We had hoped by now to have released the Nisus Writer Pro public beta. However, development is taking longer than we had hoped. It happens, but personally I am not happy about it. In the end, it will result in a better word processor, but for now it is just frustrating. It’s this reason that Apple executives, when asked when Leopard will be released, say things like “the first half of 2007â€.
Having said that, since the announcement of Pro we have added a few new features. For a lot of people, adding “Any Attributes” to Find and Replace will make their writing life a lot easier. Small Caps are now supported, faked or included in the font. Strikethrough colors and Shadow attributes are now supported. You can now adjust when a footnote is split between pages. MathType fans will note that you can live-edit equations pasted into Pro. That is to say, you paste an equation into Pro, you double-click on it, MathType opens, you make the changes. Save it, and the changes are automagically updated in Pro. It is very LinkBack-like. Finally, Pro now works on the latest developer build of Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5).
I realize that these are not huge changes, but we decided to add them now to make life easier for us (since we were going to add them at some point anyway) and to give our users the best possible experience.
Features are now frozen, and now it’s about fixing bugs. Private beta testing is underway, and we are getting closer to having a beta release that is good enough for public consumption. When will that be? I am reluctant to say, since engineering does not know at this point. When I ask, the answer I usually get is “when it is ready.” If I press the issue, the answer is “two weeks”. I have been hearing two weeks now since January.
So, the real answer is I don’t know. I would love to be able to say March. That’s what we are hoping for. But the best answer at the moment is “when it is ready.”
Thanks Dave for the update. It’s better to know it’s ‘on hold’ than not to hear anything.
What I’d like to know is what this new feature means? You wrote:
‘You can now adjust when a footnote is split between pages.’
I knew that Pro would be able to split the footnotes, like Classic, but what does it mean to adjust it? Does it mean we can cram it onto the same page if we want? Or is it just saying that a footnote will span two or more pages, or ?
Thanks,
Avram Yehoshua
Ramat Gan
Israel
Nah don’t worry about the delays. Good software is worth waiting for. As far as my own expectations are concerned, if it loads quickly and has bulletproof reliability, then I’m sold on it.
I hope to find the beta inside easter egg. :)
Don’t worry about being late. My motto is no software should be released before its time. I’m looking forward to the Mathtype compatibility. I use Mathtype regularly, the current state of Mathtype compatibility is unsatisfactory. It limits my use of NisusWriter. I am looking forward to the Pro version.
Sure! – Better a delay in time than something that won’t work!
So Dave, keep on pulling those Apple guys by the ears to get needed resources for the Leopard
No hurry.
Just take all the time necessary to get NW Pro right.
Leopard must be close to release, considering the number of quite major updates pouring out of Apple Inc.
I can’t see OS X 10.4.X coming out (:
Don’t worry about the delay. Users appreciate software that works properly – even if it does mean waiting a while.
Wow. Nisus users are far more patient than users of many other programs! Personally, I can hardly wait for Nisus Writer Pro to be released! However, please take the time to make it work before you release it. I can be patient….
There is way to much agreement here. Let me just say, we are talking about a public beta. Please don’t wait for all of the bugs to be squashed or we will never see it. I, for one, would like to take it for a test drive as soon as I can be reasonably assured that it will not randomly delete other files on my system.
Hey, it’s looking great! And these are awesome features. Pro is the writing tool. And quality is definitely worth a wait. Release the right product. Then we’ll buy it.
I am looking forward to the release of Nisus Writer Pro – until then, Apple Pages and NeoOffice takes care of my WP needs. None of those tools are perfect, but NWP seems much closer to my wants and needs. NWE does a fine job, but has too many limitations for the work I need to do. I expect the NWP to be awesome! :)
Keep up the good work***
Normally I do not buy v.1.0 software but as a long time Nisus user I am waiting with a credit card in hand ready to buy Nisus Pro 1.0 the day it comes out!
Now that BBS released the userlist (partially public) beta of MailSmith 2.2 I only need NWP beta to step forward after such a long season of deprivation.
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