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It's no secret that I and my Applelinks colleague Kirk Hiner are Nisus Writer fans. I unequivocally boost Nisus Writer as an alternative to the unfortunately ubiquitous M$ Word. It's smaller, nicer to use (IMHO), has a lot of *useful* features and power (as opposed to Word's barge-load of PC-esque gimcrackery), and it costs a fraction of the tariff Microsoft demands for the dubious privilege of using their behemoth word processor.

Nisus is my first choice when I need a full word processor, and my daughter refuses to use anything else for writing school essays and papers on her PowerBook 5300. Chalk up another advantage for Nisus Writer -- it will actually run, and run well on the feeble old 5300.

There's no native OS X version of Nisus Writer yet, but they're working on it, and in the meantime it runs nicely in Classic mode, and thanks to its modest processing demands, very speedily too.

If you like using time-saving macros, Nisus is right up your alley, with not one but two built-in macro protocols, plus facility for extensive keyboard shortcut customization.

The Nisus Writer document window is clean and simple, while still packing an amazing amount of functionality into the main ruler/toolbar at the top of the page, plus mini-toolbars in the bottom and right margins for things like the integrated draw program, Web page construction, speech recording and playback, etc. There is also a fleet of optional floating palettes that can be shown or hidden individually.

Then there are unlimited undos (even after a save), non-contiguous selections, ten editable clipboards, the ability to rename an open document without closing it, a booklet-printing feature, and synchronized scrolling for comparing documents side-by-side. No other word processor can match Nisus's incredibly powerful find and replace capability. You can even open multiple documents at once and search for files by file name. A WYSIWYG font menu and live scrolling are nice touches.

As well as being an excellent word processor for writers, Nisus is a powerful text engine (for processing text files), and few if any programs do it better. Nisus can be used to extract useful information from all sorts of raw text sources and edit it into a readable format. Some DTP people use it for composing and editing text, which is later dumped into a page layout program like Quark or PageMaker for formatting and printing.

Few if any other word processors can touch Nisus Writer's multilingual capabilities. You can have English and other Romanic languages, Japanese and other two-byte languages, and right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew, all in the same document if you wish. Nisus can also read your document to you in English, French, Italian, German, or Spanish.

The current version, Nisus Writer 6.5, offers new features such as integrated outlining and a new Document Manager, plus better compatibility with OS X in Classic mode.

Did I say that I really like Nisus Writer?

For my full review of Nisus Writer (6.1), visit:
http://www.applelinks.com/mooresviews/NW.shtml

The latest Nisus Newsletter notes:

There have been a plethora of Nisus sightings in the press lately. For example, Rodney Stevens, the Multimedia Columnist for the Charleston Daily News said of Nisus Writer 6.5 "Whether you want to jot a brief note, compose a letter, create a Web page, or work on your magnum opus, Nisus Writer 6.5 will help you to get the job done -- and without hogging your hard drive!" You can see the full review here:

http://208.55.133.27/books/books-software.htm

The fine people at MacEdition (http://www.macedition.com) conducted a very interesting interview with Jerzy Lewak, Nisus Software President, CEO and Junior Tech Support person. You can view that interview here:

http://www.MacEdition.com/interviews/int_nisus_20020107.php

Last, but certainly not least, is the continuing story of one man's attempt to leave MS Word behind forever and use Nisus Writer as his main word processor. Kirk Hiner is that man, and he has posted the latest edition of the "Nisus Files" here:

http://www.applelinks.com/reviews/nisusfiles6.shtml

Speaking of seeing Nisus on the web, Charles W. Moore of Applelinks.com recently wondered in his MailBag column if Nisus Writer could search in closed files. I would have replied that I would tell him if he gave me a free t-shirt, but our tech support guru, being a generous type simply wrote in and offered:

You'll probably want to give Nisus Writer some more memory before starting this task.

1. Choose Show Catalog from the File menu.

2. Select the files (or folders) in which you want to search.

3. Choose Add to Search List from the Catalog menu (between the Documents and Help menus on the Menu bar). The file's icons change to eyes to indicate you're going to look inside them.

4. Choose Find/Replace from the Tools menu.

5. Enter the string of characters you want to find. You can search for actual text or character patterns using Normal Find, PowerFind or PowerFind Pro. You can limit your search to text in a certain font/size/style etc., or not.

6. Click Find.

Old Nisus Writer slogan: If you can describe it you can find it, and, if you can find it you can change it to anything else you can describe.

You can see the more of Charles W. Moore in his Moore's MailBag column here:
http://www.applelinks.com

Happy reading, and turn on the light! I don't want you folks reading in the dark.

Nisus Writer 6.5 is currently on sale

For a limited time, you can purchase Nisus Writer 6.5 for $79.95 (regular price $99.95) for the full version, $54.95 (regular price $69.95) for the Competitive Upgrade (for those of you who use other word processors) or $39.95 (regular price $49.95) for the Upgrade from any paid version of Nisus Writer. You can purchase them from here:

http://www.nisus.com/products/nisuswriter

Charles W. Moore

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