long@mcntsh.enet.dec.com (Rich Long) (04/09/91)
In article <17133@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM>, dave@PRC.Unisys.COM (David Lee Matuszek) writes... >[about Word and Nisus] To his comments let me add that I have tried the Nisus demo, and like it (but WHY didn't they include the help file?). My beefs are: o RAM based. Uh-uh. Nope. Makes it darn hard to read LARGE files. Qued has the same problem. o No tables. I use this Word feature ALL the time. I want this integrated, not some random add-on program. o No color drawing on color Macs. If these things are fixed, I might buy Nisus, because it is nifty in other ways. ObParagonPeeve: What's happening with Qued? It's arguably the best text editor on the Mac. Upgrade it, guys! How about EZ-Grep for starters? Richard C. Long | long@mcntsh.enet.dec.com | Selfware: If you like --------------- | ...!decwrl!mcntsh.enet.dec.com!long | this program, send A First Edition | long%mcntsh.dec@decwrl.enet.dec.com | yourself five bucks!
hedstrom@sirius.UVic.CA (Brad Hedstrom) (04/10/91)
In article <17133@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM> dave@PRC.Unisys.COM (David Lee Matuszek) writes: > I would recommend Word if: > - you need the features Word has and Nisus lacks. > - you need to be compatible with other people who use Word. > - you have already mastered Word. I just wanted to add one small note to Dave's evaluation: Nisus can read Word 3 and Word 4 documents as long as they haven't been "fast" saved. Nisus can also write Word 3 files. -- ___________________________________________________________________________ Brad Hedstrom Electrical and Computer Engineering Department University of Victoria Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Internet: hedstrom@sirius.UVic.CA UUCP: ...!{uw-beaver,ubc-visions,ubc-cs}!sirius.UVic.CA!hedstrom "A no smoking section in a restaurant is as effective as a no chlorine section in a swimming pool."
long@mcntsh.enet.dec.com (Rich Long) (04/10/91)
In article <HEDSTROM.91Apr9125844@jacob.UVic.CA>, hedstrom@sirius.UVic.CA (Brad Hedstrom) writes... >I just wanted to add one small note to Dave's evaluation: Nisus can >read Word 3 and Word 4 documents as long as they haven't been "fast" Yes, but--in the demo at least--table formatting was not preserved. It would have been nice if Nisus had done something reasonable. Richard C. Long | long@mcntsh.enet.dec.com | Selfware: If you like --------------- | ...!decwrl!mcntsh.enet.dec.com!long | this program, send A First Edition | long%mcntsh.dec@decwrl.enet.dec.com | yourself five bucks!
hedstrom@sirius.UVic.CA (Brad Hedstrom) (04/11/91)
In article <4338@ryn.mro4.dec.com> long@mcntsh.enet.dec.com (Rich Long) writes: > In article <HEDSTROM.91Apr9125844@jacob.UVic.CA>, hedstrom@sirius.UVic.CA (Brad Hedstrom) writes... >>I just wanted to add one small note to Dave's evaluation: Nisus can >>read Word 3 and Word 4 documents as long as they haven't been "fast" > Yes, but--in the demo at least--table formatting was not preserved. It would > have been nice if Nisus had done something reasonable. You're right, it doesn't (I just tried it). I'm assuming that to preserve the Word table, Nisus would have had to implement Word's Table functionality (probably using the same data structures). Do I smell some lawyers and maybe a bit of court action here? It does seem to be the rage. Who's to say? I would imagine that since Word's tables aren't PICTs (one can't copy and past them except as text, all formatting is lost), they are proprietary data structures that Microsoft isn't too keen on divulging to its competitors. Just a supposition... -- ___________________________________________________________________________ Brad Hedstrom Electrical and Computer Engineering Department University of Victoria Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Internet: hedstrom@sirius.UVic.CA (a.k.a. Brazil North) UUCP: ...!{uw-beaver,ubc-visions,ubc-cs}!sirius.UVic.CA!hedstrom "A no smoking section in a restaurant is as effective as a no chlorine section in a swimming pool."
