jon@weber.ucsd.edu (Jon Matousek) (11/28/90)
In article <14864.9011201902@s4.sys.uea.ac.uk> jrk@information-systems.east-anglia.ac.uk (Richard Kennaway CMP RA) writes: >I recently asked here: > >> When I do a Print Merge in Word 4, it complains if it finds unmatched >> merge quotes (the option-backslash and shift-option-backslash characters). >> Reasonable enough, but what do I do if I want to use those characters as >> characters, rather than as merge command delimiters? > >I received a reply from someone at Microsoft, saying it isnt possible >(but that a future version of Word may let you specify which characters >to use as merge quotes). Ah well. In Nisus 3.0, you can do the following: << Set left="<<" >> after assigning << to the variable "left" you can then use it to obtain a left merge quote; e.g. <<left>>. (After banging around in Word 4 I verified that Word will not do this.) I believe there should be no problem with the right merge quote in Nisus and you can use it directly. Nisus 3's mail merge is fairly robust as MacWorld Australia pointed out in a recent article. In the past, they had used Word's mail merge to create large product indicies ("...a few hundred kilobytes"). The article complains how Word chokes on unmatched quotes ("") in the data file causing them much headache. Then they tried Nisus 3's new (Word compatible) mail merge facility. "...Nisus swallowed the entire database in one pass for all the software entries and another for the hardware entries, without a single error. We could not believe it. The time saving over last year had been in the order of eight hours..." Don't believe them, try it out for yourself. E-mail me your name and address for a free Nisus 3 demo disk. Any questions call Paragon's free tech. support. 800-922-2993. 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 ==========================================================================
rsholmes@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Rich Holmes) (11/28/90)
In article <4088@network.ucsd.edu> jon@weber.ucsd.edu (jOn mAtOUsEk) writes: >Don't believe them, try it out for yourself. E-mail me your name and >address for a free Nisus 3 demo disk. Any questions call Paragon's ... >SoftwareEngineer: jOn mAtOUsEk; Internet: jon@weber.ucsd.edu >%% Bitnet: jmatousek@ucsd >Paragon Concepts, Inc. AppleLink: D0405 -- FLAME ON -- Is anyone else as sick and tired as I am of seeing this BLATANT ADVERTISING for Nisus any time someone asks a question about MS Word?? For that matter, doesn't this kind of advertising violate netiquette? Jon, all these people are asking "How can I use this program I already have to do what I want" -- not "How can I spend another bundle of money on software I may not need". I may be wrong -- perhaps these folks really do appreciate knowing Nisus can solve their problems -- but your pushiness annoys the heck out of me. And maybe it doesn't violate netiquette, but if it doesn't, it should. Pardon me while I go edit my kill file. -- FLAME OFF -- -- - Rich Holmes rich@suhep.bitnet Syracuse U. Physics Dept. rich@suhep.phy.syr.edu or if you must: rsholmes@rodan.acs.syr.edu "The United States -- Making the World Safe For Monarchy!"
cckweiss@pollux (11/29/90)
Rich Holmes responds to Jon Matousek's continual plugs for Nisus with the following musical question: Is anyone else as sick and tired as I am of seeing this BLATANT ADVERTISING for Nisus any time someone asks a question about MS Word?? Well, Rich, I can't give you a definitive answer to that question, since I don't know exactly how sick and tired you are. However, I am really goddam sick and tired of it myself. I find it particularly irritating when there may be a way to solve the problem in Word. Nisus may be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but when someone asks for help with Word, it seems like they deserve the courtesy of getting some help with Word, not an unsolicited piece of electronic junk mail. Now, just so this post isn't pure noise, here's a handy trick I found last night. I needed to print a legal size page out of PageMaker to my Laserwriter IINTX. Alas, I have no legal size paper tray, and PM refused to print the entire document even if I hand fed a sheet of legal paper. Solution: dump the file to disk as pure PostScript (NOT EPS), and send it to the printer using Font Downloader or equivilent. Worked like a charm. Ken Weiss krweiss@ucdavis.edu .
