That title may seem redundant, but it isn't. Most word processors are designed principally for office and secretarial use, the formatting of documents to be printed, and for letter-writers -- not for creative writers. Mark Zeedar's new Z-Write word processor is different. If you want an office word processor, keep looking, but if you're a journalist or book author, give this one a look.

Some revolutionary innovations are deceptively simple. So it he is with Z-Write's main distinguishing feature -- its Sections navigation window.

In general, Z-Write works like most Macintosh word processing programs. Selecting text, editing text, copy and paste, drag-and-drop, changing style/type characteristics all function the way you expect them to.

However, Z-Write's document window has dual panes. On the left is a scrollable list of Section names. (New files have only one pre-defined Section called "Default." You can change the default name within Preferences.) The right-hand pane is a standard text editing window containing only the text related to whatever Section you have selected on the left (if no Section is selected, the editing window is blank). When you click on a Section name, the respective text appears on the right for editing, as you'd like.

When I first opened Z-Write and saw it's unusual two-paned interface, I thought to myself: that's interesting, but I didn't pay it a great deal of attention until I actually started using the program to compose a long article. That's when it hit me how cool this feature is for serious writers. In fact, at least for me, it takes word-processing into another dimension.

The ability to sort various parts of an article and research resources respectively into instantly accessible sections greatly facilitates the organization and development of a piece of prose. I would Venture to say that using Z-Write might in some cases even improve the quality of one's writing, all other factors remaining constant.

No more having to scroll back and forth through a long document making edits and revisions. Just keep everything organized into more easily manageable sections, and then combine the parts you want into one section when you're finished the creative process.

As Marc Zeedar notes:

"Every large writing project is made up of thousands of snippets of text. In addition to the main text, there are notes you make to yourself, various revisions, perhaps alternative chapters. There might be several outlines, descriptions, pages of ideas and thoughts. A fiction writer will have extensive biographies of various characters and plot strategies, while a non-fiction writer has to deal with hundreds of resources, facts, figures, contacts, and bibliographic details. Keeping track of all that information is complicated.

"Traditional word processors work in a linear style: chapter follows chapter, and you must create new documents for every new kind of information. You exchange the chaos of thousands of 3x5 notecards for the chaos of hundreds of computer files.

"Since books are written in a non-linear fashion, why not a non-linear word processor? That's the core of Z-Write: it allows you to store hundreds of snippets of text in a single file."

You can duplicate an existing Section with the Duplicate command (ZWrite will append "copy" and/or a number on the end to distinguish it from the original) or button. This is handy for rewrites and alternate versions. When you choose the "Merge Sections" command or button, Z-Write will prompt you with the "Select Sections" dialog box. Sections are always combined into the topmost selection and always in the order they appear in the document.

You can rearrange the order Sections appear in the Section List via the "Rearrange Sections" command or button. You will also find Sort and Revert buttons on the dialog. Revert returns your Sections into the original order before you changed them, and Sort will alphabetize your list of Sections.

To move between Sections quickly, you can use Option-Arrow Up and Option-Arrow Down to move up or down the list of Sections. If you want to view a different Section than the one you're currently working in, Z-Write lets you open Sections in separate "read-only" windows. You cannot edit text within a View Window Ð but you can select and drag text from it into your main window.

Until you have tried this for yourself, it's probably difficult to grasp its significance as a convenience. It really is not far short of revolutionary.

You can view, copy, and paste from one Section to another. You can create as many Sections as you need, and you can organize them in any manner that you'd like. Each Section can be as long as you need. This makes the process of sorting, finding, and remembering details a billion times easier. You can use Z-Write's Sections as a way to manage multiple versions of some writing.

For example, I will sometimes write a long version of a column for my local newspaper which allows me a generous 1800 word space each week, and a shortened version of the same piece for syndication to newspapers across Canada and to Continental Newstime in the U.S., most of which prefer columns of 800 words or less. Before Z-Write I used to make to separate word processor or text editor documents for the respective versions. Now I can keep both or all versions in separate sections of one Z-Write document.

