Re: Word Non-Clones (Was: Re: (OT) Mailing Lists reflect on Developers)

From: Robert B. Waltz (waltzmn@SKYPOINT.COM)
Date: Tue Aug 01 2000 - 08:31:55 AEST


On 8/1/00, Geoffrey Heard wrote:

[ ... ]

> >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....
>
>Of course, you can use Word and PageMaker -- and the style sheets
>translate. Unfortunately that is a prolific source of crashes in PM. You
>can use tags, though, out of ANY WP.
>
>In reality, you can use any WP as a story editor for PM. The stories are
>linked. Change and save them, then go back to PM, and with two key
>commands, update the links. Voila, your new text is in place.

You failed to notice the change in page layout programs. You can't
use *any* program as a story editor in Quark -- not without
re-placing the story. And Quark is the page layout program
real publishers use.

And neither Quark nor PageMaker imports Nisus files *with formatting*.
Particularly not with style sheets. That kills Nisus is a story
editor, or as a "part." (I always thought Nisus was stupid to
position itself as an OpenDoc container. It should have made
itself an OpenDoc *part*. Not that it matters any more. But
a good word processor, with kerning, as an OpenDoc part was
what OpenDoc really needed.)

And tags are *not* an answer -- particularly if you have to
go back and re-edit the tagged story....

>Graphics are the same.

Graphics are easy -- but they also don't need re-flowing every
time you edit them. Text is not easy -- not when you need
style sheets. This is the feature where Nisus really falls
down in *my* book. But somehow it always gets left off the
upgrade list....

--
Bob Waltz
waltzmn@skypoint.com

"The one thing we learn from history --
   is that no one ever learns from history."



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