6500wong@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Ki Ching Wong) (06/02/91)
I just read the report 'nisus-bugs' from sumex. I'm wondering, how much has the latest version 3.06 improved over the version (3.05) discussed in the report? I'm thinking of getting the word pro. because of its alleged better equation handling ability. But the report really sounds negative. So is it worth $85 (I think that's the educational price at my school, but it's a ver. 3.04. So what's the upgrade policy like?) Or is 3.06 simply a patched version for sys 7? Thanks for any information. -Ki Wong 6500wong@ucsbuxa
marosen@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Mark Rosen) (06/02/91)
In article <11758@hub.ucsb.edu> 6500wong@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Ki Ching Wong) writes: > I just read the report 'nisus-bugs' from sumex. I'm wondering, how > much has the latest version 3.06 improved over the version (3.05) > discussed in the report? I'm thinking of getting the word pro. > because of its alleged better equation handling ability. But the > report really sounds negative. So is it worth $85 (I think that's > the educational price at my school, but it's a ver. 3.04. So what's > the upgrade policy like?) Or is 3.06 simply a patched version for > sys 7? > Thanks for any information. > > -Ki Wong > 6500wong@ucsbuxa If you can get Nisus for $85 DO IT!! It's a great program, and upgrades are available online for free. Yes, you can upgrade to 3.05 to 3.06 very easily.JJAnd it's a great program! Mark (old Word user). -- ************************************************************* Mark J. Rosen | Internet: marosen@elbereth.rutgers.edu | CIS: 72717.2733@compuserve.com *************************************************************
jon@weber.ucsd.edu (Jon Matousek) (06/07/91)
In article <11758@hub.ucsb.edu>6500wong@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Ki Ching Wong) writes: >I just read the report 'nisus-bugs' from sumex. I'm wondering, how >much has the latest version 3.06 improved over the version (3.05) >discussed in the report? I'm thinking of getting the word pro. >because of its alleged better equation handling ability. But the >report really sounds negative. I've just finished reading the report on sumex-aim. Compared to the bug list I've seen for another popular Mac WP it is not that bad. Bug Summary- GRAPHICS: The graphics bugs mentioned exist, although I've never had Nisus crash because of too many graphic. (I will however set up some test docs and see if I can't get Nisus to crash.) Nisus does not support SuperPaint "PICT comments" for rotating text, that is why the rotation is not maintained across copy/paste to and from SuperPaint. The slowness caused by large graphics is due to the slowness of the Mac's PICT drawing calls. Nisus could speed up large graphics if it cached the bitmaps after calling the Mac OS, but currently bitmaps are not cached. SPELLING: The spelling checker in Nisus has been rated among the fastest, but this is not to say that there are problems. I don't know about the user dictionary limit but I am checking into it. There should be an "Ignore All", but currently there is not. One work around is to create a user style that has the "do not spell check" attribute checked. You can then use Nisus awesome Find/Replace to apply this user style to unusual punctuation or a group of words; easily facilitated by creating a macro. This is the easiest and quickest way to apply "ignore all" to a lot of things at once. (Very useful if you are trying to spell check TeX documents.) EDITING: I guess the biggest complaint here seems to be slowness with large docs, "around .25Megs." A few things to know: Nisus docs are completely memory resident when editing, therefore you should turn on the info bar and see how much free memory is remaining. If the free mem drops below 300K you are going to see a performance loss. You can give Nisus more mem under multi-finder, keep a minimal number of windows open, and periodically clear the multiple undo list or multiple clipboards by holding down the option key and selecting from the Edit menu the "Undo" or "Copy" command. (The menus toggle as soon as you hold down the option key so you should have no problems finding the commands.) MACROS: I was not able to reproduce the crash on 3.06 with pasting from a macro into the save as dialog. The problem with the quote (") is that he needs to enter it twice in a row (just like Pascal), so Nisus will know that the embedded quote is not the string delimiter. OUTLINING: (the macros version) Use Expand Thought + to expand all of the sub thoughts. FONTS: Yes, super/sub script tries to be too intelligent as far as resizing. Expect a future version of Nisus to allow more user control of super/sub scripts. STYLE SHEETS: The bug was due to the "Remove"al of user styles. Nisus 3.06 fixes this bug. (The update from 3.05 to 3.06 is free and is available as a PUP update file.) >So is it worth $85 (I think that's the educational price at my school, >but it's a ver. 3.04. So what's >the upgrade policy like?) Or is 3.06 simply a patched version for >sys 7? Well, call Paragon and request a free demo disk, that should help you decide. :-) 1-800-922-2993. Or, send Paragon a letter via "snail" mail. Either way will work just fine. Cheers, -jOn -------------------------------------------------------------------------- %% SoftwareEngineer: jOn mAtOUsEk; Internet: jon@weber.ucsd.edu %% Bitnet: jmatousek@ucsd Paragon Concepts, Inc. AppleLink: D0405 990 Highland Drive, #312 Solana Beach, Ca. 92075 Voice: (619)481-1477 USA FAX: (619)481-6154 ==========================================================================