Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!anaconda.cis.ohio-state.edu!tj
From: tj@anaconda.cis.ohio-state.edu (Todd R Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: merge quotes in Word 4 -- Try Nisus' Mail Merge
Keywords: mail merge nisus word
Message-ID: <86427@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 29 Nov 90 19:15:18 GMT
References: <14864.9011201902@s4.sys.uea.ac.uk> <4088@network.ucsd.edu> <1990Nov28.145957.10136@rodan.acs.syr.edu> <2859@esquire.dpw.com>
Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Reply-To: Todd R Johnson <tj@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Organization: Ohio State University Computer and Information Science
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In article <2859@esquire.dpw.com> baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten) writes:
>>Last point.  The Mac world has started making the unfortunate
>>assumption that word processing on the Mac is Word and Word is word
>>processing on the Mac.  It just isn't so.  I used to use Word all the
>>time, but having switched to Nisus I dread ever going back to it.  It
>>really is *that* much better.  It's one of the few products that do
>>some things *so* much better than its competition that it's a shame
>>more people don't know about it.  Things people struggle doing with
>>Word (or can't do at all), Nisus does with very little effort.

	I would love to switch from Word to Nisus; however, there are
some MAJOR features missing from Nisus.  If anyone can tell me how to
do these or if Nisus will soon support them, then I would consider the
program again.  

	1. EndNote doesn't read Nisus files.  In other words, you need
to do the in-text citations to bibliography entries by hand.  This is
not acceptable.  Unless Paragon can talk Niles & Associates into
changing EndNote to directly read Nisus files, I don't think I will
ever use Nisus.

	2. Nisus doesn't have a built-in outliner.  I use Word's
outliner much too often to do without one.  

	3. Nisus styles looked underpowered.  Sure you can write a
macro to keep headings on the same page as the next paragraph, but I'd
rather just click "keep with next paragraph" for the heading style.
If I want to program, I can always just continue to use LaTeX.  I also
didn't see a way to indicate space before AND space after in a
paragraph style.  You can do one, but not the other.  I also, couldn't
find a way of linking styles so that when you end a paragraph, Nisus
changes to a new style for the next.  Again, I'm sure you can write a
macro for this, but I don't want to have to write macros for everything.

	4. Nisus styles are not hierarchical.  

	5. You need to use macros to number things like figures and
equations and fix the cross references.  I'd prefer auto-numbered
series as in Word 5.  

	6. How do you do floating anchored figures?

	Nisus has a lot of features that Word will probably never
have, but right now Nisus is a lot like the Nisus icon: one arm is
on steroids and the other arm is missing.

	---Todd


--
Todd R. Johnson
tj@cis.ohio-state.edu
Laboratory for AI Research
The Ohio State University