Is there some other software doing it?

And, is there a workaround, to exchange comments with users of OpenOffice, Word, or other mainstream wordprocessors?

Paolo

ptram wrote:I'm sending a long document to a collaborator, with my notes added as comments in NWP. My collaborator is using OpenOffice, and it cannot say my comments. In fact, I cannot see them either if loaded in OpenOffice Mac.

Unfortunately OpenOffice will not read comments from RTF files; it simply lacks that import capability. That means regular ".doc" files saved by Nisus Writer (which use RTF codes internally) will also not import into OpenOffice with comments. However, if you export your document from Nisus Writer as a binary ".doc" or an OpenOffice XML document (".odt"), OpenOffice should be able to import the comments.

I tried with the wordprocessors and text editors I have, and it seems that only Scrivener is able to correctly recognize Nisus' comments. Is there some other software doing it?

Microsoft Word will happily read/write comments to/from the RTF file format.

I hope this helps.

You have to use the Export As... menu and apply Microsoft Word Format (binary) and Open Office XML in the Export dialog. Then apps which read those formats will be able to see your comments.

Thank you (both of you): it indeed works. Apart for a bug in OO, that seems to prevent showing the comments unles you select the referring text (or scroll the document in a certain way - not yet understood the pattern).

Paolo

Comments, in Nisus, are not only useful. They are also nice as some sort of abstract expressionist painting!

ptram wrote:Comments, in Nisus, are not only useful. They are also nice as some sort of abstract expressionist painting!

But to be fair, all applications seem to have trouble displaying tons of comments in a clear way. Some tips to help deal with an overwhelming number of comments:

1. Expand the width of the comment pane. This can help a lot if you have lengthy comments.
2. Switch to Draft View, where the margins don't eat up valuable horizontal space.

We also have a few small enhancements planned for future upgrades to make a big mess of comments more readable (eg: allow the plus/minus buttons to be placed next to the comment text, saving a full line of space per comment).

Martin, thank you for the tips. However, I find Nisus' way of dealing with comments already the cleanest among the various apps. My example is actually a bit on the extreme side, so your planned revision will be welcome, but will not help my madness too much!

Paolo