However, I can't leave Word just yet, although I want to because it has this horrible thing where when you type, there is a slight (and sometimes not so slight) delay after you hit the key. This might sound anal retentive, but it drives me up the wall, and it distracts me when I'm trying to write. NWE, thankfully, does not.
And back to NWE. What keeps me from switching:
1. No outlining support in NWE. Say what you want about Word, but outlining in the program is easy and intuitive: tabs work the way they do in OmniOutliner and creating a quick or complex outline is equally easy. I believe it's even better than AppleWorks, which has a great outlining feature itself. I wish that NWE would provide full support for outlining that is both intuitive and powerful (Melell has failed miserably at this).
2. Some way to do an automatic Table of Contents. Word's is easy, because it is based on styles. Melell's is counterintuitive (I still haven't figured out how to do it, even after reading the manual time and again).
3. Recording Macros. Can you record macros in NWE? I don't know Perl. I don't want to learn Perl. I just want to create a macro easily. (I could live without this feature, but I don't want to).
4. When writing my syllabi for classes, I rely heavily on tables. Some of my tables need to stretch over multiple pages (one table, many pages). Word can do this, NWE cannot.
5. Hyphenation in NWE is iffy sometimes. I believe this is a bug that is being worked on, though. I would also like to have hyphenation options (how many lines between hyphenation), but first, I would just like it to work.
6. Image support. A lot of people may argue that a word processing program should not be a page layout program, but I would argue that in some simpler respects it should, especially on the insertion of images. I know that NWE has this feature, but there's no wrapping options at all that I can find.
To me, these are basic things that a modern word processor should have, and I don't think it would "bloat" the package at all. Although the features above would get me to switch, here are a few of my dream features:
1. What happened to the mini layout buttons just above the ruler that were prominent in every Classic program except for Word? Buttons like justification, drop down menus for font, style, and size, and dropdowns for paragraph style. I miss those buttons.
2. A built-in dictionary, with definitions and everything.
3. Comments, comments, comments (particularly, importing Word's comments). No one else can do this, can Nisus?
4. A paragraph control that would allow me to "keep with next".
I know this is a pretty extensive list. However, I do want to reiterate that you have so much right in NWE. It is a damn fine word processor. I would like it to be a perfect word processor.
Scott Whitlock