jas@ISI.EDU (Jeff Sullivan) (11/29/90)
In article <9355@aggie.ucdavis.edu> cckweiss@pollux writes: >Rich Holmes responds to Jon Matousek's continual plugs for Nisus with >the following musical question: > >Is anyone else as sick and tired as I am of seeing this BLATANT >ADVERTISING >for Nisus any time someone asks a question about MS Word?? > >Well, Rich, I can't give you a definitive answer to that question, since >I don't know exactly how sick and tired you are. However, I am really >goddam sick and tired of it myself. I find it particularly irritating >when there may be a way to solve the problem in Word. Nisus may be the >greatest thing since sliced bread, but when someone asks for help with >Word, it seems like they deserve the courtesy of getting some help with >Word, not an unsolicited piece of electronic junk mail. > >Now, just so this post isn't pure noise, here's a handy trick I found >last night. I needed to print a legal size page out of PageMaker to my >Laserwriter IINTX. Alas, I have no legal size paper tray, and PM >refused to print the entire document even if I hand fed a sheet of legal >paper. Solution: dump the file to disk as pure PostScript (NOT EPS), and >send it to the printer using Font Downloader or equivilent. Worked like >a charm. > >Ken Weiss >krweiss@ucdavis.edu >. This is just plain silly. Whenever someone posts a question about how to do something, if you can't do it in the program, people COMMONLY recommend a program that can do it, or deos it better/easier/faster. If Jon has irritated anyone, perhaps he should more blatantly point out the standard disclaimer: I *DO* work for Paragon. Take my recommendations with that in mind. So far, he has not lied or given wrong feedback (that I've seen), so you really have no room to complain. If he's the only one giving feedback, you should be goddamn happy there's someone, ANYONE, who cares enough to even answer your questions. Some people have no sense of reality. What do you expect, for chrissakes? jas -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey A. Sullivan | Senior Systems Programmer jas@venera.isi.edu | Information Sciences Institute jas@isi.edu DELPHI: JSULLIVAN | University of Southern California
baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten) (11/29/90)
In article <1990Nov28.145957.10136@rodan.acs.syr.edu>, rsholmes@rodan (Rich Holmes) writes: >Is anyone else as sick and tired as I am of seeing this BLATANT ADVERTISING >for Nisus any time someone asks a question about MS Word?? I feel like I should come to Mr. Matousek's aid here. True, telling someone that another product will solve his or her problems isn't always helpful -- but sometimes it is. If you've got something that just has to be done, and Word can't do it (or it can, but it requires hours of tedious manual labor to set up), perhaps getting a copy of Nisus would be a good idea. Jon isn't selling them, you know. You could just as well find a friend with a copy, or perhaps a sympathetic dealer. Let's say I asked the net: How do I align things *precisely* in PageMaker? Not just by eye, but exactly. If someone were to answer, "You can't," that would be informative, but not very helpful. But an answer that said, "You can't, but did you know that both Quark and DesignStudio will let you do this?", would tell me a little more, and maybe pique my curiousity about those products. Such an answer does two things. For one, it tells me one way to solve my problem. For another, it lets me know that not everything out there is PageMaker, and that there are other programs with different -- and sometimes greater -- capabilities in certain areas. If someone were to ask me how to turn fonts into outlines in Freehand, I'd say that I didn't know, but that I knew you could do it in Illustrator 3.0, and that it works like a charm, with almost no effort at all. It wouldn't occur to me that just because that person might not own Illustrator 3.0 that he *wouldn't* want to hear that answer. Perhaps he *does* own Illustrator, but just didn't realize that he could do that! Last point. The Mac world has started making the unfortunate assumption that word processing on the Mac is Word and Word is word processing on the Mac. It just isn't so. I used to use Word all the time, but having switched to Nisus I dread ever going back to it. It really is *that* much better. It's one of the few products that do some things *so* much better than its competition that it's a shame more people don't know about it. Things people struggle doing with Word (or can't do at all), Nisus does with very little effort. So, while it seems like Mr. Matousek is constantly hawking Nisus, I think he's really just doing his best to make people aware of the alternatives that are out there. It's a relatively little-known and little-used product, but it's really so good that I think people should appreciate hearing every now and again that there are choices other than Word for word processing tasks. The fact that a demo is available makes it that much more attractive, since it can be tried without risk and at very little cost. Hope that wasn't too long or too much of a diatribe... By the way, are you all too young to remember the days when all Mac fanatics did was go around telling people, "You know, you could do that in about 2 minutes on a Mac...", no matter what the question was? I remember them fondly. Nothing like constantly telling people how great a little-known and little-used product is... :-) -- Steve Baumgarten | "New York... when civilization falls apart, Davis Polk & Wardwell | remember, we were way ahead of you." baumgart@esquire.dpw.com | cmcl2!esquire!baumgart | - David Letterman
tj@anaconda.cis.ohio-state.edu (Todd R Johnson) (11/30/90)
In article <2859@esquire.dpw.com> baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten) writes: >>Last point. The Mac world has started making the unfortunate >>assumption that word processing on the Mac is Word and Word is word >>processing on the Mac. It just isn't so. I used to use Word all the >>time, but having switched to Nisus I dread ever going back to it. It >>really is *that* much better. It's one of the few products that do >>some things *so* much better than its competition that it's a shame >>more people don't know about it. Things people struggle doing with >>Word (or can't do at all), Nisus does with very little effort. I would love to switch from Word to Nisus; however, there are some MAJOR features missing from Nisus. If anyone can tell me how to do these or if Nisus will soon support them, then I would consider the program again. 1. EndNote doesn't read Nisus files. In other words, you need to do the in-text citations to bibliography entries by hand. This is not acceptable. Unless Paragon can talk Niles & Associates into changing EndNote to directly read Nisus files, I don't think I will ever use Nisus. 2. Nisus doesn't have a built-in outliner. I use Word's outliner much too often to do without one. 3. Nisus styles looked underpowered. Sure you can write a macro to keep headings on the same page as the next paragraph, but I'd rather just click "keep with next paragraph" for the heading style. If I want to program, I can always just continue to use LaTeX. I also didn't see a way to indicate space before AND space after in a paragraph style. You can do one, but not the other. I also, couldn't find a way of linking styles so that when you end a paragraph, Nisus changes to a new style for the next. Again, I'm sure you can write a macro for this, but I don't want to have to write macros for everything. 4. Nisus styles are not hierarchical. 5. You need to use macros to number things like figures and equations and fix the cross references. I'd prefer auto-numbered series as in Word 5. 6. How do you do floating anchored figures? Nisus has a lot of features that Word will probably never have, but right now Nisus is a lot like the Nisus icon: one arm is on steroids and the other arm is missing. ---Todd -- Todd R. Johnson tj@cis.ohio-state.edu Laboratory for AI Research The Ohio State University
jeffe@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (George Jefferson ) (11/30/90)
> 5. You need to use macros to number things like figures and >equations and fix the cross references. I'd prefer auto-numbered >series as in Word 5. now we are bringing word for windows into this? As far as I am concerned macro-numbering would be better than none at all (Wake up microsoft) The only thing that keeps me using Word 4 is the equation typsetter (And i think I am the only one, so we wont be seing this in Nisus any time soon :-( -- -george @sol1.lrsm.upenn.edu