Month: August 2004

NWE 2.0 has had one of the longest and most involved beta test phases of any product I’ve ever worked on. Earlier this week we released what I hope will be the last beta, beta 9. We have released a new beta about once a week, sometimes more frequently, sometimes less. This is a great achievement for us because in the past our software and our process of doing a beta release were not good enough to allow us to be this interactive with our testers. Martin, Dave, and Andrew have all worked hard to perfect our release process though so now we can decide to do a beta late afternoon and have it out by evening. Our entire engineering team has done a great job of keeping the app overall stable while working on their own parts. I’m very proud of the hard work all of us have done!

The latest issue of Macworld has as its cover story “Top Mac Tips”. Almost all of it is tips on how to get the best out of Office. However, Adam Engst of TidBits fame has raised the Nisus flag, adding a couple of tips on using the Document Manager and how to find just the right word with Nisus Thesaurus.

Thanks Adam!

P.S. The check is in the mail.

Clay Shirky has a great piece on how the RIAA’s efforts to shut down file sharing services and file sharing users is driving the adoption of encryption technology by mainstream users. The fact is, people will share music. It is going to happen. The RIAA can keep trying to shut these services down, but all they are doing instead is pushing these system to evolve until finally something will be created that is immune to the RIAA’s legal efforts.

A user recently asked for a button that would “block indent” selected text:

First, will there be a button you can push that will indent an entire paragraph?

Second, (a more accurate description of ‘block indent’) will there be a button you can push that will indent both right and left margins of a paragraph? An example of needing this feature would be, say, if you have a quote that is too long for quotation marks, you will want to ‘block indent’ it, which means the paragraph is centered on the page, but indented on both right and left margins.

We have not made provisions for any such “buttons”. However, that does not mean that you (any user) can’t extend the “out of the box” capabilities of Nisus Writer Express to fulfill unforeseen needs.

I answered:

To paraphrase the House Un-American Activities Committee:

There is not now, nor has there ever been a button you can push that will indent an entire paragraph.

You should, however (in Nisus Writer Express 2.x), be able to create a “Style” in the “Style Sheets” view of Nisus Writer Express that will consist of an indented paragraph (you’ll set the ruler parameters along with the font, etc.) Then, you’ll be able to select a range of text (put your insertion point inside a paragraph or select portions of various paragraphs) and click that style’s name in the Style palette. There, once you’ve created the “block indent” or “block quote” style, one click achieves the desired result… almost the same as Nisus Writer Express coming shipped with a button.

Can you think of other ways to customize Nisus Writer Express that others might appreciate knowing about?

`//rite on!