Sonoma 14.0 Problem

[anj909@live.com]

Hi All, My Nisus Writer Pro constantly closes down, usually within a minute of loading - the 1st time I've ever had a problem.
I'm currently running Sonoma 14.0 and have reloaded the Nisus application to no avail:- the previous system did not exhibit any problems.
Can anyone suggest what to do?

Cheers, Arthur

[martin]

Hi Arthur! We’re very sorry for the trouble. There are indeed compatibility issues with Nisus Writer and macOS Sonoma. The most prominent is related to system-wide auto-completion, which triggers crashes in Nisus Writer. You can disable this Sonoma feature in your system preferences to prevent the issue.

We also have a pre-release beta version of Nisus Writer Pro that attempts to fix the most serious of these problems. We hope the beta helps while we smooth out other remaining issues

[_NM_]

Unfortunately, I am experiencing the same problem. I hope a fix will be released soon. I am already forced to use other applications, and it will become a habit.

[xiamenese]

Have you tried the beta mentioned by Martin in his post in this thread?

[anj909@live.com]

Yes, the beta has solved the problem for me. Hope an official release happens soon.
A.

[_NM_]

Have you tried the beta mentioned by Martin in his post in this thread?

Unfortunately, we're restricted to only what can be obtained from the app store. On the horizon, I dread to say, is MS Word because of its scripting capabilities. Unfortunately, not my decision, but it will handle RTF files, and I'm told come with additional candy like Writeful and EndNote integration.

[adryan]

G'day, _NM_ et al

Sorry to hear about the difficulty you're experiencing. I'm sure Nisus are doing everything they can to rectify the situation as rapidly as possible.

You might try using Pages as an interim measure. You can open an existing NWP RTF file in Pages, work on it in Pages, and then export it to an RTF file for subsequent use by an updated NWP. Obviously this is not ideal, but you may at least be able to get on with your work

Another possibility is to use another computer which has not been updated to Sonoma. (I always have a spare computer available and retain a previous version of the operating system on it.) Files could be transferred via network, USB sticks or email. Again, not ideal but better than nothing.

As I mentioned in another posting, it is a big mistake to be an early adopter of a new operating system. A corollary is that it is a mistake to tick the "Automatically keep my Mac up-to-date…" checkbox in Software Update. Difficult if you work in a corporate environment, but you would think IT people would know better before inflicting potentially buggy software on an entire organization. (But who knows? Maybe they're bored and enjoy the extra work.) To prevent these sorts of disasters occurring in future, it may be worth while talking to the IT people and seeing whether they can postpone upgrading the operating system until it's had the inevitable dot update or two. Even if the problem lies not with the operating system but with software from another developer, it allows more time for the developer to fix things before you start using the new environment.

Cheers,
Adrian

[_NM_]

Thanks for your post Adrian. Early adoption is forced by the need to test products and update technical documentation for the latest OS and builds. I guess Pages and Apple Script might work, but moving on it will be MS Word for us. Personally, I would have picked LibreOffice. VBA is not may favorite language, but I have to admit it is pretty fast.

I'll take your word that Nisus is working on a fix. Objectively, however, Nisus writer has not received any updates for a year or more. Yes, you can argue it was because it was bug-free, but from our point of view, we can't wait for Nisus given such a track record, and a fix is overdue. We can't allow this to happen again, either. Nisus crashes within seconds of launching, which would raise eyebrows about QA practices of any vendor.

I am not necessarily blaming Nisus here. Unlike Windows and Linux, Apple does not have a good track record of maintaining backward compatibility. However, new OSs are released as early betas for developers to test their products.

[adryan]

G'day, _NM_ et al

It's worth noting that Bare Bones Software say they have "identified several bugs and regressions in macOS 14 which affect BBEdit's performance and stability.… For that reason we recommend that you remain on an older compatible version of macOS until such time as Apple addresses these issues."

https://www.barebones.com/support/bbedi ... 4.6.8.html

You get the idea that it's pretty hard for developers to rectify everything at their end with a beta version of an operating system when Apple have dropped the ball at their end.

Testing and documenting a new operating system should be done behind the scenes: there should be no need to roll it out to all users in an organization in order to accomplish this. Doing so just places users in the role of beta testers and risks disrupting their workflow.

Cheers,
Adrian

[_NM_]

All software have bugs. Developers have a choice of the body of water where they want to swim. One either stays afloat or drowns. Anyone still using BBEdit or TextWrangler they discontinued? Most have moved on to VSCode, JetBrains, etc. People have valid reasons to update to the latest and greatest, and sometimes they do not have a choice when purchasing new hardware.

Please, this is recommendation is equivalent to "Hey everybody wait for me while I figure out how to tie my shoelaces ..."

There was enough time to test with pre-release OS versions. Depending on the tool-chain you are using, this may be a daunting task. Nobody is saying that this is an easy or difficult task. All of these issues aside, the end user does not care who is at fault. All he/she cares about is the app working. These are excuses, and when your app does not work, it will ultimately hurt you.

[sethgodin]

The beta worked I thought, but now, it's crashing again.

hoping for an update soon!

[martin]

The beta worked I thought, but now, it's crashing again.

hoping for an update soon!

Hi Seth– I just saw your latest crash report and it was not from the beta. The report shows you were using regular version 3.3 at the time. Please switch back to the beta version to avoid the crashes. Sorry for the nuisance!

[drbrilliant]

I love Nisus, but I am frustrated that this crash problem hasn't been solved in over a month. I updated from Sonoma 14.0 to 14.1.1 this morning, thinking Apple might have done something to fix the problem. Instead, I discovered that now Nisus won't load at all.

Until the problem is fixed, I have gone back to Bean, a lightweight free word processor I used many, many years ago, but that claims to be compatible with Sonoma. It lacks many of Nisus Writer Pro's features but it opens and doesn't crash when typing a sentence.

I hope I will get an email from Nisus alerting me to a new version when the problem is fixed. Because I can't even open the app to check for updates I will have to download the fixed version from the Nisus website.

[Hogeye]

I have the same problem. Seeing it hang, I suspected that it had something to do with auto-correct. i have reverted to using Pages until the issue is fixed. Please get it corrected so I can switch back to Nisuswriter!

[drbrilliant]

I initially ignored the post, suggesting the beta might fix the problem. I have since downloaded and installed Nisus 3.4 beta 1. So far, it has not crashed while typing. I haven't tested all the features I sometimes use, but it seems stable for editing. For completeness, I am on Sonoma 14.1.1 on a MacBook Air from 2020.

Although the beta works, there is an annoying vertical line down the center of the editing window, which I can't get rid. I am not using text columns or a vertical split window.