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From: ack@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Andy J. Williams)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Does anyone have comments on Nisus?
Message-ID: <18372@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Date: 8 Jan 90 21:15:52 GMT
References: <422@skippy.UUCP>
Sender: news@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU
Organization: Kiewit Computation Center, Dartmouth College
Lines: 44

In article <422@skippy.UUCP> ras@skippy.UUCP (Bob Surtees) writes:
>I have seen a couple of reviews on Paragon's Word Processor Nisus and, as a
>result of playing around with the demo version, am almost at the point of
>purchasing a copy.
>Does anyone out there have any experience with this product for serious
>word processing and had a chance to compare it to some of the other
>*heavies* that are in common use?  I currently use WordPerfect and was
>thinking of Nisus as a second WP over Word.

At this point, I have decided to stay with Word 4.0 (even if it is somewhat
slow...)  The reasons:

1) Nisus doesn't have any style sheets.  Granted, you can make macros to go
   through and emulate them, but that is a little too much work for a simple
   feature which Word already has built in.
2) It doesn't have true WYSIWYG when editing multiple columns.  I often do
   Newsletters and page layout work and need this feature for my design work.
3) As far as I can tell (I am working off the demo) it does not seem to
   have good control of text wraps around graphics.  When I drew a sample
   Mac screen in a design document (using the built-in graphics layer) and
   set the text to wrap around it, the text wrapped right up to the exact edge
   of the graphic.  There was no way that I could see to set a 0.25 inch or so
   space between the graphic and the text.  In the end I had to draw a white
   rectangle with white edges which was slightly larger than the original
   rectangle. Again, I do not have the manual and this is a demo copy.
4) I can't afford it now.

So, all in all, I really like Nisus a lot.  I think that 3.0 will probably be
very well done and may then make me shell out the money.  Until then, and since
I've taken the necessary time to learn how to do what I need to do in Word
(all 6 months of it :-) :-), I am not going to switch right now.

>Bob Surtees (ras@skippy.UUCP)    Home = 42.51'N 71.25'W
>Digital Equipment Corporation    UUCP   (...!decvax!skippy!ras)
>Nashua, NH                       DNET   (SKANDA::SURTEES)

-ajw


--
Andy J. Williams '90  Systems Programmer, Kiewit Computation Center
Dartmouth College     Macintosh Interface Design, Critique & Programming
603-643-2177          (Well, that's my job until June.  What then?)
ack@dartmouth.edu     "Argue for your limitations, and they're yours" - R. Bach