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Nisus Writer has been my favorite Mac word processor since I discovered it in the late ‘90s and switched to it from Microsoft Word 5.1. Remarkably (and sometimes quirkily) innovative, Nisus managed to offer an extraordinary combination of an incredibly rich feature set, lightning speed and interface slickness, and very modest hardware demands.

While Word has, at least since version 5, always been something of a junior desktop publishing and page layout application masquerading as a word processor, Nisus Writer was a pure, very powerful, word crunching and text manipulation engine. It had an attractive, tasteful, but relatively subdued interface compared to that of Word, and was obviously designed designed to do serious work rather than dazzle the user with featuritis.

It was also, I’m told, unsurpassed in its handling of multiple languages, including those with a right-to-left orientation, and supported Apple Language Kits. 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.

As well as being an excellent word processor for writers, Classic Nisus Writer was 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.

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).

However, when Apple announced the transition to OS X, Nisus Software was faced with a challenge. Nisus Writer was a complex and highly developed piece of software, and porting it to a new operating system, even to build a Carbon version, would be a major task for a small firm with only a small fraction of the Mac word processor market (there has never been a Windows version of Nisus Writer). Better to start from scratch inn Cocoa, but developing a word processor from a clean slate would also be a formidable task.

Enter a little startup firm called Okito, which had been developing its own Cocoa-based word processor called Okito Composer. When I checked out Okito Composer for OS X Odyssey back in 2001, my first impression was that it had to be the prettiest word processor I’ve ever used. The interface was gorgeous -- a truly professional effort that reminded me of the OmniWeb browser. And of course it had a Cocoa tool drawer. It was definitely feature-light and a work in progress, but it showed plenty of potential. However, it was going to be even more difficult for that potential to be realized by an even smaller Mac-only word processor developed with no name recognition, established user-base, and fewer resources, struggling to gain traction in a market overwhelmingly dominated by Microsoft Word.

I expect you’re seeing the same logical convergence here that Okito’s Charles Jolley and Nisus’ Jerzy Lewak did. By pooling their respective resources, Nisus could bring the credibility of an established name with a 17 year track record and a relatively small but fiercely loyal coterie of Nisus Writer fans, while skipping the basic donkey-work of developing a Cocoa based application from scratch, and Nisus’ experience and deep inventory of word processor and language support technology could be applied to Okito’s up and running OS X native product to allow it to reach its potential. A merger was struck, and Okito Composer became the base for Nisus Writer for OS X, or as it was eventually named, the new Nisus Writer Express.

“When Okito Software approached us, it was very gratifying to see how well matched in features and philosophy the two products were. This provided a wonderful opportunity for us to join forces, creating a stronger and better product and enabling us to exploit together the strengths and special features of OS X” said Jerzy Lewak, President and CEO of Nisus Software, Inc., when the merger was announced in early 2002. “We are very excited to have the Okito team join us to implement our mission of developing software which enhances the user’s creativity.”

Charles Jolley, President and CEO of Okito Software, joined Nisus Software in the continuing development of Nisus Writer. Jolley commented: “I started Okito Software to create high-quality, innovative software for Mac OS X. I am very excited to join our efforts with Nisus Software, which has 17 years of experience doing this very thing on the Mac. Together we can create more innovative and more useful software for all of our users.”

Using a favorite piece of software that has been heavily revised can be a bit like coming home and finding that someone has rearranged the furniture while you were out. It can be a bit unsettling. I guess a good analogy to the Classic Nisus Writer/Nisus Writer Express dichotomy is the difference between OS 9 and OS X. It’s somewhat familiar, but it sure has changed!

In it Nisus instance, some changes are for the better. While I think that Okito Composer was even more attractive, Nisus Writer Express has a very pretty interface.

While this is a 1.0 release, and there is a way to go yet before Express matches NW Classic in terms of the latter’s incredibly deep and layered feature set, the new version is far from spartan, with both new and Nisus carry-over features such as Microsoft Word read/write support, Unicode, RTF and plain text format support, a customizable interface, Perl macros, non-contiguous selection, an exclusive Document Manager and powerful GREP find and replace.

