Provides: Word processing

Format: Electronic download or CD

Developer: Nisus Software, Inc.

Minimum Requirements: Mac OS X v10.3.9 (Mac OS X v10.4 is needed for full right to left text support)

Retail Price: $79.00 (+$10 for boxed version); $45.00 upgrade; more purchasing options

Version Reviewed: 1.0.3

Availability: Out now

Demo Available: 15 day free trial.

There seems to be some confusion on Capitol Hill over my love for the 1980 movie Flash Gordon. Yes, it's my favorite movie, and yes, I have watched it so many times that I have the whole thing memorized (which I once set about proving to a friend in New York City before she told me to shut up and suddenly remembered she had another engagement that day which didn't require her to be standing on crowded street corners with a guy doing his best Brian Blessed imitation), but that doesn't mean I feel it's the best movie ever made. Flash Gordon? The best movie ever? That would be crazy! Rather, I think we can all agree with the AFI that the honor of best movie ever goes to Jake Speed.

My point to all of this is that when I tell you Nisus Writer Pro is currently my favorite word processor, that doesn't necessarily mean it's the best. There are a lot of good word processors available for the Mac—some big, some small—so it becomes a matter of finding the one that offers the features you want set up in the manner in which you work. For me, that's NIsus Writer Pro.

Those who actually owned their first Mac before owning their first iPod will certainly remember the original Nisus Writer. It was an entirely new kind of word processor in the pre-OS X days that developed a rather large and rabid cult following. If you're amongst this group and you're looking for the true to successor Nisus Writer (Classic), stop reading now; you're going to be sorely disappointed. Nisus Writer Pro is built from the same core as Nisus Writer Express (see the Applelinks review), so it comes with that user interface (which was based on Okito Composer). However, Pro brings with it many features of Nisus Writer Classic, which should finally win back some of those users.

Here's why. Back in the mix are features such as right to left text for languages such as Arabic, Hebrew and Persian (Mac OS X v10.4 or higher required). With support for Latin, Cryllic, Greek, Chinese, Japanese and Korean—and any mixture thereof within a single document—Nisus Writer Pro may be the most universally adaptable word processor available.

Nisus Writer Pro also adds cataloging and document navigation items such as indexing, bookmarks and the ability to automatically generate a table of contents. This is very simply to use, and can be handy for multiple reasons. To add items to the table of contents, you simply select the text you would like to see appear, then select "Include in TOC" from the Insert menu. You can assign a level to the text (Nisus Writer Pro supports nine levels), and your selected text will then appear in the Table of Contents sidebar.

To add the full table of contents to your document, simply place your cursor where you want it to appear and select "Insert TOC." Nisus Writer Pro gives you some control over how the table of contents appears on the page, allowing you to control certain elements of each level individually. Of course, you can also format the text after the fact with the standard text controls.

Also aiding in your ability to navigate your document is the attribute sensitive search feature, which allows you to find and replace text in your document based on how it's formatted, and how you want it to be formatted. You can search the whole document, in an area of selected text only, and from your cursor position to either the end or back to the start of the document. Learning how to best use this feature will take some trial and error, as will taking full advantage of Nisus' PowerFind feature. These features get 30 pages of documentation in the manual (only the PDF is included, but a hard copy can be purchased for $25.00), but you'll still need to play around with them a bit to know how and when to use these search features to get the best results.

Now, these are only some of the features that Nisus Writer Pro has over the less expensive but less powerful Nisus Writer Express. You also get features such as line numbering and advanced macro capabilities in the Pro version (a complete feature comparison can be found at the Nisus website). I can't go through this whole review, however, without mentioning some of my favorite features that are available in both versions.

First, there's the general layout of Nisus Writer, which, unlike Microsoft Word, is designed to actually be used. Although some of the more common features are placed in a single row toolbar across the top of the window, the bulk of your options are placed in a tooldrawer palette on the side of the page. Considering the trend towards widescreen monitors, this makes perfect sense; you can see more of your actual document by letting the tools hang off in the unused space.

You get complete control over both the header toolbar and side palette menu options; simply drag the tools you want into the toolbar to alter that, and create a new palette to place items in there.

I find the default palettes from Nisus to be good enough, but those with smaller monitors may want to have more control over what appears towards the top. After using the program for a while, you'll know what you need where. How novel that a developer lets you use a program the way you want to, not the way it wants you to. And that's actually a marked improvement over Nisus Writer Classic. It had a unique way of doing things that appealed to many writers, but it was the Nisus way [sic]. Nisus Writer Pro works your way.

Nisus Writer Pro also offers features you've come to expect in all high-end word processors: widow and orphan control, sections and columns, tables, text wrap around images, glossaries, bullets and numbering, etc. Undoubtedly, there are users out there who won't use Nisus because it's missing this feature or that. Fair enough. Personally, I would like to see better edit tracking, the ability to store notes relative to sections of text, and a complete set of outlining tools. As Nisus Writer Pro stands, however, it contains more features and power than the majority of users will need. For instance, I doubt most users will take advantage of full screen mode, but those of us who do spend a lot of time staring at their words will appreciate the elimination of clutter and distraction.

The gorilla on the page, however, is support for Microsoft Word. For (better or) worse, pretty much all word processors competing with Word have to support Word in order to make any sort of dent in the market. By default, Nisus Writer Pro saves files as RTFs, which Word can read. Nisus goes one better, however, by allowing you to save your files directly as Word docs. There will still be some discrepancies when opening your Nisus files in Word, depending upon the complexity of the layout, but they're kept to a minimum. This problem is more apparent when opening Word docs in Nisus Writer Pro. Text documents with simple formatting are no problem, and I found that Nisus Writer Pro gave me cleaner, easier to format documents than even Apple's Pages program. However, there's pretty much no such thing as a simple Word document anymore, and Nisus did tend to choke to Word files with heavy graphics and "church secretary" layouts. I occasionally opened a graphic heavy Word doc in Nisus only to have the graphics not show up at all.

Oh, but how's this for irony? This new .docx format of Microsoft's that not even Word can open? Nisus opens it just fine. We had a client send us a .docx PC file that my boss couldn't open with Microsoft Word on his PC. I opened the document without trouble in Nisus Writer Pro, saved it to Word, and handed it off to my boss.

These days, word processors are being geared directly towards specific target audiences in order to stand apart from the competition (StoryMill for novelists, Montage for screenwriters, etc.). Nisus Writer Pro may not have grown up the way fans of Nisus Writer Classic had hoped, but Nisus is sticking to its guns by providing a standard word processor for the masses. And believe me, this is a good thing for Macintosh community. As I said in the introduction, I won't say it's the "best," and whether it's right for you will depend upon what you're looking for in a word processor. If you need an intuitive, clean, powerful program to document the exploits of a pulp novel action hero as he attempts to save a beautiful woman and her sister from white slave traders while trapped in a nation on the brink of civil war, or even just to write reference jokes that no one other than yourself will ever get, Nisus Writer Pro just may be your favorite.

Regardless, if you process words for any reason, you're handicapping yourself by not giving Nisus Writer Pro a look.

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