![]() Back in grad school when I was studying linguistics, I was a PC user. I mean it.Ī Little Background - Many TidBITS readers have known me since way back, and have heard this before, but the story is worth repeating. Those of you who traffic in text: go download this software right now. For someone who spends all day, every day, in a word processor and whose feelings about Microsoft Word are unprintable, this is huge. It isn’t quite everything I need it to be yet, but it’s finally within striking distance - by which I mean, close enough that I can make up for nearly all its deficiencies by way of a few carefully crafted macros. But let me do you the favor of summarizing my findings here at the outset: Wow - Nisus isīack, baby! I’m geeking out over this software in a way I haven’t done since my earliest days as a Mac user. Those who have no patience for such things should feel free to skip ahead to the appropriate heading (“New in Two”). Because of my personal history with Nisus (the product and the company), I need to wrap this review in a bit of a story, which I’m sure will come as a surprise to no one. I’ve been spending a great deal of time with the new Nisus Writer Pro, and in just a bit I’ll tell you all about it - the new, the old, the good, the bad. That sort of power is what sets Nisus Writer Pro apart from every other word processor. Need to go through a 950-page alumni directory and change every entry in the form “John Smith, Class of ’72” to “1972 SMITH, John,” with the year spelled out, the last name in uppercase, and the first name in italics? Nisus Writer Pro can do This is a serious tool for people with heavy-duty writing needs - those writing books, dissertations, academic papers, legal documents, and other complex works are most likely to benefit from what Nisus Writer Pro can do best: manipulate text, in almost any way you can imagine. ![]() Nisus pioneered features that are now nearly universal, such as noncontiguous selection (now called “multipart” selection) and unlimited undo and redo.īefore I go on, I should acknowledge that if your word-processing needs extend no further than the occasional business letter or shopping list, Nisus Writer Pro may not interest you much. Of course, Nisus Writer Pro retains such trademark features as multiple, editable clipboards extensive support for multilingual text, especially in right-to-left languages the world’s best find-and-replace capability a built-in macro language a glossary feature for automatic text substitutions a first-rate table editor multiple columns, sections, and other layout features heavily customizable autonumbering, bookmarking, cross-referencing, indexing, and tables of contents footnotes and endnotes user-defined paragraph, character, list, and note styles and a tremendously adaptable user interface, with such niceties as custom mnemonic multi-key shortcuts (such as Command-S-A-P for “Save as PDF”). Nisus Writer Pro 2.0 can also create PDF files with proper tables of contents and clickable links to internal references, export documents in EPUB format, add watermarks behind page contents, display a vertical ruler, show a customizable menu palette of special characters, and link to image files stored on disk. Among the headliner features of this release are several capabilities I’ve been wanting eagerly for years - change tracking, paragraph borders and shading, and drawing tools. They detail over 500 changes, including major new features, minor alterations, and bug fixes. The release notes make for extremely interesting reading. ![]() After following Nisus Writer’s ups and downs carefully these many years, I am equally shocked and delighted to say this is the first version of the application since Mac OS X was released - over ten years ago - that I can seriously contemplate using for my own professional writing. In fact, it goes quite a bit beyond that. It had been more than a year since its last update, but the new version includes a vast number of improvements that more than justify the delay. ![]() Nisus Software recently released Nisus Writer Pro 2.0, a major revision to the company’s legendary high-end word processor.
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