• Greetings From Nisus Land
  "Nisus Writer Pro Update"
• Nisus Writer Express
  "High Value, Low Price"
• Tips and Tricks
  "Why Do My Word Docs Change To Nisus Docs?"
• Odds And Ends

Greetings From Nisus Land
"After Macworld Rumblings"

I posted this originally to our web log, but I realize that some of you do not read our blog, which is located at http://www.nisus.com/blogs/.

Anyway, the question is why hasn't the Nisus Writer Pro public beta been released? 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, when asked when Leopard will be released, says things like "the first half of 2007".

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 where 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).

We know 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 (really, truly) 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, when is the Pro public beta going to be released? 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."

Nisus Writer Express
"High Value, Low Price"

Since some of you will be reading this with hangovers after a weekend of celebrating St. Patrick's Day, let me just say this: You need a writing tool that is dependable, easy to use, and non-intrusive.

That tool is Nisus Writer Express. You want features? Express has them. Intuitive user interface, powerful find and replace, non-contiguous selection, multilingual text support, and much more. Compatibility? Express uses RTF as its native format. This means that anyone who has some sort of semi-modern word processor can open your documents. Need to deal with Word documents? Express can open most Word documents.

Best of all, Express has a new, lower price. Just $45 for the download version. That's just about a $25.00 price drop. The Express Family Pack is now only $79.00, and the Academic version is only $39.00.

We also have CD versions for $10.00 extra plus shipping.

You can read all about Express at our Nisus Writer Express page, and even download a full working demo.

Let's face it, you need a reliable word processor to help you write those formal apology letters after your weekend of "fun".

Tips and Tricks
"Why Do My Word Docs Change To Nisus Docs?"

Rock Strongo here, to disseminate information as only I can. Which really means that I stopped in long enough to write this tip.

This is an email we get fairly often:

"I get lots of email attachments that are Word documents. Why do they change to Nisus documents? What are you doing to my files?"

First, you should know that we do not do anything to encourage this behavior. The finder does this, not Nisus. Don't believe me? Read on, Rembrandt.

Note that the system changes the icon only, not the file itself. In other words, nothing has been changed except the icon.

To change the association from Nisus back to Word, simply choose a file that you want to change, then go to the Finder and from the File menu, choose "Get Info" (or Command-I). In the "Get Info" window, find "Open with:" and from the pull down menu, choose "Microsoft Word" and that document will be associated with MS Word. If you want all documents of that type to open with Word, click the "Change AllÉ" button.

Nisus Writer Express can still open those documents, but you will have to drag it to the Nisus icon in the dock or use the Open dialog in Express.

You can find many other answers to other common questions in our FAQ section.

Now I am off to TED, or FRED, or some such conference. No big deal, I won't remember it anyway.

Odd And Ends

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