Nisus Writer Express: real competition for Word?
Nisus have released their first public beta of Nisus Writer for Mac OS X called Nisus Writer Express.
This looks to be a promising word processor and one that opens and saves in Word format. In fact, Word documents seem to look better to me in Nisus then in Word. A quick look around tells me they haven't implemented footnotes or endnotes yet but I just might have missed it... still much to check out!
What do people think of this new cocoa goodness?
This looks to be a promising word processor and one that opens and saves in Word format. In fact, Word documents seem to look better to me in Nisus then in Word. A quick look around tells me they haven't implemented footnotes or endnotes yet but I just might have missed it... still much to check out!
What do people think of this new cocoa goodness?
Comments
They should probably also look into using the Omni Group's free framework for detachable/attachable palettes (see OmniGraffle 3.0) instead of packing everything into the Okito Composer drawer.
Has Nissus done any real work since they bought Okito Composer? Have they come up with any original idea of their own? I can't tell since I can't even download the beta.
The site says Nissus Writer can opens .docs? If it does, I'm happy. But it apparently doesn't do tables yet. That makes me sad indeed.
Can someone host the beta so I can download it once and for all?
(I'm judging based on the two screenshots since the links to download the actual beta aren't working as of this post.)
Originally posted by Brad
Important tools in drawer = bad mojo! *sigh*
(I'm judging based on the two screenshots since the links to download the actual beta aren't working as of this post.)
Precisely...drawers are being misused by a lot of developers. But Okito and Nisus are the winnars here!
Drawers should be used for extra/additional info or options...emphasis on extra/additional. And the items/info inside the drawer have to be specific to the parent window.
Global tools such as the ones displayed in the screenshot, shouldn't be attached to a window since you'd multiple instances of windows with drawers that contain the exact same tools.
I don't care how good the app is otherwise...Nisus should really clean up the GUI. Okito Composer's GUI was neat when I first saw it but I quickly realized that it was bad news.
That said...the page magnification and 'stats' should definitely be in the drawer because they are specific to one document. 'Characters' and 'paragraphs' should not.
It does read and save word documents. No table support as it states. To me, this will work for now. Tables are what kill efforts to read and save. (Just ask the folks at Mariner write.) If I have a document that has tables, I will just use word. (I don't put tables in any of my docs.)
Spelling checker is not good with the beta.
No bullets or numbering yet.
I like how the toolbar palette works. It even has a drop down menu that lets you choose another drawer with different palettes. On my 12 pb, this is a nice solution. While I didn't check this yet, with Okito Composer, you could tear off parts of the palette that you like, let them float, and close the tool bar drawer. I bet this still works.
You can edit multiple clipboards.
Multiple undo/redo.
For some reason, not all of my fonts show up in the font palette.
I really like it, just as I liked Composer although this is better. Not ready for prime time and I don't know that I would trust anything critical with it, but I like using this better than Text Edit.
Don't know that I would buy it yet since iWorks rumors are floating but I don't expect that too soon anyway.
Originally posted by JBL
I hate to interrupt all this b*tching and moaning with some facts, but the palettes actually work reasonably intelligently. You can pull them out of the drawers at which point they are no longer associated with particular documents (i.e., they come out of the drawers of all the documents). In effect, you get to decide whether to use the drawer or to use palettes. If you choose the drawer it works the way a drawer should (i.e., document specific). If you choose palettes they work the way palettes should. The only thing I can't figure out yet is why Find isn't just like one of the other palettes.
Neat...
I suppose if I could have gotten the damn thing downloaded I would have known this.
If you don't like the icons in the toolbar you can hide the toolbar from view.
Good luck in downloading it. Seems there sight was overwhelmed.
Actually, I can see the point in putting the tools in a draw for a WP app: generally you set the document up when you start, then don't mess with the formatting a great deal. However, on general principles, it's an untidy paradigm.
Anyhoo, download in progress, I'll give it a whirl until the beta expires.
Originally posted by Aquatic
There should at least be a widget to make it go in and out.
What are you talking about? Do you mean like the little "tools" button on Nisus and Navigator that makes the drawer go in and out?
If it's not in your toolbar go to view>customize toolbar.
However, Nisus Writer Express will never replace Word (or even AppleWorks) for me until it can handle footnotes! Any word processor is useless to me without this feature.
I can cut and paste Arabic text from any browser into Nisus but cannot type in it. Grrr.
3 years of OSX and still no solution for writing right to left in Hebrew/Arabic.