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Once upon a time, not so long ago (back in the mid-1990's), there were three high-end Mac word processors -- Microsoft Word; WordPerfect; and Nisus Writer. With Corel's termination of development for WordPerfect for the Mac, there are now just two -- both of which released major new versions last week. You can read more than you want to know about Word 2001 on nearly any Mac Web site. It is a formidable Word-cruncher in a Microsoft sort of way, but I haven't been very interested in Word since version 5.1, which was great at the time. If you need the bloated behemoth thing for transparent PC file compatibility, then it's your obvious and essentially only choice, but if that aspect is of lesser or no particular importance to you, I recommend giving Nisus Writer a look. Nisus is smaller, faster, cheaper, and in this scribe's humble opinion -- better for serious word processing. Frankly, I've been using Nisus Writer since 1998, and I've barely scratched the surface of what it can do. Nisus doesn't introduce a new version of Nisus Writer every whipstitch. Version 5 debuted back in 1998, quickly had three minor fractional point upgrades that year to 5.1.3, where it has remained until now, so the introduction of NW 6 is a major event for Nisus Writer fan. Those who have waited patiently won't be disappointed. When he e-mailed to notify me of the imminent NW 6 release, my contact Nisus Software asked that I "Please be gentle, we have worked quite hard on this to get it right with the resources we have. It is very stable, but not sexy... no really big features, just a nice stable release." He needn't have worried, preaching to the converted as he was. I already thought NW 5.1.3 was the best full Mac word processor. If they enhanced its capabilities without messing with the familiar good stuff, I would be delighted. And that is exactly what the good folk at Nisus have done. In the wee hours of last Saturday morning, I downloaded the Mac binary version of the NW 6 installer from the Nisus FTP site (a little over 20 MB -- the bin hex version is 50% larger at 30+ MB). Big downloads like this are a formidable challenge on my noisy, rural, dial-up Internet service, which connects (on a good day) at 26,400 bps. I used Vicomsoft's excellent, freeware FTP client, which supports resumable downloads, something that paid off during this one. 
Booting up the NW installer, I was greeted with an attractive new splash screen, and the installer itself has one of the best laid out custom install dialogues I've seen. I opted for full U.S. English install at 42 MB (although the application alone is a svelte 4.1 MB). There is also a British English auction, which will be of interest to some of my fellow Canadians, since "Canajan" English is a hybrid of British and U.S. spellings--(e.g.: we include the "u" in words like honour and harbour, but spell jail and tire in the U.S. mode rather than the British gaol and tyre). Someday, somebody might produce a Canadian English spelling dictionary, but for now Canadians are stuck in the middle. The band-aid solution is, where possible, to install both British English and U.S. English dictionaries, but of course crossover words will not be flagged in a spell check. Pardon the Great White Northern digression. Back to Nisus Writer 6. 
While Word is something of a junior desktop publishing and page layout application masquerading as a word processor, Nisus Writer is a pure, very powerful, word crunching and text manipulation engine. It has an attractive, tasteful, but relatively subdued interface compared to that of Word, and is designed to do serious work rather than dazzle you with a lot of bells and whistles. It is unsurpassed in its handling of multiple languages, including those with a right-to-left orientation, and supports Apple Language Kits. I like Nisus's uncluttered, Mac-like interface, which faithfully integrates Apple's OS 9 platinum appearance much more successfully than Word ‘98 does. The 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. 
NW has no keyboard command set library like the ones in Word and WordPerfect; but almost everything is customizable using a keyboard shortcut Preferences dialog, or two powerful macro languages. Several Nisus features are unavailable in any other word processor (unless they have been copied in Word 2001, which I haven't seen yet), such as 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 readable format . Many 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. Nisus Writer's customizable Glossary is more powerful than Word 5.1's Glossary/Work Menu and almost as slick. An integrated graphics layer lets you draw within your text and wrap words around your drawing. You can view a document while editing in Nisus Writer's interactive page preview window, and watch it update immediately, as well as resize it and reposition it anywhere on the screen. Margins are adjusted by simply clicking and dragging. 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. There is also a basic but capable graphics creation and editing module. 
