Endnote support

[propstuff]

Greetings Mark,Charles,Dave,etc,
With NWX2.0 due to arrive in "Spring". Uh huh?
and having looked at the promised features, I was wondering if you can tell us exactly (?) what the functionality of the

"Footnotes,
Document endnotes, and,
Smart Quotes" will be?

If, for instance, I add quoted references to the body of my PHD dissertion on "The Role of Small Chain Proteins in the Prevalence of Dysentary Amongst Cistercian Monks in Thirteenth Century Latin-Speaking Romanian Mountain Monastaries", will NWX2.0 build a Bibliography for me?

cheers,
N.

[charles]

HI:

The footnotes/section endnotes/document endnotes means that you will be able to insert notes that appear per page, per section, or per document. It will also be quite easy to reassign a note to change where it appears.

The Smart Quotes function means that when you type "" it will change them to curly quotes. This is a language sensitive feature, so it will do the right kind of substitution for the language you are writing in.

We do want to add something like the endnote feature you support, including integration with a product of the same name. This will probably not make it into 2.0, unfortunately, though we wanted it to. It should come shortly though since we want to have it out by the time school starts (Insert caveat here about how schedules can change; this is just a target; don't hold me to that... )

-Charles

[propstuff]

We do want to add something like the endnote feature you support, including integration with a product of the same name. This will probably not make it into 2.0, unfortunately, though we wanted it to.

Hi again Charles,
The "product of the same name" seems like an outrageous amount of money for (what seems to be) a basic database functionality. :-O
I'm sure programmers of your dedication, knowledge, and finesse could integrate such a "simple" feature, especially if the endnotes/ footnotes already have an assigned "handle" as seems to be implied by your
"It will also be quite easy to reassign a note to change where it appears."

If you want me to add any more sycophantic whining to promote this cause, just let me know.......

It should come shortly though since we want to have it out by the time school starts (Insert caveat here about how schedules can change; this is just a target; don't hold me to that... )

I was speaking to a small developer the other day who said that the updated version of his Plug-in was due in "a couple of months", although, he noted, he was not refering to Human months, but to Software Developer's months.

cheers
N[/quote]

[mirko]

Just to drop in: the Product of the Same name is indeed a basic database, but if you ever had to resubmit a paper to the Royal Society of Chemistry that was originally targeted at the American Chemical Society (please replace chemistry with the science of your liking), then it is worth it weight in gold.
As a matter of fact, I really applaud tighter integration than the basic Services approach that that Product offers.
These things are what keep me returning to the stuff from Redmond when it comes to real writing.

[charles]

We are looking at options for people whom such a product does not make sense, actually. But for anyone who needs to actually keep a database of citations for multiple papers and so on, we are not going to try to replace any of the citation management applications.

-C

[Adelheid]

I read that in the future footnotes will be available in Nisus. Will these also export to Word? I have already tried Mellel (which already offers footnotes and endnotes), but that doens't export footnotes to Word docs.

I would like to be able to work with a osx native word processor that also offers interaction with Endnote, but since the world out there mostly expects Word docs, the export of foot-/endnotes would seem crucial to me.

Up to now I struggle along with the very slow and annoying MS Word, would love to switch!

Any suggestions?

Regards,
Adelheid

[rmark]

Adelheid asks:

...in the future footnotes will be available in Nisus. Will these also export to Word?

Absolutely yes. The only caveat is that internally we are able to provide more flexible notes than Word, the biggest one being that Word has no notion of note styles.
[/quote]

[propstuff]

We are looking at options for people whom such a product does not make sense, actually.

Thankyou charles,
I'm looking forward to
"late Spring"

cheers,
N.

[Renoir]

I read that in the future footnotes will be available in Nisus. Will these also export to Word? I have already tried Mellel (which already offers footnotes and endnotes), but that doens't export footnotes to Word docs.

Regards,
Adelheid

Actually, Mellel does export notes to RTF so the export from NWE will be the same IIUC. I read a note by Charles in the Nisus list saying that the DOC export is RTF with .doc name extension, so this is the same thing.

[charles]

Actually, Mellel does export notes to RTF so the export from NWE will be the same IIUC. I read a note by Charles in the Nisus list saying that the DOC export is RTF with .doc name extension, so this is the same thing.

While we do support saving notes in RTF in 2.0, do not depend on what Mellel can or cannot do to compare. Mellel, I believe, uses a new RTF engine they just developed and before that used Apple's built-in RTF engine. We built our own RTF engine over 3 years ago and have been maturing it ever since.

Also, Mellel uses Apple's built-in, limited Word document support while we use our own system for reading Word files that has very complete support for the format. We do save DOC files with RTF content since this is an allowed way to save Doc files by Microsoft.

