On 7/31/00, Chris Walker wrote: >On 31/7/00 Benjamin Cramer wrote: > >>It seems that >>there is a large contingent of people who like NW the way it is, say that >>if NW isn't your app just dump it and get off this list, and don't want >>to get into any real discussion of what might be incorporated into NW to >>make it a competitor again. > >Bearing in mind what I said in another post, it might be thought that I >am against discussion of improvements in Nisus. I doubt there are many >on the list who do not want to get into a discussion on how to improve >Nisus, there have been several discussions of wishlists for improving Nisus. > >However, what currently seems to be happening is that some people want >Nisus to be just like Word. I have to agree with this. I use Nisus for several reasons. One is that it isn't Word -- and all the others are that it's not Word. :-) That is, not only is Nisus *not* by Microsoft, but it has GREP, and it has a macro language which is safe to use, because there aren't 10 million or so virus writers targeting it. I'd like to see improvements to Nisus -- I have a fairly long list, in fact. Examples: Quark XPress import (doesn't need to be a filter, just a really reliable macro suite. :-) FrameMaker import (ditto). Syntax colouring. Better HTML/C/Perl/Pascal support. (In other words, position it against BBEdit. Don't make us buy QUED/M and Nisus, or at least offer a bundle and make sure that the GREP and Macro features are *identical*.) Improvements in memory management. There are more which I won't get into. (I don't even remember a lot of them. :-) What I *don't* want and don't need are all these Word features. If the goal is to become a Word clone, the only market will be people who are anti-Microsoft. Now if there are two identical products and one is by MS and the other isn't, I'll buy the non-MS product. But I'd rather get more -- or, at least, something different. Word is not the ultimate word processor; if it were, Nisus would not exist at all. :-) Word has a lot of problems -- including a continued resistance to adopting Macintosh standards. What is needed is not a clone but a program which provides all the things Word doesn't have, while having enough core features (HINT: Quality export to other programs) that people can actually use it. [ ... ] > >We may end up with lots of little >>applications, each of which does one part of the process extremely well >>but nothing more......I don't find the first option to >>my liking > >I think you may be dispointed as that's the way OSX may well go. With it >being heavily multi-threaded and object oriented, it is possible (but not >certain) that it will enable lots of small apps, each with a fairly >specific purpose. If it does, it may be that these will be bundled in >packages creating in effect a major app. As ever, we wait with interest Put it this way: Unix people are in the habit of using small apps for little jobs. Nothing wrong with that, if the OS can pipe the results well enough. I'd love to use BBEdit (or Nisus) to write my e-mail, then send it via Eudora. (And before you ask why, in that case, I don't use NESY, that's easy: I want no part of a program which encourages styled e-mail, and I want the filtering options of Eudora.) The trick is always to make the interface between the programs such that ordinary people can use the programs effectively. Most unix utilities are command-line driven. Unless OS X can find a way to shield users from that (which I doubt :-), the small-program model won't work. And you still need occasional monolithic programs, like page layout software. It's just that they can take advantage of other tools. Take page layout software: PageMaker has a "story editor," but it stinks. Wouldn't it be great if Quark XPress could use Nisus as its story editor? I'd love it! But only if they can transfer style sheets. That's where the bottleneck comes in.... -- Bob Waltz waltzmn@skypoint.com "The one thing we learn from history -- is that no one ever learns from history."
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