• Greetings From Nisus Land
  "Looking Forward, Looking Back"
• Nisus Writer Express
  "Right to Left Text Input? Why yes. Yes we do"
• Did You Know?
  "QuickFix"
• Odds And Ends

Grettings From Nisus Land
"Looking Forward, Looking Back"

As we near the end of the year (hey, that rhymes!), I have to say that it's been a pretty good year for Nisus Software. Nisus Writer Express has been very successful for us, and Express 2.5 is the best version yet.

On a personal note, I have stayed on the right side of the law now for almost 7 months, a new personal best which I hope will last until at least New Year's Eve.

Anyway, back to Nisus. The New Year will bring the annual Macworld Expo, which we will be attending yet again. If you are in the San Francisco area January 9 - 13, feel free to stop by and say hello. But just hello! We are very busy people.

Speaking of Macworld, this particular edition might be a big one, as it is expected that Apple will launch their first Intel based machines at the show. As usual, Apple will neither confirm or deny this, so we are left to guess. My guess is that if they are going to do it, this is the biggest stage, so why not? It makes sense to do it there, yes? Yes. Of course, I will believe it when I see it.

What does that mean for Nisus? It means that we will have to recompile Express for these Intel machines. I am sure that most of you have heard that it is an easy thing to produce a Universal Binary (that is a PowerPC and an Intel application wrapped in one package). For us, it will be a bit more complicated because of our Classic file converter. It won't be a simple matter of clicking a checkbox, it will require some actual work.

Then there is the matter of having an actual production machine to test with.

Apart from those issues, things are going great! When the Intel machines are released we will work quickly to release Express as a Universal Binary.

In the short term Express 2.6 should be out for beta testing soon. This will be a bug fix update, with a few new features thrown in, including WYSIWYG font viewing, converting smart to straight quotes and vice versa, and a couple other minor features. This will of course be a free upgrade for current owners of Express.

So, as you can see, the immediate future, while not completely without potential problems, looks very rosy. We don't plan on going anywhere, we will be here for you to antagonize for many years to come.

Unless we aren't.

Nisus Writer Express
"Right to Left Text Input? Why yes. Yes we do"

Festivus is fast approaching, and I have a lot of problems with you people! I'll get back to that, but in the meantime, let's talk about Express.

Yes, as it says above, Nisus Writer Express does indeed support right to left text input (Mac OS X 10.4 is required for best results). Express 2.5 also has support for list styles (bullets and numbering), support for hyperlinks, fixed line spacing, LinkBack support, and many other fixes and enhancements. These new features go along with our award winning interface that looks like it belongs on the Mac, industry standard RTF file format support (so you can share your work with others), our easy to use style sheet navigator, fix typos as you type (QuickFix) ... I could go on.

What I am driving at is that if you are looking for an easy to use word processor that has an interface that looks like it belongs on a Mac, Nisus Writer Express is for you!

There is also an upgrade from Nisus Writer 6.0 and above. An academic version is also available from here.

By the way, Express is a perfect gift for someone who is new to the Mac, or an experienced Mac user like yourself. Just specify a different shipping address and let us know it is a gift and we will take care of it.

Remember, there are only (fill in the blank) shopping days left. Express makes a great gift, and it won't bust your budget.

Don't get one for me, though. I already have a copy.

Did You Know?
"QuickFix"

Rock Strongo here. Did you know that QuickFix fixes typos as you type? Well, neither did I until someone told me.

So at this point, you are probably thinking to yourself "tell me something I don't know, bucket head!" Fine, I will, but can you stop with the name calling?

If you look in the Preference menu, which is under the "Nisus Writer Express" menu, you will see a pane called "QuickFix". Click on that, and you will see a list of misspelled words and their properly spelled counterparts. If you click the "Fix Typos" checkbox, every time you type "teh" it will auto-magically change "teh" to "the".

Pretty cool, eh?

You can also add to our list of words simply by checking the "+" button.

Now, we know that some of you do not like this sort of thing. You don't want to use it, no problem. Just uncheck the "Fix Typos" checkbox and you can misspell to your heart's content.

So there you go. Pretty simple to use, or not use, depending on your preferences.

Next time, how to spy on your enemies using Express (No one under 18 allowed)!

Odd And Ends

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