Official Nisus Writer Express 2.7 Beta Thread

Have a problem? A question? This is the place for answers from other Express users.
swilcox
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Post by swilcox »

martin wrote:swilcox, and any others that have this problem:

1. Does the Styles palette properly show you the styles that are in the document. eg: are all the styles listed?
2. Does the Styles palette show that a style is applied to your text. Eg: in a new document, is the "Normal" style highlighted?

I'd like to see if this is a problem with your preferences file:

1. Quit Express if it is running.
2. Find your preferences file in your home directory at ~/Library/Preferences/com.nisus.NisusWriter.plist
3. Please send a copy of the file to expressfeedback@nisus.com.
4. Delete the file (or move it somewhere else, in case you want to restore it later).
5. Launch Express.

Sorry I haven't logged in lately. Answers:

1. It does appear that all styles are listed.
2. The style is highlighted.

I'll send a copy of my prefs file.

A couple other notes:

1. While clicking on a style in the palette doesn't apply it, DOUBLE CLICKING does switch to style definition view.
2. Shortcuts for applying a style do still work of course.
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Spiros
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Double Help menu

Post by Spiros »

Hello,

This fc2 release is indeed very stable and works well.

One minor thing though that I just noticed, after using it for so long, is that there are two (2) Help menu items in the menu bar, both carrying the Nisus Help files and Feedback sub-menus

It's more of a visible eyesore than anything else. I'm running 10.3.9 if that helps.

Spiros
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martin
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Post by martin »

FC3 now includes updated German and French localizations, along with a few other bug fixes:

http://www.nisus.com/Express/beta/
Bob Stern
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Post by Bob Stern »

I'm happy to confirm that you fixed the problem with tables in columns. Now a legend above (ie, outside) the table wraps properly within its column if it is too long to fit on a single line, and a table cannot be widened beyond the column width.

Great work, Nisus team! Thanks!
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martin
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Post by martin »

I'm not sure which poster it was, but somebody sent in a preference file that reproduces the non-functional Styles palette bug. The problem only manifests (in this case) if the palette is configured as a floating palette. I'll see that we fix this before release. Thanks!
shades
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Post by shades »

martin wrote:I'm not sure which poster it was, but somebody sent in a preference file that reproduces the non-functional Styles palette bug. The problem only manifests (in this case) if the palette is configured as a floating palette. I'll see that we fix this before release. Thanks!
That was me; I sent the file in to you. And it still happens in FC.
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martin
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Post by martin »

shades wrote:That was me; I sent the file in to you. And it still happens in FC.
Thanks shades, I didn't recognize the email address. And yeah, the bug is still there in FC3, but it will be fixed.
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martin
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Post by martin »

Final candidate number 4 is ready with a handful of small fixes and some optimizations and tweaks:
http://www.nisus.com/Express/beta/

The Styles palette should work now. Also, we've tried to fix the dual Help menu some of you have been seeing. We'd be grateful if you could post here and let us know if the issue has been resolved. Thanks!
Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus
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Post by Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus »

Uh... The problem with the ellipsis is still there. :cry:
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Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus
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Post by Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus »

Suggestion: Create a new document and look at the Table menu. What's wrong with it? The following items should be disabled (grayed out): Insert, Select, Delete. They span into... nothing (all the items are unavailable, since there's no table to modify).

I wasn't sure about it and was going to look it up in Apple's HIG, but then it was easy to check. Make sure nothing is selected in the Finder and look at its File menu. The Open With menu is grayed out (even though it technically spans out into a submenu).

Other menu items in Nisus that fail to comply with the HIG are:

Edit menu: Convert
Format: Note Style

Edit: Darn it! TextEdit—Edit->Speech. :evil: Apple better get their ... together.

Apple says: "A menu’s title is displayed undimmed even if all of the menu’s commands are unavailable (dimmed) at the same time. Users should always be able to view a menu’s contents, whether or not they are currently available."

While this doesn't cover submenus, I think it makes sense. I stand corrected. But then again, there's this Open With menu in the Finder... Someone's gonna file a bug report to a company the name of which starts with the "A." :lol:
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drmacnut
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Full Screen Mode in 2.7 FC4

Post by drmacnut »

Full screen (FS) mode is an excellent addition. Thank you Martin, Dave, and "Team-N"! Here is some feedback on this new feature.

Using the cmd +/- to zoom is absolutely necessary for those with screens greater than 15"; but the ability to zoom is effectively hidden from most users. One way to expose new users to this option (which I also didn't notice until mrennie mentioned it; thanks!) would be to have the zoom palette automatically show up when the user switches into FS mode. This would be on by default, but with a checkbox in Prefs. (For those of you with large displays, try using the Zoom Palette in FS mode; it's great!)

Which brings me to the Prefs->General dialog. FS mode is perhaps not best left under the "Document Options" sub-heading along with Recent Items and Suggest Completions. Instead, a separate sub-heading labeled "Full Screen Mode" or something, could include...

-menu bar auto-show after x.x sec delay
-zoom palette visible default yes
-background color behind text option (click brings up user-friendly standard OS Color Palette)
-[future expansion]

Now to the Toolbar when in Draft and Page view. Unlike many others it seems, I have no problem with the "beauty" of the icons used in NWE, and I always show the Toolbar. But the View icons (the three buttons fused together) should have an FS mode button added in right after Page View and before Style Sheet. (As an aside, I don't think Style Sheet belongs in that button, but that's another posting!)

And finally back to the FS editing mode. Not that I think we should always copy other apps "just because", but take a look at how iPhoto 6 (and I think DVD Player too perhaps) handles the menu in FS mode. The mouse, on hover over, opens the menu; on hover-off, the menu closes. Simple. Beautiful. Slide in, slide out. In NWE, making the user click on the page to dismiss the menu bar is not intuitive, because sometimes the focus never changed from the document to the menu in the first place (i.e. no menu click ever happened, just a scan-over of the menus as in "just looking").

There is more, but I'd better end here for now.

Take care everyone! Happy weekend.
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Spiros
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Re: Double Help menu

Post by Spiros »

Spiros wrote:Hello,

This fc2 release is indeed very stable and works well.

One minor thing though that I just noticed, after using it for so long, is that there are two (2) Help menu items in the menu bar, both carrying the Nisus Help files and Feedback sub-menus

It's more of a visible eyesore than anything else. I'm running 10.3.9 if that helps.

Spiros
No problem any more. fc4 is working great, no double Help menu. I don't know if fc3 was okay, I never got a chance to use it, it came and went so fast! :shock:

Cheers!
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martin
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Post by martin »

It's official, 2.7 is available now, hooray!
http://www.nisus.com/Express/

Thanks everyone for helping us out... now back to the grind for 3.0 ;)
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