Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!esquire!baumgart From: baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Does anyone have comments on Nisus? Message-ID: <1712@esquire.UUCP> Date: 9 Jan 90 20:07:25 GMT References: <2941@dogie.macc.wisc.edu> <5200@mnetor.UUCP> Sender: news@esquire.UUCP Reply-To: baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten) Organization: Davis Polk & Wardwell Lines: 124 In-reply-to: frank@mnetor.UUCP (Frank Kolnick) In article <5200@mnetor.UUCP>, frank@mnetor (Frank Kolnick) writes: >When Nisus was released, I ordered their demo disk, as I was >frustrated with Word. I spent about a week trying to convert a chapter >of a book I was writing to Nisus. This is a *lot* of work because >Nisus doesn't understand Word files and doesn't have the Hmm. Nisus doesn't understand Word styles, but it should convert Word documents without any trouble. I've converted all of mine (some needed some minor touchup, but there were no major headaches). You can't convert documents saved in "Fast Save" format, though. Maybe this was your problem? >equivalent of style sheets (no, char. styles are *not* the same). This is true, but it's easily worked around. I suspect it would be more of a problem if you were working in a group and wanted to have a readily definable "Heading" style (or something like that). But since styles are local to Word documents (at least the DOS version of Word stores them separately), I don't see what the big advantage is. Nisus has a simple way to change text and/or attributes from one thing to something else. You can easily change all the "Nisus"'s in your document from bold to italic. Very straightforward. But I agree, sometimes styles are better. >Anyway, my conclusion was that, while I'd really like to have all >of the nice *extra* features that Nisus provides, but I couldn't live >without the *essential* features that Word provides (more flexible >paragraph spacing, for example). And with Word 4, I find I actually >like its interface, which I think is cleaner and less cluttered than >Nisus (I'm not fond of little icons all over my screen). I really have to disagree with you here, but I won't try to convince you. But the recent discussion in this group of how to get fonts to show up in Word's font menu points out serious interface flaws that Microsoft has never (and probably will never) address. Nisus's interface is *very* clear and easy to understand (although I will grant that it relies on perhaps a few too many icons). Yet once you understand what those icons mean, it makes the program very simple and intuitive to operate. Sort of like the finder, I guess. There are very few modal dialogs in Nisus, which is a big plus. Cut and paste work *everywhere* -- even the Edit menu works. This is great for novices, who haven't learned (from badly conceived software like Word) that "you can't do that here." >Now, as always, choose the wp that provides the functions you need >with the interface with which you feel most comfortable. In my >opinion, Nisus is a very good, medium-power wp, perhaps in the class >of MacWrite. Try before you buy. No, it's significantly more powerful than MacWrite, but not much more difficult to use. It lags behind Word in a couple of areas (no automatic table creation -- a very nice feature of Word 4; mail-merge is a bit kludgy (relies on macros); and true styles would be nice), but is far superior in many others: o Unlimited undo and redo. This is a big help since it lets you back out of many changes. I've used it many times to get my document back to the state it was in 5 minutes earlier -- after I'd made dozens of changes. You can't do that with any other Mac application (that I'm aware of). o 10 clipboards. Implemented in such a way that even a novice can make use of them. And once you have more than a single clipboard, you wonder how you ever got along without this feature. o Macros to let you do nearly anything you want. One of my favorites is one they supply you with: It goes through your document and changes letter combinations like "ff", "fi", etc. into the appropriate ligatures, then prints the document, then changes them back (for ease of editing). The macro itself is quite straightforward and could have been designed by anyone with a little computer experience. First time users, though, might have difficulty creating the more advance macros, although macros can be recorded, which makes things easier. o Integrated drawing and text around/on top of/with graphics. o Saves files as TEXT documents (formatting in the resource fork). I thought this was particularly neat, since it allows you to open your Nisus documents with DAs like miniWRITER or whatever. The TEXT portion is quite readable, so this gives you a quick way to browse through your files when you're doing something else. I've opened/copied/uploaded portions of my Nisus files when I was online in Versaterm. o Sophisticated searching through open and closed documents. This is incredibly useful, since not only do you have full regular expression search and replace (including an "EZ" mode that allows novices to search for things like returns, tabs, etc. without resorting to Word's bizarre "^p" syntax), but you can also search through hundreds of Nisus and TEXT files very quickly, without going through the bother of opening each one. o Excellent footnote and index/table of contents handling. I could go on, but suffice it to say that I was very happy I made the switch from Word to Nisus. It's really on a par with Word in terms of features, the interface is wonderful, and the support is great. Even the manual is great (once you've inserted the errata sheets they give you -- something I could have lived without). So give it a try if you're looking for something a little more powerful than MacWrite or WriteNow, or if you're just sick of Word's idiosyncrasies and bizarro interface. -- Steve Baumgarten | "New York... when civilization falls apart, Davis Polk & Wardwell | remember, we were way ahead of you." baumgart@esquire.dpw.com | cmcl2!esquire!baumgart | - David Letterman