A Miscellany of Hints

[adryan]

G'day, all

With things so quiet on these Forums at present, I thought it might be an opportune time to share some practices I find convenient in my own work with Nisus Writer. Others may feel motivated to add their own suggestions.

Nisus Writer is highly customizable, so you might as well exploit the fact.

You can make life easier for yourself by adding a couple of folders to the Macros folder. I call them "• Frequent" and "• Test". The leading bullets make these folders rise to the top of the list in the Macro menu so they are easily found. Their purpose is self-explanatory.

The Special Characters Palette is a great feature. Adding a group called "• Frequent" to it is one of the best things I ever did (with Nisus Writer).

You can add Palette Groups to the Palette Dock, so again one for frequent use could be handy.

Idle moments can find productive expression by playing with the Add Custom Toolbar Icon command (accessible via the View menu). For example, for testing Macros that people post on these Forums I find it useful to have the "Lorem ipsum" Macro (in the Document set) represented in the Toolbar.

The width of the Toolbar depends on the width of the window. If the width cannot accommodate all the items you have in the Toolbar, one or more of those at the right (at least in a left-to-write language configuration) will disappear into the overflow void. So choose an ordering of the items that suits you. I find it convenient to have the Palettes item sufficiently far to the left to ensure it's always visible.

Easily overlooked but very useful commands are "Previous Selection" and "Next Selection" (accessible via the Edit menu but with easily remembered Keyboard Shortcuts). You can mark your place in a document by selecting a word, then travel at will elsewhere in the document, safe in the knowledge that you've got a return ticket. By the way, I think the order of these commands should be swapped in the Select submenu.

You can effectively add months to your productive life by remembering and using the Keyboard Shortcuts for the "Find Next" and "Find Previous" commands.

If you crave even more longevity, you can effectively add years to your productive life by saving (with mnemonic names) Find and Replace expressions for future use. It's perhaps worth observing that here the life-extending mechanism relates more to the decreased requirement for addictive anxiolytic expedients than to anything else.

Cheers,
Adrian

[NisusUser]

Brilliant suggestions! I like the idea of using bullets to make macros folders appear at the top. I did not know that would have that effect.

I had to look up "anxiolytic", though. The Apple Dictionary says this: adjective (chiefly of a drug) used to reduce anxiety. I smiled widely.

Thank you, Adrian!
Eric

[adryan]

G'day, Eric et al

Thanks for the positive feedback, Eric.

It's not just bullets and it's not just Nisus Writer. The idea here is that, in many situations where items in a list can be sorted by name, the sorting principle is the order of characters in the Unicode character table. For example, a leading space trumps a leading asterisk which in turn trumps a leading bullet. Two spaces trump a single space. Digits trump letters of the alphabet.

I find this most useful when it comes to naming Finder items. This is where expressing dates in ISO 8601 format (ie, YYYY-MM-DD) makes life a lot easier. I often precede a filename with a date like this. The Unicode sorting principle can also make items in your Scripts menu easier to find.

However, there is a caveat when it comes to Finder items. Names there are case-independent; ie, the Finder does not distinguish between uppercase and lowercase characters in item names.

I might also add that Nisus Writer selections form a sequence that can be traversed in either direction. This means that you can step back through several Previous Selections, a bit like following a trail of breadcrumbs. Often convenient when you don’t want to go to the trouble of creating Bookmarks.

Cheers,
Adrian

[xiamenese]

I find this most useful when it comes to naming Finder items. This is where expressing dates in ISO 8601 format (ie, YYYY-MM-DD) makes life a lot easier. I often precede a filename with a date like this.

Having lived in China for many years, where the year-month-day dating system is the norm, I've been heading all my filenames like that for nearly two decades; it makes sorting and finding them so much easier. The only difference with my system is I omit the hyphens, so any file saved today is "20230715-whatever.extension".

As for the rest, I don't bother to customise the toolbar as I hardly ever use it, I do customise the palettes slightly, floating the Styles Palette and the Format Examiner, so that they are always quickly accessible. But I do have my "Personal" macros folder; I might take up your tip of starting its name with a bullet so it moves to the top though.



Mark