On the down side, there is no way to assign page-up/page-down and start/end of document commands to the up/down arrow keys of my PowerBook--a task easily accomplished with the Commands feature in Word and WordPerfect. Nisus Writer's inability to support multiple column formats in a single document is a flaw. I like to think of Mac-only Nisus Writer as the Mac of word processors as opposed to Microsoft Word's Windows. Nisus Writer 6 incorporates a raft of new features and improvements: • Zoom feature opens a floating window which shows an enlarged (or reduced) version of the text at and near the insertion point. • Added an automatic Glossary Expansion feature. When turned on, any abbreviation you have defined will be expanded automatically as you type. The setting is saved in the preferences file. I really like this feature, which is a blessing for people like me with typing pain. However, I find that Riccardo Ettore's shareware TypeIt4Me is a better option than a dedicated one-application implementation because it works in all text fields -- the Finder as well as apps. • Added a new feature called the Nisus Text Analyzer Tool. It analyzes the text of the current document and produces phrase lists according to relevance indexes. These can be a useful starting point for indexing. Can also be used for very quickly producing a word list of your document. Also lists number of words, number of unique words, and the frequency of each word and phrase. • Support for Navigation Services was added, including Open dialog preview of text documents, Glossary documents and Macro documents. • Support for contextual menus was added. • A new Grammar Checker is included for those who like grammar checkers. Nisus did not previously have one. • IBM’s dictation software ViaVoice is supported, although to what extent I was unable to determine. I could find no reference to ViaVoice in the Nisus Writer online help. • Importing of graphics files using QuickTime has been added. • A new XTND RTF Filter from Mercury Software has been added. • Feature added to allow you to copy the displayed data in the Word Count dialog. • A special file save called Nisus®TextPlus was added to the list in the Save dialog. It saves the document as a text file with all the notes (endnotes or footnotes) converted to text. • Nisus Table tool now remembers font setting of each empty cell. • Platinum menu background. (This is not yet supported for Appearance Manager.) • Options added to the spelling dialog to allow you to turn off capitalization and repeat words checking. • Checkbox in Find/Replace window for turning on/off search through headers/footers and footnotes. • Catalog Icon display has been added for users of MacOS 8.5-9.0.4 • Save Settings button, in the Print dialog, saves our custom Print setting panel items (e.g. page numbers as numbered in document). • Feature to make Find/Replace more friendly. If the Find/Replace checkbox "In Selection" is on, but there is no selection and the user initiates a search/replace operation, the checkbox is automatically turned off and the operation carried out on the active document. Previously forgetting that it was on would cause “Expression Not Found” messages and frustration. • When search is run from a macro, search through headers/footers and footnotes is always turned off. From a macro, you can always perform the search explicitly in these other components. • When opening a new document, using the supplied Nisus New File template, the counters are setup to be hierarchically related and Custom Counter F is set to not display but to re-set all other counters. Nisus Writer 6.0, like all versions since 4.1, provides two methods of creating HTML documents — the HTML “Save As” feature, which uses special Style Libraries, and HTML Macros. Each method has its strengths and weaknesses. Users of Nisus Writer 4.1 who are accustomed to the macros will probably prefer to continue using the macros, and in fact will find that the HTML macros included with version 6.0 are expanded and enhanced. These macros, and instructions for using them, are located in the “HTML Authoring Tools” folder inside the Nisus Writer Tools folder. New users, those who prefer not to see HTML tags at all, or those who require automatic conversion of graphics to JPEGs will probably prefer to use the HTML Save As feature, which also provides floating tool bars to simplify application of styles. I experimented a bit with the HTML macros, which I had not used before, but I found them cumbersome compared with HTML editing in BBEdit or my personal favorite -- Tex-Edit Plus enhanced with my suite of custom AppleScripts and keyboard shortcuts. NW 6, by the way, is AppleScriptable, and includes a built-in script recorder. However, I found Nisus Writer's AppleScript implementation compared unfavorably with TE+'s ultra-slick AppleScript menu. However, if you have an AppleScript that has been saved as a stand-alone application, it can be executed from Nisus Writer’s Catalog window. You must choose “All Files” or “Applications Only” from the Catalog Menu to display these applications. 
I generally like Nisus Writer 6. It retains all the goodness of the previous versions and adds cool new stuff. What's not to like? Well, I did encounter a few unsquashed bugs of a minor nature such as when my alert sound started repeating and would not hut off until I quit the program. I expect these will be addressed soon in a maintenance update. Speaking of updates, Nisus Writer 6.0 is not carbon compliant, but Nisus Software is reportedly in the process of rewriting the program to run natively under OS X, to be released as soon as possible after the OS X ships next year. One of the nicest things about using Nisus is the support of the close-knit user community. Hundreds of Nisus Writer users subscribe to an e-mail discussion list where tips, problems, questions, and answers are shared. You can subscribe to the Nisus mailing list by sending an email to listserv@listserv.dartmouth.edu. In the body of the message (no subject is required), include the line: subscribe nisus Your Name (note: Your Name is substituted with your actual name). To find out about frequently asked questions on Nisus Writer, go to:
If you haven't tried Nisus Writer, I encourage you to do so. A demo version can be downloaded for free from the Nisus web site. If you decide you like it, the registration fee is $99.95 -- substantially cheaper than Word. Upgrades from previous versions of Nisus Writer are $49.95. Competitive upgrades from other word processors are $69.95. System requirements are modest compared to Word:
You can download Nisus Writer 6 here:
Appendix 1 Appendix 2
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Cool Mac Gear• iPod 1G-2G • iPod 3G • iPod 4G • iPod Mini • PowerBook-iBook • Keyboard Skins • Garageband
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