Just FYI. You are right though that we support notes fully in both RTF and Word reading and writing for 2.0.

-Charles

[Renoir]

Actually, Mellel does export notes to RTF so the export from NWE will be the same IIUC. I read a note by Charles in the Nisus list saying that the DOC export is RTF with .doc name extension, so this is the same thing.

While we do support saving notes in RTF in 2.0, do not depend on what Mellel can or cannot do to compare. Mellel, I believe, uses a new RTF engine they just developed and before that used Apple's built-in RTF engine. We built our own RTF engine over 3 years ago and have been maturing it ever since.

Also, Mellel uses Apple's built-in, limited Word document support while we use our own system for reading Word files that has very complete support for the format. We do save DOC files with RTF content since this is an allowed way to save Doc files by Microsoft.

Just FYI. You are right though that we support notes fully in both RTF and Word reading and writing for 2.0.

-Charles

If I understand correctly what you say is that you use your RTF engine to open RTF, and use AbiConvert to open DOC. Right?

I think saving files as RTF is the right idea but I thought then and I think now that saying "Microsoft Word format" when you really save RTF is misleading.
Do you intend to support DOC (not RTF with DOC extension) with 2.0?

[charles]

We use abiconvert, which is a tool we developed in cooperation with the AbiWord folks, for one part of the DOC opening process.

As for saving rtf as doc, well I have 4 points here:

First off, certain versions of Word will sometimes do this as well. Since the Microsoft Word format is a closed format, then what constitutes a real "Microsoft Word Document" is basically whatever Microsoft Word outputs, which can sometimes be RTF rather than the binary version of the same. This, it is not misleading to do this since Microsoft does the same thing.

Secondly, when a user picks "Microsoft Word Format" to save a document, what they really mean is that they want the document saved in a format that can be open and saved in Microsoft Word without getting complaints about the file format from Word or other users. The actual content of the document does not matter, it is this compatibility experience experience that all of us want. From this perspective also, it is also legitimate to call this document a "Microsoft Word Format" document.

Third, by using this method (which as have already established is a legitimate form of the Microsoft Word Format according to how Microsoft does things) we actually are able to serve our customers better. RTF is more extendable than the binary format of Word. This means that when we save the document, we can include any extensions for features we support that Word does not. The user still gets the compatibility experience with Word but then they can also reopen the same file in Nisus Writer Express without losing anything. This would not be possible with the binary format.

Finally, I would like to point out that a lot of other third parties use this method to save Microsoft Word Format documents; we got the idea from AbiWord, in fact. This is a common practice.

That being said, our goal with this area of Nisus Writer is to give users the compatibility experience of being able to seamlessly share their documents with Word users. If our technique should prevent this goal from being achieved and offering the binary version support would be a better solution, then we will offer the binary support. But, as I stated above, this approach actually supports user's needs better for the most part.

-Charles

[Renoir]

We use abiconvert, which is a tool we developed in cooperation with the AbiWord folks, for one part of the DOC opening process.

As for saving rtf as doc, well I have 4 points here:

I agree with all your points. RTF IS better and I personally prefer it to DOC. But after reading about it in the list I felt cheated.
In the save as window when I choose RTF I get RTF, when I choose text I get text, when I choose RTFD I get RTFD and when I choose Microsoft Word format I get RTF pretending to be DOC. I can save a cwk file from AppleWorks and change the extension to DOC and Word will open it without a problem but it is not a Word file.

Again - I agree that RTF is better for all the reasons you mentioned. But it should be in the help and in the save window. Even "Microsoft Word format (RTF with .doc extension)" is better.

[charles]

Renoir:

The Microsoft Word file format has changed dramatically over the lifetime of Word. In fact, there was a time when the contents of a Word file would change completely with each new version of Word. In fact, at one point, Word saved DOC files with RTF contents. To fully support the "Word format", then, you need to really be able to read no less than three completely different formats (which we do, by the way). These arcane issues are of no concern to the daily needs of users, probably including you and me who simply want a file they can share with other Word users.

Additionally, your comparison to renaming an AppleWorks files is simply not correct. Word actually has used RTF as an official flavor of Word DOC files but they have never used the AppleWorks format in this way.

As I said, RTF is one of no less than three major variants of formats used by Microsoft at one time or another. We have to pick one of these flavors to implement when saving, so why not use the one that offers the best overall experience for the user?

Seriously, if you can make the case to us how using the "RTF-flavor" for our Word documents does a worse job of providing users the compatibility they want with this format than using some other flavor, then please let us know and we will definitely consider changing our approach to this issue.

Cheers,
-Charles