cs178aas@sdcc8.ucsd.EDU (Grobbins) (02/04/88)
Here, taken from the top of my head rather than from an advertisement, is information about our word processor. All of this information is tentative, and none of it reflects the official policy or plans of Paragon Concepts, Inc. Nisus (pronounced Nice-Us) price: $200 range estimated release: Summer 1988 code size: under 400K written primarily in LSC documents are memory resident What the first release probably _will not_ have: spell checking or thesaurus, hyphenation, equation generation, built-in math functions, mail merge, text wrap along arbitrary graphic borders, kerning, editing multiple on-screen columns What the first release will have: complete graphics/text integration; basic drawing tools; easy graphics importing; text wrap-around of drawings, and opaque and transparent overlapping of drawings and text; more text styles than the competition; style sheets; resizable print preview windows for all open documents, automatically updated; multiple same-width columns in page preview and printed; easy and powerful text pattern matching for searching and replacing (more powerful than Unix regular expressions, and simpler to use); searching on any text attributes; rectangular text selection; tons of preference settings; completely user-defined command keys; cross referencing; footnotes; section numbering; glossary substitution; table of contents and index generation; quick, automatic repagination; two-up formatting for printing booklets. All of the functions of QUED/M are provided, such as: user programmable macros, for mail merge, data management, or any other needed facility; automatic macro recording; manipulation of inactive windows; unlimited undoing and redoing of all actions since the program was started (except for file saving and clipboard changes); support for opening and managing dozens of files; searching through a list of files, even unopened files; ten fully editable clipboards; marker placement and jumping; text hiding, for outlining and browsing; plenty of tools for editing programs; "grep" searching with extensions; copying from file dialogs; file comparison; synchronized two-window scrolling; saving to two separate folders or disks. Many more features are included; feel free to ask about details. Nisus files are saved as plain text, with all extra information in resources, so the text file output of all other programs can be read directly, without conversion, and nearly all other programs will read Nisus files. MacWrite files are read directly, but not written. A MacWrite-compatible clipboard can be used for formatted text exchange with other programs or desk accessories. It is unclear what other file formats (PageMaker, Word 3.0, and so on) will be provided for in the first release. The overriding design concern is adherence to, and natural extension of, the Macintosh user interface guidelines. And, no, we will not be selling copies before it's complete, nor will it be advertised before it's nearly done with testing -- which hasn't even begun. We are taking a chance on offering good value in a market inundated by heavily hyped competitors. As this posting hopefully makes apparent, we are Macintosh users first and foremost, and deal with our customers the way we like to be dealt with. We will be honest about the capabilities and limitations of Nisus. Grobbins grobbins@sdemlab.ucsd.edu Paragon Concepts, Inc. Again, all of this information is tentative, and none of it reflects the official policy or plans of Paragon Concepts, Inc.