3.382 more on Nisus (43)

Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@VM.EPAS.UTORONTO.CA)
Tue, 22 Aug 89 19:37:54 EDT


Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 382. Tuesday, 22 Aug 1989.

Date: Tue, 22 Aug 89 13:05:27 EDT
From: Geoff Rockwell <rockwell@utorgpu>
Subject: Re: 3.378 Nisus (50)

At MacWorld I picked up a demo copy of Nisus which I am sure they would send
to those interested. My contact is

Edwina Riblet
Paragon Concepts, Inc
99 Highland Drive, #312
Solana Beach, CA 92075
(619) 481-1477

What interested me was the "Easy Grep" feature. Combined with a macro
language one can do things like create a word type index or frequency
list (I saw the first and was told the second could be done.) The latest
release also has footnoting and endnoting which was not there before,
making it a more interesting to the accademic. Finally it has a graphics
layer that alows one to attach graphics to text so that the images float
over the text anchored to the paragraph. As for importing, it seems to handle
MS Word and MacWrite (import not export.) I am waiting for the real version
before pushing it further.

As an aside, at MacWorld I met two programers from Nisus who had taken
jobs with other companies. Both spoke highly of what they had done (note
the past tense.) Makes one wonder...

Considering how quickly Nisus has matured from a code editor to a fully
featured word processor, it is worth watching. Some word processors seem
to rest on their laurels while others experiment. I suspect it has to do
with the size of the user base that one must not alienate.

Yours Geoffrey Rockwell