I've found that I still need to transfer my work to a full-fledged word processor for proofing and formatting or to Tex-Edit for HTML markup once the composing and editing stages are complete. However, that is pretty much how Marc intended Z-Write to be used.

"Z-Write is not intended to completely replace your high-end word processor," he notes. "Z-Write is streamlined for writing and organizing. You won't find support for footnotes, WYSIWYG display, imported graphics, tables, tabs, hyperlinks, etc. The idea is that you'll use Z-Write for writing and brainstorming. If you need high-end formatting features, you can copy or export the final text to a full-featured word processor like Nisus Writer or Microsoft Word."

Other Stuff

The program always remembers where you left your cursor, the document window size and position, even the text you had selected, making it easy to continue right where you left off after a writing session. It offers conveniences like reopening the last document you were working on, and supports find and replace (very basic, however), case conversion, glossaries, digital bookmarks (which allows you to jump to specific places within your text, in any Section), print headers and footers, and several export options.

Other Z-Write features:
• Time/Date insert
• Word count and other statistics
• Can automatically "bullet," number, or sort paragraphs
• Automatic "smart quote" feature
• Auto-save feature (you set the frequency in minutes)
• Print preview
• Flexible print headers and footers with print variables (like total number of pages within the document)

Z-Write features Hot Help for most program commands. When you point to an item, Z-Write displays a short description of the feature in the Hot Help area.

Spell Checking Options

Z-Write has no built-in spell checker or thesaurus, and Marc recommends Casady and Greene's superb, standalone SpellCatcher 8.x, advice I heartily concur with. Spell Catcher is great.

However, if paying more than twice the price of your word processor for a spell checker to use with it seems too much (although Spell Catcher will work with virtually any application), the better-than-not bad freeware spell checker Excalibur will work with Z-Write via AppleEvents. Marc says that Z-Write users have reported that Newer Technology's free SpellTools also works well.

Hooray! A Glossary

Z-Write allows you to store snippets of text as glossary entries, and insert them in documents. Their easy-to-use Glossaries are one of my favorite features in Word 5.1 (with its customizable "Work" menu) and Nisus Writer, and kudos to Marc for including this feature in Z-Write.

You define Z-Write glossary items with "Edit Glossary Items" menu command. Each glossary entry has a unique name. To edit the entry, select it from the list at the left and edit the name or the entry's text on right. To delete an entry, select it from the list and click the "Delete" button. To create a new entry, click the "New" button and type in a name on the right.

Z-Write includes workmanlike find and replace capabilities, although not nearly as powerful and versatile as the ones in Nisus (the unchallenged champion of F&R), or even in the Tex-Edit Plus and BBEdit text editors. You can specify whether Z-Write searches just the currently active Section or All Sections. One odd "feature" is that there is no undo for "Replace All." Marc suggests saving just before doing a Replace All for safety's sake.

Bookmarks Too

Another Z-Write navigation feature support for electronic bookmarks. You can place a bookmark anywhere in your text using the Insert Bookmark command. Bookmark tags are visible within Z-Write, but they will not show up when your document is printed or exported. To jump to a specific bookmark, choose that bookmark's name from the Bookmarks menu or the Bookmark popup menu on the button bar.

Z-Write's Button Bar

Speaking of which, if you prefer not to have the button bar showing, you can hide/show it by pressing Command-Y (or choosing "Hide Buttonbar" from the Edit menu). Below the Section List are several buttons for manipulating Sections. These buttons are displayed even when the button bar at the top is turned off.

One button I find especially useful is Z-Write's "Convert Case" button, which is a lot more convenient than opening a menu and submenu.

With the Paragraph button you can add bullets or numbers to each of the selected paragraphs. The Info Button displays a floating window showing the number of characters, words, sentences, and paragraphs in your selection, Section, and entire document. The Find Button activates Find and Replace command. The Bookmark Button displays a popup menu of bookmarks in your document. The Glossary Button lets you select pre-defined glossary items and insert their text into your document at the cursor position. There are also the standard Typestyle buttons. I would rate Z-Write's button bar as one of the best and most useful that I've used.

