On 1/10/01, Mark Masny wrote: >As one who is on the cusp of buying Nisus Writer, and also one who >likes Word 2001, I would be interested in hearing what it is about >Writer that appeals to writers of books and article where the >multi-linguistic and advanced search capabilities are not overtly >relevant. In particular, I'd be interested in hearing from Judyth, >who's letter on the compatibility or capability of Writer working >with Word was interesting. From her letter, I now see that it isn't >unreasonable to consider having both Word 2001 and Writer on the same >Mac, each for different reasons. Word 2001 or 98 are great for office >type tasks, and working with Excel etc, while Writer is a great >writing tool for writers. > >I guess I'm just looking for an adequate reason to buy Writer. Word >2001 is, in my opinion, a fine application, for many tasks, but >there's something about Writer that I can't put my finger on that >makes it feel right for long writing. Maybe it's simply having a >separate application for the writing task, like a special table one >sits at to write. Other than it's language and search strengths, and >leaving out the MS negativity, what are the convincing reasons to buy >it. I don't expect it would replace my Word, but how might it be more >applicable to serious writing. The reason Nisus is better than Word as a writer's tool is its editing capabilities. Pure and simple. If you never revise text, then NisusWriter has no advantages over Word. But if you need to change something, then Nisus is the tool you need. My case is extreme: I edit other people's work. I've written a series of macros to take some of the effort out of this -- it takes care of curling quotes, handling dashes, putting phone numbers in the needed format, etc. You may not need to do as much of that. But chances are that you need to do some. The key is Nisus's GREP utility (what it calls PowerFind). NisusWriter has at once the easiest and the most powerful GREP of any program known. A dumb example. Suppose you have a document full of phone numbers. They're all in the format (999) 999-9999. Now suppose your publisher comes along and says, "No, they have to be in the format 999-999-9999." In Nisus, that's one GREP command: FIND: (((0-9)(0-9)(0-9))) ((0-9)(0-9)(0-9))-((0-9)(0-9)(0-9)(0-9)) REPLACE: (FOUND1)-(FOUND2)-(FOUND3) That does *all* of them in one command. (No, you can't actually cut and paste what I typed above. Unfortunately, the parentheses mean three different things in Nisus. But the point is, it's *one* operation.) Don't think that matters? Well, the same commands can format, say, the names of web sites (you used ordinary text; your publisher wants it in Courier 10). Or suppose you wrote something and can't remember exactly what you said. GREP can find things ordinary find can't. And if you use these things regularly, you can save it all as a macro. Nisus is a lousy layout tool; if you're doing camera-ready work, you need something else (not Word; Quark XPress or FrameMaker). Nisus doesn't have an irritating little icon making irritating little suggestions. :-) Nisus doesn't do tables or outlining. If those are essential to your work, then you're out of luck. But for many writers, the real task of writing is not writing (that is, preparing the first draft). It's going over it, getting it right, incorporating publisher's suggestions, polishing. NisusWriter is a great editing tool. It helps you with that process far more than Word does. And it's no worse than Word for basic writing. -- Bob Waltz waltzmn@skypoint.com "The one thing we learn from history -- is that no one ever learns from history."
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jan 15 2001 - 23:00:13 AEDT