Nisus Writer Express includes:

• Tooldrawer attached to the side of your document window, so your tools are as close as a click but out of your face when you are writing.
• Industry standard RTF, plain text and Unicode formats so you can exchange documents with others using any platform. Classic Nisus Writer file support (read only), of course.
• Open and Save As Microsoft Word (.doc) documents.

Some returning Classic Nisus Writer advantages that Nisus pioneered with some extras for OS X:
• Define your own keyboard shortcuts so you can access any and every menu item without opening a menu.
• Nisus’ traditionally unparalleled three level find and replace using GREP. Simple for simple finds, Power for more power and PowerFind Pro for the kind of complex find and replace that would means hours at the keyboard using other word processors. In Nisus Writer Express, if you can describe a text pattern, you can probably find it. And, if you can find it, you can almost definitely change it to any other text pattern you can describe. Nisus Writer Express offers three ways to find and replace text: Normal Find, PowerFind, and PowerFind Pro. Normal Find meets the needs of most searches for words. Use PowerFind and PowerFind Pro for text patterns, such as a series of numbers (where you know how many digits, but you don’t know what they are).
• Multiple undos for editing convenience and data security.
• Noncontiguous selection to select multiple, disconnected items in your document. If you have never had this available in a word-crunching application, you won’t believe how handy it is in editing.
• Headers and footers.
• Multiple, editable clipboards
• Document window zoom for preferred viewing size independent of monitor settings.

Future updates to Nisus Writer Express will include features such as footnotes and endnotes, right to left input, line numbering, integrated tables, a thesaurus and more.

In some respects, Nisus Writer Express will present considerably less of a learning curve to climb for users new to the application than Classic Nisus Writer did. It’s more conventional (in a good way), and a smaller inventory of features, at least at this juncture, will make it possible to learn and grow with the application. Frankly, I don’t think I ever more than scratched the surface of what Classic Nisus Writer is capable of.

One question is whether the loyal cadre of veteran Nisus users will see it that way. When I was on the Nisus Writer email list, a couple of things that impressed me were the large number of academics who used Nisus Writer, and the fact that many of them, especially those from outside the US, Canada, and the UK were still using really ancient Macs. Nisus Writer Classic works well on antiquated hardware. My daughter, a consummate Nisus Writer devotee, is very happy with the Classic application’s performance on her old PowerBook 5300/100 and 1400/133. My surmise is that Nisus Writer users are not likely to be elbowing for the front of the OS X switcher pack.

On the other hand, this is one really cool word processor, and the capability to read and write MS Word files should open up a whole new vista of potential Nisus Writer fans. And I don’t think they will be disappointed. It’s early days yet; I’ve only been getting acquainted with Nisus Writer Express for a week so far, but like its Classic namesake, I think its the sort of program that will reel you in and turn you into a fan as well as a user.

However, there are still some of those rough edges I noticed in Okito Composer. I have experienced several unexpected quits, and while Nisus Writer Express can open MS Word files, the process is frustratingly slow. I found that opening a lightly formatted 176k Word file took about two minutes on my 700 MHz iBook running OS 10.2.6, although it looked fine when it finally displayed. Saving as a Word document was much faster. A copy of this review saved as a Word file almost instantaneously, although it appeared on the Desktop with a Nisus Writer icon. The translation engine needs a bit of tweaking yet. Express will also save in a variety of other formats. Also, while a Word 5 document I tried did open, the file translation left something to be desired, which is not a serious fault, but there are a lot of Word 5 files around. I have several hundred on my hard drive archived from the ‘90s.

One other thing I have observed is that dictation with ViaVoice or iListen copies really slowly into Nisus Writer Express documents for some reason.

However, I’m confident that those issues will be ironed out in subsequent version releases. As it stands in this debut version, Nisus Writer Express is, like its Classic forbear, a very likable application, and it will only get better. I’f you’re looking to break the Microsoft habit and get off Word, want to make a step up from AppleWorks, or are just looking for a really good, capable Mac word processor, check this one out. The price is right too. Nisus Writer Express sells for $59.95 new/$34.95 upgrade. Nisus Writer Express also entitles you to free Internet updates for a period of one year There is also a free, downloadable, 30 day demo that can be licensed upon payment of the fee.

System requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.2 or higher

For more information, visit:
http://www.nisus.com/express/

Charles W. Moore

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