bulleted and numbered lists?

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Stoic
Posts: 15
Joined: 2003-07-26 05:57:45

bulleted and numbered lists?

Post by Stoic »

I own NWE, Mellel, Word, and now Pages. But I've almost stopped visiting this site because, for me, NWE is unusable in its present form. I need bulleted and numbered lists frequently in my writing, and these are far too awkward to create in NWE.

I watched the earlier development of NWE with hope. How can NWE reach its 2.1 version without this capability? This is basic in each of the other three word processors mentioned above. I listened to NWE's developers say how important it was to "lay a solid foundation" before additional features. But isn't this sounding a bit hollow by now?
MacSailor
Posts: 290
Joined: 2003-04-03 08:38:41
Location: Linköping, Sweden

Post by MacSailor »

My academic writing has also reached a critical point there I must have basic features as automatic numbers, TOC, bulleted and numbered lists. I also will be needing the ability to create index and also have the feature of cross-reference.

How soon will this be implemented with NWE? Do you have a public plan to show us, so that we could see how long we have to wait to be able to get these more or less basic tools?

I understand that it sometimes can be difficult to know exactly when a certain feature will be implemented in a certain product. But it would be good to have a hint of how far away these features are.
Peter Edwardsson
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charles
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Location: San Diego, CA
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Post by charles »

Hi Peter and Stoic:

Thanks for letting us know which features are more important to you. We are adding things primarily based on how many people request such things. Let me tell you a bit about our current plan and priorities:

First of all, to your specific request:

We are working on outlines, lists, bullets and numbers for this next release. We don't have a specific release date set yet but we are getting close; I hope to start testing sometime in early March.

Also, we have had a higher number of bugs than we would like in this last release, which is something we do not want to repeat. In addition to some internal changes to our development process, we are also going to provide sneaky peeks and a public beta so you all can test and give feedback on product before we call it "final".

We are planning TOC, cross references and indexing but these features will not be in the next release. We are trying to do a release about once every three months so it could sometime in the summer or fall. (This next release will be our "spring" release.)

Finally, on the bigger issue of planning: we are in the middle of some strategic planning for 2005. I hope to make some announcements on this in the near future. Watch the blog for this.

-Charles
Charles Jolley
Nisus Software, Inc.
MacSailor
Posts: 290
Joined: 2003-04-03 08:38:41
Location: Linköping, Sweden

Post by MacSailor »

charles wrote:We are trying to do a release about once every three months so it could sometime in the summer or fall. (This next release will be our "spring" release.)

-Charles

Sounds great. Just what I wanted and needed to hear. 8)

Keep on the good work…
Peter Edwardsson
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joao
Posts: 55
Joined: 2003-04-25 04:42:14

Post by joao »

It's great to hear that bullets and numbers are on their way.

A request for these and other new features: please don't assign a keystroke command to them that is bound to that command. Instead, let the users define their own command(s) – or (even better) allow any keystroke command to be assigned to any feature.

Thanks for listening!
Ryan
Posts: 211
Joined: 2005-01-31 14:36:45
Location: Portland, OR
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Post by Ryan »

NWE already does this. It's in the preferences, under Menu Keys. You can assign any menu item any key combination you like. Presumably, the bullet/number features will fall under the same approach.

Ryan
www.r-blog.com
joao
Posts: 55
Joined: 2003-04-25 04:42:14

Post by joao »

Actually, while some of the commands can be re-assigned, not all of them can, such as shift-command-B, which is reserved for showing/hiding the toolbar.

It would be great if all commands could be user-defined.
midwinter
Posts: 333
Joined: 2004-09-09 18:07:11
Location: Utah
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Post by midwinter »

charles wrote:We are working on outlines, lists, bullets and numbers for this next release. We don't have a specific release date set yet but we are getting close; I hope to start testing sometime in early March.
Sweet!!!
In addition to some internal changes to our development process, we are also going to provide sneaky peeks and a public beta so you all can test and give feedback on product before we call it "final".
Sweet!!!
We are planning TOC, cross references and indexing but these features will not be in the next release. We are trying to do a release about once every three months so it could sometime in the summer or fall. (This next release will be our "spring" release.)
Sweet!!!
Finally, on the bigger issue of planning: we are in the middle of some strategic planning for 2005. I hope to make some announcements on this in the near future. Watch the blog for this.
Sweet!!!
strikeman
Posts: 1
Joined: 2005-02-13 18:11:42

bullets and numbered lists

Post by strikeman »

I am a heavy Word user, but the performance issues have finally gotten to me, so I have been casting around for a replacement. With great anticipation I downloaded the NWE demo and on my first test document my switching experience was stopped dead in its tracks but the lack of what seems to be a pretty basic WP function - bullets and numbers.

I am extremely happy to hear that NWE will soon have these features. One plea - can you support hierarchical numbering, and make it so that your numbers will automagically update if new points are added but don't do it the way Word does it - ie the magic is just waaay too arcane and numbers change for no apparent reason.

Keep up the good work!
Ryan
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Location: Portland, OR
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Post by Ryan »

It's kind of funny -- I think I'm the only one around who doesn't care about bulleted/numbered lists. I guess I just tend to write essays, stories, theses, and poetry, which don't really need 'em.

So, my request for this feature is that it not be obtrusive and obnoxious like Word's lists. I'm sure I'll find some occasion to make lists, but I want my basic writing to remain unaffected (e.g. if I start a paragraph with a number, I don't bloody want the return key to change all my formatting and add another paragraph with a number and generally piss me off).

Just thought I'd throw in the other side of this discussion.

Ryan
www.r-blog.com
charles
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Post by charles »

Hi:

Bullet and numbering does include support for numbering paragraphs of text in a structured document. We will eventually extend this support as part of a complete outlining and document navigation solution.

-Charles
Charles Jolley
Nisus Software, Inc.
Ryan
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Location: Portland, OR
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Post by Ryan »

Hm. Let me clarify slightly: I have no problem with automatic numbering, I just want it to be easy to turn on and off. Word is much too quick to start numbering my paragraphs when I don't want it to do so. And turning the feature on/off is an ordeal.
We will eventually extend this support as part of a complete outlining and document navigation solution.
Very intriguing indeed... This could actually make all of this stuff quite useful for even my writing needs.

Ryan
www.r-blog.com[/quote]
charles
Posts: 481
Joined: 2002-11-26 11:40:35
Location: San Diego, CA
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Post by charles »

Hi Ryan:

We are not going to automatically turn on/off bullets or numbering. Too often Word gets this wrong and we have decided as policy that any kind of automated "correction" of your text will not happen unless we can make it very unobtrusive. For example, we have QuickFix, which is like Auto-correct in Word, but no one complains about it because it generally restricts itself to fixing only things you definitely want corrected.

-Charles
Charles Jolley
Nisus Software, Inc.
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