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From: pollock@screamer.csee.usf.edu (Wayne Pollock)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: Nisus questions: time to dump Microsoft?  (LONG!)
Message-ID: <1423@screamer.csee.usf.edu>
Date: 24 May 91 22:51:50 GMT
References: <1765@vtserf.cc.vt.edu> <1991May24.101824.1144@husc3.harvard.edu>
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of South Florida at Tampa
Lines: 101

>[Some questions and answers about Nisus features, too long to include]

I thought I'd add my two cents worth. Maybe even three cents worth.  I also
have switched from Word to Nisus, and while I wouldn't want to switch
back, Nisus has many more problems for technical writers than you mentioned.

First off, Nisus does *not* have floating displays; what was meant by floating
text (which is what Nisus does) and what some technical writers mean by
floating displays are different.  If I had a document with a graphic (or
even a paragraph) that just fit at the bottom of, say, page 3, with text
following it, and then I typed more text on page 2, this will push the
graphic onto the top of the following page (page 4).  The problem is that
this will leave some unwanted white space at the bottom of page 3 (it was a
large graphic).  Still with me?  Now if the graphic were a "floating display",
the text following the graphic would fill the bottom of page three; the
graphic appears to have floated past text that had followed it (this text
now appears before the graphic).

Nisus has no support for bibliographies, such as the creation of reference
lists from BibTeX, REFER, Pro-Cite, or any other standard.  This wouldn't
be so bad if EndNote worked with Nisus the way it works with Word, but it
doesn't.  (Guess which bibliography tool I have?)  The ability to put
citations in the text, and have the reference list built automatically is
very important for certain types of work.

Nisus has no suport for equations.  This wouldn't be too much of a problem
since MathType works well with Nisus, but Paragon ought to license the code
and include it directly, so equations could line wrap, and be searched and
replaced in (when I change a variable name for instance).

Nisus has no support for numbering equations, figures, etc.  This is so
easy to implement, I have never understoon why no Mac word processor has
this feature.

Nisus has no support for making pretty tables.  I don't mean like in Word,
I have never understood Word tables, but something is needed.

Along with tables, I would like to see a command to make a chart from a
table (line, bar, and pie charts, like in MockChart only less limited).

Nisus has no support for page numbering, except the most primitive kind.
I want the beginning pages to be numbered using roman numerals, then the
numbers need to start again in regular numerals with 1.  I won't even
mention section numbering or appendix numbering.  (Page, section, figure,
etc., numbers are all special cases of an auto-incrementing general mechanism.)

Nisus has no support for ligatures.  I have a macro that can find and
replace them, but the spelling checker will choke on them later unless I
also mark all such words with the Ignore style.

Nisus doesn't suport widow and orphan control well, and is missing several
useful styles (break page before paragraph, or a keep on same page style
that actually works correctly).

Nisus graphics are lacking a 4x zoom, or fat-bits mode, so it is impossilbe
to align lines and arcs and polygons using the 1/4 point pen size.  (And a
true hairline size would be more useful!)  Also missing is macro support for
graphics.  A macro I wanted to write would use the "compare files" tool
to find all differences in two versions of a document, and put a vertical
line in the right margin the full height of any paragraph which is different.
Not only can't you find the height of the paragraph (or its offset from the
top of the page), but even if you could there are no macro commands for
drawing lines.

A lot of these features can be implemented using the macro language, but in
the first place a lot of people would rather write documents than learn how
to write Nisus programs, in the second place running macros to fix up a
document is not WYSIWYG anymore, and in the third place the macro language
is missing several functions that would allow some of these problems to
be addressed.  (For instance, there is no way to get the X and Y positions
of a point - say the start or end of some selection - so it's not even
possible to write a macro to correctly implement floating displays.)

As much as I love the user interface when compared to Word, this needs
some work too.  There are a few other ommisions from Nisus, but few people
will miss all of them.  The missing features I talked about above are all
vital for most kinds of technical writting, which is why many people will
probably continue to use TeX for thesises and journal articles.

The support people at Paragon are incredibly nice and helpful, and
are open to suggestions.  They do know these things are needed, but I
get the impression they haven't even started working on Nisus 4.0, and
will not in the near future.  So I suppose I'll have to switch back to
TeX soon.  The world is still waiting for someone to invent a WYSIWYG
word processor with the power of a text formatter such as TeX.

Having said all this, let me add that for writting letters, articles, books
(I just started my first), and general correspondence, I wouldn't use
anything but Nisus.  I think you can turn out nicer looking documents faster
and with less effort than with Word or MacWrite I (I've never tried II).

Oh, and Paragon Concepts *does* have educational discounts.  They even have
a free demo available.  I also think that if enough people request these
missing "power" features, they would be willing to put them into a future
version.

I have no connection with Paragon Concepts except that of a (mostly) satisfied
customer.

Wayne Pollock (The MAD Scientist)
Internet:	pollock@screamer.csee.usf.edu