Nisus Blog

Nisus Writer has issues with two recently released pieces of software: 1. The latest beta/preview version of macOS Monterey. Nisus Writer will often crash due to changes in the macOS system. 2. The recently released Bookends version 14. Nisus Writer can’t communicate directly with this version of Bookends due to internal changes in how the […]

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We’ve recently had more reports that Nisus Writer Pro users can’t import or export file formats that require conversion (e.g. DOCX). The error message states that “you do not have permission” to run the Nisus File Converter app. The alert looks like this: This is caused by a bug that was introduced in recent versions […]

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In certain kinds of writing (e.g. mathematics or linguistics) it can be useful to insert characters with a line on top. This line is known by several names like an overbar, overline, or macron. Here are some examples of such characters: ā ō n̅ You can easily enter such characters in Nisus Writer and other […]

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Here’s a nifty and lightweight flying toasters website that recreates that beloved After Dark screensaver.

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It’s an unexpected thing to say, but I feel a certain amount of warm nostalgia for Clippy, one of the first virtual assistants, as found in Microsoft Office circa the 1990’s. Oh sure I hated him at the time. He was basically worse than useless. I recall that my only interaction was to annoyingly dismiss […]

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It’s interesting to think about what counts as “technology” for particular generations of people. We might consider Apple’s latest iPad Pro on the edge of what’s new in personal tech. But in centuries past wax boards (literally wooden frames filled with melted beeswax) may have been the exciting new writing technology: “Wax boards can be […]

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We just released a new version of InfoClick, our Apple Mail search app. It provides an unrivaled view into the contents of your emails. There’s no more guessing whether or not to trust wishy-washy Spotlight search results. And InfoClick is incredibly fast. You see results and what other search terms are still available instantly. This […]

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A topic that recently arose on the Nisus user forums is whether or not Nisus Writer comes with any custom keyboard layouts. While we don’t provide any keyboard layouts, Nisus Writer does support all layouts that are available system-wide on macOS. That includes all the default layouts provided by Apple as well as any customized […]

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I’m a big fan of learning keyboard shortcuts. It’s nice to save time and avoid reaching for the mouse. Apple provides some basic macOS system preferences to customize keyboard shortcuts across apps, but Nisus Writer’s enhancements go much further. Nisus Writer of course lets you customize the keyboard shortcut for any menu command. But an […]

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Source?

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For the first time since its official release in early November 2020, macOS Big Sur’s usage has finally achieved a majority. The chart above shows Big Sur’s usage rate amongst all users of Nisus Writer Pro (for those that opt-in to sharing anonymous system metrics). You can see that Big Sur’s usage for March 2021 […]

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We all know the importance of using an appropriate typeface. This week courts in Washington, D.C. have officially placed Garamond on the naughty list: the court has determined that certain typefaces, such as Century and Times New Roman, are more legible than others, particularly Garamond, which appears smaller than the other two typefaces This is […]

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Apple made some changes to the file system for macOS Big Sur. The big underlying change is the new cryptographically signed system volume that prevents tampering with system data (for better and worse). There is also another little change to what you see in the Finder when you browse sandbox folders. As you may know, […]

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There’s a lot of complexity that goes into the display of text. Text features like ligatures, small caps, and font substitution surface some of the complexity, even for languages like English whose Latin letters have been part of technology since the very beginning (ASCII encoding was standardized in the 1960’s). For languages whose letters and […]

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Nisus Writer recently added a feature that allows you to extract editable text from your photos, scans, PDFs, and other images. This process is often called optical character recognition (aka OCR). Let’s see how text extraction works using a COVID relief notice I recently received from the United States government: Once the image is in […]

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One of my favorite new features in Nisus Writer Pro 3 is the Go To Content command. Whenever I’m writing a reasonably complex document I often want to jump around it, to consult material from other sections or simply work on different parts of the text. Nisus Writer has a Navigator sidebar that can aid […]

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This week Apple released macOS Big Sur. If you’re a Nisus customer you may want to hold off on updating your system, as we’re aware of some issues. Most of the problems are minor, but one potentially significant issue is that Nisus Writer Pro may be unable to import and export certain document file formats– […]

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Do you enjoy using new features before everyone else? Do you like sharing your ideas and feedback? If you’re an existing Nisus Writer Pro user and interested in helping out, please sign up to become a Nisus Writer beta tester. We’d love for you to join us!

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Nisus Writer adopts macOS autosave, which means copies of your document are automatically and periodically saved while you’re editing. The system preserves earlier autosaved copies so you can restore prior document versions. These prior versions aren’t kept forever (only Apple might say how long), but they’re incredibly useful if you realize you made a mistake […]

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Nisus Writer Pro 3.1 (and Nisus Writer Express 4.1) were just released and added several non-English localizations. We are interested in adding additional translations, so more people can enjoy using Nisus Writer in their native language. If you might be interested in helping out, please let us know. You can contact us any way you […]

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