navigating document

[txwriter]

I’m testing Nisus as a Word alternative and the only stumbling block I have is in navigating a document while in draft mode. I’m a writer and I use keyboard commands, in this case the down arrow, to quickly edit through a document.
When reaching the bottom of a page on the screen the page jumps several paragraphs forward rather than moving simply to the next line.
It’s disconcerting, breaking the editing flow and taking too much time to locate the cursor. No problem when scrolling with a wheel mouse or the scroll bar.
Please tell me if I’m missing something. I’m impressed otherwise but for my job, it’s a killer.

[Jzents]

Actually Word does the same to me when I am editing outlines for students, thought I never use draft mode.

[rmark]

OK.

How much would you like it to scroll?

And is that the only thing holding you back from…?

[midwinter]

mark,

I think the complaint is that it should behave like Word—upon reaching the bottom of the page, the document should scroll up one line at a time. Don't know if I agree, but there you go.

[rmark]

Yes, perhaps.

that it should behave like Word—upon reaching the bottom of the page, the document should scroll up one line at a time

But I was puzzled because of this:

Actually Word does the same to me when I am editing outlines for students, thought I never use draft mode.

I imagine different users have differing desires regarding the appropriate behavior here.

[joao]

I find that having text scroll up only one line at a time keeps me focused far too much on the bottom of the screen, which doesn't (to me) make a great deal of ergonomic sense.

I think the way the program handles this right now makes a great deal more sense.

[txwriter]

I appreciate that different people prefer different ways of viewing a screen. And I'm no fan of MS Word, thus the reason I'm considering Nisus.

That said, I've earned a living for 17 years as a writer. I go back to the days of VDT terminals. And I've used at least a half-dozen different propritary systems at newspapers as well as most word processing software released in the last 15 years.

Nisus is the only example I've used where you end up hunting for the cursor whenever you scroll the page. When you're editing fast, it's very distracting.

I like the product. But, this is a devlish detail that makes my job harder. I appreciate all of the feedback and I'll continue to evaluate Nisus.

[rmark]

OK, OK!

I've submitted a feature request that this be variably set in preferences. And the feature request will follow this discussion.

It is not high on "the list", but, depending on how much it "costs" (engineering effort), we'll see when it gets implemented.

That being the case, this discussion should now focus on how the preference should be implemented: number of lines/pixels, scrolling speed, at what point should the new line(s) appear… (i.e. how close to the bottom of the screen before you get new lines). Be specific and precise.

[midwinter]

Using the arrow keys to move the cursor from one page to another causes the document to:

a) pagedown, with the cursor at the top
b) scroll line by line
c) email Nisus with requests for some other function

[cchapin]

When I first started using Nisus, I was bothered by the behavior that bugs txwriter, but I got used to it. If I want something like what he is after, I'd want to set it so that, in Draft View, when I reached the last fully visible line of text in a window and then pressed the down arrow key once, the window would scroll just enough to display the full line of text below that. It would not necessarily have to work this way in Page View. How does that sit with you other folks?

--Craig