Mark Masny <net.mail@VERIZON.NET> asked for opinions on NW's appeal to writers. >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. Personally, I am a great believer in having a proper toolkit and using the right tool for each job, in contrast with the tendency to buy one tool and expect it to do everything. As you can easily see on this list, many of us spend quite a bit of time comparing various programs so as to acquire the best tools for what we do...which naturally varies with the individual. I was happy to buy Word 5.1 long ago --as a complement to WordPerfect 5.0 for DOS-- and sometimes put the same project through both programs to achieve what I wanted. Word's strong point was its ability to take advantage of the Mac's capacities for layout and graphics. WordPerfect's was its ability to handle longer documents and more complex macros without crashing, as well as the "Master document" feature which enabled one to consolidate multiple chapters into a single document for "global replace", table of contents and index creation, and formatting AFTER the contents were right --all in 640k of RAM on an old XT! I've still got both of those (and the XT, though it's been relegated to doorstop status), Wordperfect 2.5 for Mac (sadly, not as good as the DOS version), BBEdit 4.0 (mostly for extracting text from badly corrupted Micrsoft files), Nisus Writer 4.1.6, and miscellaneous other stuff I never use. As an editor I really hate the way that writing quality deteriorates when people spend hours making their writing "look good" with a lot of formatting and expect the spell-checker and (horrors!) Microsoft's notion of grammar to make the content acceptable. As far as I am concerned, an author should not even *dream* of formatting the work until all of the content is as good as one can make it ...and, even then, the author is surely less able to do layout and typography than the people who specialize in such work and don't try to do rewrites. I do virtually all my *writing* in Nisus Compact or SimpleText with the SimpleText Color Menus patch (a shareware which adds capabilities like opening multiple, improved search and replace, and document statistics) -- the only formatting being the choice of an easy-to-read screen font and the odd bit of bold or italic. I also use NC for making Web pages since I prefer to hand-tag anyway. I do virtually all of my *translation* work in Nisus Compact, using a printed copy of the original, or a copy of the client's file stripped of unnecessary doodads and imported as text. (European characters only for me since I don't have any Asian or Semitic languages.) The resulting file can easily be formatted to suit the client, both in NC for printing and in NC or something else to produce files the client can import without glitches or viruses. I use Word 5.1 almost exclusively to handle files people insist on sending as Word docs and to make sure that my files can be opened even by idiots who don't realize other file formats can be opened within Word but not necessarily by double-clicking a desktop icon. Occasionally, I use Word to apply styles to match the client's, or to edit something for which the client needs Word annotations inserted in the text. >...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. I don't think it's just having a separate application and I don't see how one can leave out its search strengths even if one works in English only. I don't think it's just "MS negativity" to point out that a fast and economical tool is better than an expensive and buggy one unless one wants to spend a lot of time dealing with the bugs. I am busy enough not to want to spend a lot of time trying to replace corrupted files or try to figure out why the machine crashed during some straightforward editing task...and cheap enough not to want to lose 2 months a year (and a lot more income) changing computers to accommodate the latest "upgrade" to fix the bugs. I am always thrilled to find a program that does exactly what it says it will, reliably, for a reasonable price. Also, the creative flow tends to get interrupted when the computer hangs or crashes... I'd love to have more excuse to play with Nisus Writer and do intend to buy the new version but am hesitant since our colleagues seem to indicate it wants a lot of memory I don't have on my machines and is less reliable than the 4.1.6 I have but rarely have reason to use. I am trying in odd moments to put together my own lexicon for technical translations and am hoping to learn enough of the macro language myself to make it work as a "translation memory" program -- nobody seems to have written one for old Macs -- but this is something that keeps getting pushed aside by current work. >I'm already convinced the participation in this List is one >stroke in it's favor. It's a *major* advantage. Not only is the list a good resource for information on technical issues but it includes a lot of experienced and brilliant people who have written macros for hundreds of tasks and will even write one for you within 24 hours if you need a solution to a particular problem, You couldn't buy that kind of tech support for a million dollars, and you certainly won't get it from Microsoft; although there are dozens of self-help mailing lists for their software, I haven't seen one with the same congeniality. Regards, Judyth &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Judyth Mermelstein "cogito ergo lego ergo cogito ..." Montreal, QC <espresso@e-scape.net> &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jan 18 2001 - 23:01:54 AEDT