Printing Support

Z-Write supports printing, but if you are interested in anything beyond the most basic formatting, you will likely want to print from a full-tilt word processor.

However, one print feature of Z-Write that might attract you is the "Auto-Resize" option. Z-Write will resize all text in your document by the specified amount, which allows you to edit your text at a large, readable size, then print it at a more appropriate 10- or 12-point.

Z-Write also has a powerful Print Preview feature that allows you to see your document on screen exactly as it will be printed without wasting paper. You can print a single Section or a group of Sections.

Z-Write And HTML

Z-Write's HTML export feature allows you to create a single file or export each selected Section as a separate file. If you choose the multiple files option you can have Z-Write generate a TOC (Table of Contents) file, which is a very basic HTML document with the title of your document and bulleted list of documents. Each of these is the name of a Section and is hotlinked to that document. The documents themselves are linked to each other via "Previous" and "Next" buttons, and to the TOC document via a "Contents" link.

You can also set whether or not Z-Write uses FONT tags to preserve font information, which is handy.

However, Z-Write is no substitute for BBEdit or my AppleScript-tweaked copy of Tex-Edit Plus as an HTML editor, at least not yet.

AppleScript Support Coming

Marc Zeedar says he plans to make Z-Write AppleScriptable, but he's not sure yet to what degree. Right now it doesn't support anything -- even the basic "standard" AppleEvents. Marc says he took those out for the final release because there were some bugs, but plans to put them back in an update, and then offer some basic commands (like give Z-Write a Section number or name it will return the text of that Section, etc.)

"Eventually I'd like offer a Script menu," he says, "and then I could ship or update scripts for nifty Textspresso-like text formatting (remove e-mail quotes, change single returns to doubles, etc.) rather than have to add all those features into the main program. Full scripting probably won't happen until version 1.5 -- I've got a lot on my plate right now, and there are a number of things I'm adding that take priority. I think people will be impressed with my upgrades -- even "small" upgrades like 1.1 will have significant new features in addition to bug fixes."

I can't wait. With an AppleScript menu, Z-Write will really rock. If Marc could make the AppleScript Menu a tear-off floating palette, I would be ecstatic.

A Few Gripes

Thus far, I've been heaping praise on Z-Write, and for good reason. It is fast, stable, works as advertised, and I haven't identified any serious bugs yet. However, there are a few things about the program in its current iteration that I don't like.

On thing I find particularly annoying is that the insertion point "I-beam" cursor bar disappears when you drag and drop text, making accurate drop positioning guesswork.

As mentioned above, the Search and Replace function is pretty rudimentary.

Dragging and dropping text files generated by other applications onto Z-Write's icon in Application Switcher does not open them.

Dragging and dropping dictated text from ViaVoice's SpeakPad dictation window to Z-Write results in the mysterious insertion of little character blocks between each word in the dragged text upon the next use of the sections command. This does not happen with the same text transferred via the Mac OS Clipboard. Even more annoying, these little blocks proved resistant to Tex-Edit's Find & Replace engine, although I was finally able to excise them with good ol' Nisus Writer.

Summary Conclusions

That said, I test a lot of applications and utilities, and occasionally hardware for review, but I rarely continue using test products after the review period. Z-Write will be one of the exceptions. While Tex-Edit Plus will remain my jack-of-all trades text crunching mainstay, I have already adopted Z-Write as my application of choice for composing feature articles and columns, including this one. I look forward eagerly to those version updates.

Rating: Four Stars with a bullet.

Z-Write 1.0 Specs/ and Particulars

System Requirements:
• A PowerMac running System 7.5 or better
• QuickTime
• 10MB of free memory.

Z-Write is $20 shareware, fully functional for two-week preview period, and it won't orphan documents it creates even if you decide not to register.

For more information, visit the Stone Table Software Website:
http://www.designwrite.com/sts/

Charles W. Moore

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Tuesday, 09-Feb-2010 11:37:24 EST