nisus.com

I just installed and opened the Nisus Thesaurus. The Thesaurus entries look so similar to what I am used to seeing in the Dictionary widget. Was I already using the Nisus Thesaurus because of having NWPro installed?

Confused in the foothills,

When you say "dictionary widget", do you mean the one that comes with your Mac/OSX and is available globally? If so, no, Nisus Thesaurus has no impact on that dictionary or its list of words.

But if you mean the Language palette (which displays synonyms and spelling corrections from within Nisus Writer, in the drawer attached to every Nisus document), then yes, that list of words comes from Nisus Thesaurus.

Ah, I see. I do not know why I thought the Nisus thesaurus would appear as a dashboard widget. Now I see it. It would be nice if it could be made to show more words at a time, so the mind can mull over choices. For that reason I will probably stick with the one from Apple (and my 40 year old paperback Roget’s).

Ah, but you can "show more words at a time".
You can drag the little three horizontal lines at the bottom of the Language palette down to reveal more words.
If you want, you can drag that palette from the Tooldrawer and allow it to float wherever you like on your screen, and also drag the bottom of the palette down to reveal more words.

I hope that helps. If you need any additional assistance, please let me know.

Yes, big improvement with a larger list. Thanks.