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Nisus Software’s acquisition of the Cocoa-based Okito Composer word processor makes a lot of sense. Nisus, a small company, had been faced with the challenge of continuing support for its Nisus Writer word processor while trying to develop an OS X product essentially from scratch. Okito, an even smaller, startup enterprise, had what I think is the prettiest Mac word processor ever, with lots of state-of-the-art innovations, but faced the formidable challenge of developing the application into a full-featured product while simultaneously struggling to gain traction in a market overwhelmingly dominated by Microsoft Word.

This merger is consequently a marriage made in heaven, and could hardly be a more logical match. Solana Beach, California - based Nisus brings the credibility of an established name with a 17 year track record and a relatively small but fiercely loyal coterie of Nisus Writer fans. Okito contributes an up and running OS X native product that should be a solid and substantial base upon which to build the OS X Nisus Writer.

“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., in a press release announcing the collaboration. “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, will join 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.”

The Okito name wasn’t especially inspired or euphonious anyway, and while Nisus is sort of odd nomenclature too, it has name-recognition in the Mac community, and there’s that Nisus Writer fan base I mentioned.

Nisus Writer has been my favorite full word processor for years. Remarkably (and sometimes quirkily) innovative, it has managed to offer an extraordinary combination of an incredibly rich feature set, lightning speed and interface slickness, and very modest hardware demands. The current version of Nisus Writer, 6.5, will run on any PPC Mac under OS 8.5 and up (Classic Mode in OS X), while the still available Nisus Writer 6.0.1 will support 68 K Macs back to OS 8.1, and the also still available, freeware, http://www.nisus.com/free/Login_nw.php Nisus Writer 4.1.6 needs only a 68020 processor and OS 7.1.

Nisus Writer’s ability to support legacy Macintosh hardware has been one of the reasons for the tenacious user loyalty that it enjoys. That, combined with its facility with handling a wide variety of languages (even including ones that write from left to right) has made it especially possible popular with academics in countries where people can’t afford to upgrade to a new system every two or three years.

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.

Nisus Writer also offers powerful find & replace, unlimited undos, customizable keyboard menu equivalents, graphics creation, multiple clipboards, and an especially powerful macro language. Need to select multiple items in your document? You can do that easily with NW’s non-contiguous selection feature. You can also select rectangular blocks of material (handy for switching columns of figures around).

It is going to be fascinating to watch Nisus can turn Okito Composer into what one hopes will an equally powerful and versatile Mac OS X native successor to the classic Nisus Writer.

Jerzy Lewak, a native of Poland, moved to California in 1966 to join the faculty of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of California, San Diego, and went on to found Paragon Courseware in 1983.

In 1984 Jerzy’s son convinced him to buy an Apple Lisa and become an Apple developer. Paragon’s first Macintosh project: was TechFonts, a typeface with equation and schematic symbols. A Mac text editor QUED (QUality EDitor) followed in early 1985, and a new version, QUED/M (for QUality EDitor with Macros) was released in 1987.

In 1988, the decision was made to develop a full-featured word processor, which was dubbed Nisus, which means “a striving or an endeavor.” Nisus 1.0 was released in January 1989.

Nisus supported having graphics in the same document window as text, had unlimited Undos and 10 separate editable clipboards, a thesaurus, and QUED/M’s macro capability was carried over. Nisus 2.0 was released in August 1989 adding footnote support and other enhancements.

Nisus 3.0, released in August 1990 added noncontiguous selection and a macro programming dialect -- a complete programming language for the macro facility. In the fall of 1991,

Nisus Writer 4.0 came along in October 1994 with XTND file translation and Sound support along with support for Apple events. XTND was a system developed by Apple’s Claris that allowed a single set of filters to provide file-translation capabilities to any application that supported the technology. Other Nisus Writer 4 changes included a completely redesigned interface, support for QuickTime, Publish & Subscribe, text-to-speech, autonumbering, color graphics and tools for creating tables and equations.

A Power Macintosh-native version, Nisus Writer 4.1, soon followed, and included XTND translators for the Macintosh versions of Word 6 and WordPerfect, plus a suite of HTML tools. As noted above, Nisus Writer 4.1.6 is still available as a free download from Nisus.

Nisus Writer 5 was a refinement of the 4.x version, adding a more intuitive, customizable interface, improved footnotes, better HTML support, optional background color to all documents, easier Power Find Pro (find/replace), multiple macro files, more keyboard shortcuts, an immediate WYSIWYG Font Menu, and Mac OS 8.5 support.

Nisus called Nisus Writer 6, which came along in 2000, “the number one multilingual word processor for the Macintosh.” Along with the Apple Language Kits (found on the Mac OS 9 CD) and Nisus’s own Dictionary Collection CD, you had a complete multilingual writing solution.

New features in Nisus Writer 6 included a grammar checker, an RTF filter, zoom, an automatic Glossary Expansion feature, .support for IBM’s ViaVoice dictation software, an auto-expanding glossary, the Nisus Text Analyzer tool, support for navigation services and contextual menus, importing graphics via QuickTime, and support for Mac OS 9 Language Kits, as well as an enhanced interface with an eclectic selection of floating toolbars. NW 6 still worked with Mac OS versions back to System 7.0, and the soon-released version 6.0.1 restored support for older 68K Macs as well as PowerPC machines.

Nisus Software released version 6 0.2 of Nisus Writer in August, 2001, which was no longer 68k compatible. However, 68k Mac owners could (and still can) download the very capable Nisus Writer 4.1.6 for free. Other than an enhanced Mercury RTF XTND filter to both read and write RTF files in any language (WorldScript as well as Roman), and handle footnotes, plus some minor refinements, version 6.0.2 was largely a bugfix release.

In September, 2001, Nisus released Nisus Writer 6.0.3 which was another bugfix. The free 6.0.3 updater could update versions 6.0.1 and 6.0.2 to 6.0.3. To update NW 6.0, you had to download the full installer.

The current Nisus Writer 6.5 is a further refinement of NW 6.0.x, with Mac OS 9.2.2 support (the minimum OS is now OS 8.5), an integrated outliner and a Document Manager.

As I noted above, Okito Composer is one of the most attractive word processors I’ve ever used. The interface is gorgeous -- a truly professional effort that reminds me a lot of the OmniWeb browser. The level of interface refinement already evident in Okito Composer bodes well for Nisus Writer’s OS X future. Aside from its general appearance, another factor Composer has in common with OmniWeb is its pop-out drawer of tools and buttons. This is a slick idea that had to wait for today’s larger displays in order to be practical. There would not have been enough room on a 640 x 480 screen, and it’s not ideally suited to 800 x 600 either, but for 1024 x 768 and higher resolutions, it’s great, and when you do need to free up some desktop real-estate, just close the tooldrawer.

The Okito toolbar provides one-click access to many of the program’s functions including changing the document view, showing the tooldrawer and ruler, printing, and more.

Using the Okito’s Quick Find palette, you can quickly find your place in your document by simply typing a word or phrase near where you want to be. Composer can search as you type. For those times when you need to do full search and replace, simply click on the Find/Replace.

The Okito Tooldrawer contains a number of palettes that you can use to edit your document. Each of these palettes has a gray titlebar with a disclosure triangle to the left that you can use to show or hide the contents of the palette. You can reorder your palettes by clicking on the titlebar and dragging the palette around. If you would prefer to have a floating palette, you can drag a palette out of the tooldrawer, let go and it will become a floating palette. You can reorder and open and close tool palettes in the tooldrawer as you want them to appear. For those times when you would prefer a floating palette, just pull a palette out of the tooldrawer and it will become a floating palette.

Okito Composer uses the standard RTF format for default saves, and the Mac OS X standard RTFD for documents containing graphics. I hope that the Nisus Writer version will continue to offer the Classic Nisus plain text save format that can be opened in any text editor with no file translation issues.

Spell checking in composer is handled with the OS X Cocoa Spellchecker service.

One neat Composer feature is can separate a document into separate sections that each have unique settings. You can use this feature to create single column headings over multi-column documents or to use Roman numeral page numbering for your introductions. You can also set each section to start on the same page as the last one, on the next page, or on the next odd or even page. You can add headers and footers to each page and have different headers and footers on the odd and even pages of each section and on the first page of each section. Each column and the space between them can be any size you want. With automatic balancing, Okito Composer will lay out your text as evenly as possible between each column so keep your documents looking clean and professional.

It will be interesting to see whether these features will be carried over in the Nisus Writer version, and how much of the Classic Nisus Writer’s formidable feature inventory can be grafted in.

No timetable has been announced for the release of the OS X native Nisus Writer, but the Okito acquisition will certainly help speed things along. I can hardly wait.

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

Appendix 1
The Nisus Way

Appendix 2
Nisus Writer 4.1.6 Is Freeware

Charles W. Moore

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