From: bwolfe@trentu.ca (BEN WOLFE)
Subject: Nisus 3.06 Comments
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Trent University Computer Services Department
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 19:49:00 GMT

Eric.Choi@p5.f57.n7000.z8.ieee.org (Eric Choi) writes:

>I saw a Nisus demo on MacConnection's MacTV off the satellite last
>week. It looks very good. Any comments regarding Nisus?

I spend about six hours a day using Nisus, and in my experience it is
the best of the best for serious writers.

At the moment, unfortunately, I am hesitating to recommend it in an
unqualified way because there have been real problems in getting out
an upgrade that was first *advertised* well over a year ago. The
company is not large, and if these problems continue it is reasonable
to wonder about its future.

The best things about Nisus are:

- its unlimited undos. I can't believe other word processors have
not picked up this feature. When you're editing, it always takes at
least two commands to change something. In Nisus you can Undo both of
them, plus as many more as you want. I couldn't live without it. (I'm
a very indecisive writer.)

- non-contiguous selection. Hold down command-option and add a word
here, a phrase there to your selection. Then change them all with a
single command.

- fabulous find/replace capability that includes sophisticated pattern
searching. Example? I recently did a download of more than 1000 records
from a bibliographic database on a library CD-ROM. Some were older and were
missing some fields, and there were other minor inconsistencies. Using
a few global find/replace commands with wildcards I cleaned hundreds of
pages of data up for clean and consistent export to a database in less
than ten minutes.

- two-character command keys. Does this sound mundane? In practice, it
isn't. It means you can apply easy-to-remember keyboard shortcuts to all
sorts of powerful commands, easily and in a matter of seconds. Examples?
Command -IF for insert footnote, IH for insert header, SA for save as,
XR for cross-reference, SC for small caps. These shortcuts make sense,
so you can actually remember them. Here's a good example: global search
and replace without ever opening the Find/Replace dialog. Select the text 
to be replaced and choose Command-CF for "Copy to Find". Type the
replacement text, select it and choose Command-CR for "Copy to Replace".
Now Command-RA for Replace All makes the changes. Oh, and if I'd spent
another minute making a list of files, I could apply that command to
any number of open and unopened files simultaneously.


Enough raves about great features; there's also a down side. The manual
is just about the worst I've ever seen, which makes for a steep learning
curve on what should be a pretty user-friendly program. Graphics import
is inadequate (no EPS or TIFF support). Multiple columns apply through
a whole document, and can only be displayed in a non-interactive preview
mode. Style sheets, while very powerful, are confusingly implemented.

Still, it's well worth a look. I'm hoping that once the much-delayed
upgrade appears Nisus will once again be the clear choice for serious
word processor users, as I think it was before recent upgrades by
competitors.

Ben Wolfe
Green by Design

Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps