General

In our never ending quest to release as many beta versions as possible, I am proud to annouce Nisus Writer Express 2.5 Beta 7.

You can see what has changed on the release notes page.

Thank you all again for sending us bug reports and helping us to make this release a very solid one. Keep them coming!

It looks like Express 2.5 is getting closer. We just released Beta 4 and there are a number of bugs fixed. However, we would love to hear from people who have had problems with Classic File Conversion and Keyboard Shortcuts.

Please download the new beta, try it out, and let us know what you think by filing bug reports.

Another alpha version of 2.5 is available on our Sneak Peek page. This new alpha is compatible with Panther, so any user running 10.3 or later should be able to try 2.5 out now.

The latest alpha of Nisus Writer Express 2.5 is out. New in this version is the ability to create custom palette groups.

Download it from the Sneak Peek page.

Enjoy!

Version up, people! Download from the Sneak Peek page. Give it a look. Send us feedback.

We are getting very close to a beta release. Thank you all for your help.

In my earlier post about file formats I said:

There was a day when every word processor had its own format. The reason developers did this was to “lock” you in to using their software. The idea was that once you had all your documents stored in their proprietary format, you would have to keep buying the same software to read your documents.

But Mark recently pointed out to me that actually Nisus chose its original format specifically to avoid locking people into our format:

Actually we settled on TEXT so than *anyone* could read our documents. You might have lost the formatting, but, that did not affect the actual text. Innumerable people chose Nisus Writer Classic specifically because it stored the text as TEXT!.

The way the Nisus Writer Classic file format handles formatting was truly clever. So, I guess we’ve always had a tradition of helping our users share their files with others.

This new alpha bring right to left table support, though there will be some rough edges (hey, it’s an alpha!). There is also a fix for the LinkBack/OmniGraffle bug that some have reported.

Feel free to give this latest build a spin.

There has been some talk about file formats among our users and users of other word processors lately. I’ve seen a lot of explanations about what the different formats are and their relative benefits. Since we know a little about this stuff, I thought a little explanation of the major formats might help the conversation. So here it is, my run down of the different word processor formats and their relative strengths:

Omni just released the beta of OmniGraffle 4. Aside from its nifty new palette system, it also supports LinkBack so you can edit OmniGraffle drawings in your Nisus Writer Express documents with just a double-click. To try it out get the OmniGraffle Beta the latest preview release of Nisus Writer Express 2.5. It’s awesome!

For the brave amongst you, we have released the latest Express 2.5 Sneak Peek build. There are no release notes, but lots of bugs are squashed in this version.

You will need Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) at least to use this build.

As per normal, we do not offer support on these builds, so please do not ask. Send your feedback to sneakpeek@nisus.com or use the feedback function built into Express.

Happy Hunting!

Nisus Writer Express 2.5 is getting close. We have a few touch-ups to add, but we have mostly been fixing bugs. We have fixed about 90% of the bugs in our bug tracker now. Once we get our known issues squashed, we will go to beta before our final release.

Also, here’s something fun to do if you are using the 2.5alpha sneakpeek: Open a new document and type the word “POOF”. Now highlight the word and choose Table->Convert To Table.

The final version of Nisus Writer Express 2.1.3 is now available at the usual place. Or, you can open Express and choose the “Check for Updates” feature in Nisus Writer Express, located under the “Nisus Writer Express” menu.

No new features have been added, as this version fixes a few issues that were disconvered after Tiger was released.

Enjoy!

So lately we have released both 2.1.2 and 2.5alpha and soon we will release 2.1.3. What’s up with all these versions? Well, here’s what’s happening:

Nisus Writer Express 2.5 is the brand spanking new version of Express that we have been working on for some time. It has some cool new features like a really slick system for bullets and numbering, a better style sheet, and right to left support. Perhaps most importantly, version 2.5 will be our “bug smasher” release. We are taking the time to really clean out our bug database. We are also going to release frequent alphas and betas so that you can try out the new features if you want and report bugs to us early on while we can fix them.

In the mean time, we have made some very minor changes to our current “stable” release 2.1.1 to support the new version of Mac OS X, Tiger. This version is called 2.1.2. Several users have experienced some additional issues that we did not find in our own testing on Tiger, so we have now fixed those issues as well and we will soon release 2.1.3.

So there you have it: if you are on Tiger, please upgrade to 2.1.2 (and 2.1.3 when it is released. If you want to try out the newest features and you aren’t afraid of bugs, try the sneak peek of our new version 2.5.

We have posted a Nisus Writer Express 2.1.3 sneak peek at, appropriately enough, our Sneak Peek page.

Please feel free to check it out and send us feedback.

Express 2.1.2 is out, and you can get it from here or you can use the “Check for Updates” feature in Nisus Writer Express, located under the “Nisus Writer Express” menu.

There are no new features, just fixes to ensure Tiger compatibility. Also, Spotlight can search inside of Nisus Writer Express documents, because it understands our file format.

So we have that going for us too!

For anyone interested, we have put up a new page on our site, the Nisus Sneak Peek Page. We wanted to provide a way for people to have a look at what we are currently working on, and to receive feedback for those interested in giving it.

We do not offer support on Sneak Peek builds. These builds are development builds. There will be some stabililty issues, and it will have bugs. You probably do not want to use one of these dev builds for everyday work. However, if you are interested in trying some of the new features, such as bullets and numbering, the new style sheet navigator, and right to left input, we are interested in hearing your feedback.

So, for those of you who are brave, please have a look and let us know what you think.

Since Apple has announced that Tiger will be released on April 29th, we can now answer the question “Is Express compatible with Tiger?” The answer at this point is yes, but no. There are some potential gotchas that need to be addressed, so there will be an update to Express that will come out before Tiger is released. That version, Express 2.1.2, will address only issues that affect Tiger compatibility. It will add no new features. I don’t have a release date on 2.1.2 at this point, since we have not seen the final build of 10.4 as of today.

Of course, there will be another release that has new features, etc. That version, Express 2.5, will include bullets and numbering, right to left input, support for LinkBack, and the usual bug fixes and enhancements. That release is due shortly, though it may not be ready in time for Tiger’s release. There has been a lot of work done on this version, and we want to make sure that the quality is there before we release it into the wild.

There will be a public beta of this new build, as we want to make sure that everyone who wants to can contribute to the development process. Plus, we can blame you folks in case there are issues …

Seriously, watch this space for details. We will post here and in the newsletter when we release these new versions.

As someone who just about lost all of their important files, I would like to remind all of you to back up your data!

I bring this up because I very recently had a drive go bad, and without a backup I am in big trouble. And by trouble, I mean that I lose my documents, mail, my pictures and music files. Luckily, I was backing up to my iPod (really!) and was able to restore my files, thus saving myself a giant headache, not to mention heartache.

I know this sounds like a public service announcement, and it is. If you are like me, and you have thousands of pictures and music files, backing up is one of the smartest things you can do.

At a cost of millions of dollars and several months of R&D, I give you:

The Ensorcelled 7 Sphere Version 1.0

Sure, we could have been doing other things, like making Express compatible with Tiger, but this just seemed more important at the time. Then again, I have a tenuous hold on reality, so I have that going for me as well!

In case you have not yet received our latest newsletter (you are a subscriber aren’t you?) we’ve started talking about our next release, which means that we are getting close to finishing it. There are a lot of cool features in this next release that I am really happy to finally deliver, including LinkBack among others.

One very important thing we are going to do is release a public beta. This will give us a chance to work out as many outstanding issues that we can with users before we call this new version final. We are also going to make some changes to our support page that will make it easier to get information about any outstanding issues that we do find and how you can work around them or get a fix. A lot of these changes we are making are due to some great suggestions by users in our forum so thanks for your input everyone!