As I am sure many of us have, I have received the katest Nisus Newsletter and its link to page offering a glimpse of Nisus X. <http://www.nisus.com/products/NisusWriter/SneakPeek/> for those who do not get the newsletter.
Overall, the screenshots and feature list looks good. Here are a few initial impressions. Main Window Although the new look is very different from the classic Nisus interface, it looks promising. However, there needs to be some indication of the name of the font and font size for the current insertion point without having to have the Tool drawer open. OS X's Show Fonts palette is not the answer, especially if it would be the only way to check which font and font size is being used. The Tool bar seems to have room for this. Tool Drawer This looks very promising, provided all the options can also be set from menus (and therefore also by macros). If each section within the drawer is collapsable, as I assume they are, we will be able to have only the sections we use regularly expanded with the others collapsed and out of the way. While a slide bar is great for the page view option, I doubt that many people will use one to specify a font size. (Although it may be useful when experimenting with chapter and section title sizes.) Most people, who have used a word processor or DTP package before, are likely to continue selecting the size from a list or specifying the size directly. Features Apart from the obvious lack of table support, the feature set looks good. Ideally, Nisus X should be able to open Word (*.doc) files, either directly or via conversion. It must definitely be capable of producing RTF files that other (PC or Word) users can open and edit. If Nisus can do this, they have a great opportunity to woo disgruntled and reluctant Word users. If they can't, it will be a deal breaker for many of us. As for tables, the current version does not do tables (the table editor monstrosity does not count), so that is no great loss provided tables can be imported from some other source. I would rather Nisus implement tables properly than have another botched effort like the table editor. Considering how often the issue of table support comes up, it will be criminal neglect on Nisus' part if they have not considered it when planning the file format for Nisus X. If they are not able to implement it for the initial release, I for one will not be too upset. * By "proper tables" I mean tables that can span more than one page, and automatically create header rows when the table flows over a page break. -- Mark Smith (InterLingual) <http://www2.gol.com/users/mspsmith/> Translation & Writing Solutions 6-8-401 Asahigaoka, Ashiya, Hyogo 659-0012 Tel & Fax: 0797-31-7999 --------------------------------------------------- The Nisus Interactive List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Searchable archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/nisus-interactive%40nisus.com/ To unsubscribe from this list please send a message with "unsubscribe nisus-interactive" in the body of the email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