george@hsvaic.boeing.com (George Williams) (04/11/91)
long@mcntsh.enet.dec.com (Rich Long) and dave@PRC.Unisys.COM (David Lee Matuszek) write about Nisus... > >[about Word and Nisus] > To his comments let me add that I have tried the Nisus demo, and like it (but > WHY didn't they include the help file?). My beefs are: > o RAM based. Uh-uh. Nope. Makes it darn hard to read LARGE files. Qued > has the same problem. > o No tables. I use this Word feature ALL the time. I want this > integrated, not some random add-on program. > o No color drawing on color Macs. > If these things are fixed, I might buy Nisus, because it is nifty in other > ways. I also tried the demo, though only briefly. I didn't switch from FullWrite because one of the most important things to me is an integrated outliner. MSWord has one, but the user interface is awful. I understand that there are other outliners (e.g., Acta) and other word processing programs that either aren't as full-featured as FullWrite or have ugly user interfaces. Except for the outliner, I would probably have bought Nisus. I really like the idea of being able to use it to edit source code and have font and style changes that I see but that the compilers don't. Hmm..., What would an outline look like to a compiler? I guess I'd want the ability to say whether or not the titles, heading numbers, and such were hidden (in the resource fork). George Williams Boeing Computer Services Internet: george@hsvaic.boeing.com POBox 240002, M/S JY-58 UUCP: ...!uw-beaver!bcsaic!hsvaic!george Huntsville AL 35824-6402 Phone: 205+464-4968 FAX: 205+464-4930 BTN: 464-4968
pv9y@vax5.cit.cornell.edu (04/11/91)
In article <4329@ryn.mro4.dec.com>, long@mcntsh.enet.dec.com (Rich Long) writes: > > In article <17133@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM>, dave@PRC.Unisys.COM (David Lee Matuszek) writes... >>[about Word and Nisus] > > To his comments let me add that I have tried the Nisus demo, and like it (but > WHY didn't they include the help file?). My beefs are: To add more comments on still :-) > > o RAM based. Uh-uh. Nope. Makes it darn hard to read LARGE files. Qued > has the same problem. I see this as a feature. Nisus is fast to do things because everything is in RAM. Just yesterday I opened 53 files (over 1M of text) in Nisus under the Finder so it could use all of my 8 MB of RAM. It was fast and easy and only slightly slower than working with the two or three files I usually have open. Not to mention then I could search for anything in all open files instantaneously. To compare, I opened an 800K document in Word today and tried to save as TEXT. It must have taken 5 minutes at least, if not longer. I'll take the speed any day, although if you've got a decent amount of memory there should be no problem with large files or lots of them. > o No tables. I use this Word feature ALL the time. I want this > integrated, not some random add-on program. Tables are pretty snazzy alright, though I find Word's implementation clumsy. I'll bet that Nisus 4.0 will sport a super-cool table feature. Comments from Jon Matousek on this? > Richard C. Long | long@mcntsh.enet.dec.com | Selfware: If you like My opinion is that things like the GREP search and replace, powerful macros (and who cares if they're a little slow in comparison to AutoMac - they do so much more) and a programming language, non-contiguous selection, character-based styles (much more powerful than paragraph-based styles), and multiple user-defined command keys (so I have Page Setup mapped to Command-P-S, far easier to remember than Control-Option-F14 or whatever you could make it in any other macro program) make Nisus the word processor of choice for people who **really** work with text. And those 53 files I was talking about? Those were the text files for each issue of TidBITS released so far, a total of over 900,000 characters and almost 400 pages in the last year. All of that was written and edited in Nisus. Check out TidBITS#54 in comp.sys.mac.digest for other stats on the last year of TidBITS along with information from our survey. cheers ... -Adam -- Adam C. Engst (best) ace@tidbits.tcnet.ithaca.ny.us (also) ace@tidbits.uucp (if all else fails) pv9y@vax5.cit.cornell.edu --------------------------------------------------------------- Editor of TidBITS, the weekly electronic Macintosh news journal
martin@cs.uchicago.edu (Charles Martin) (04/14/91)
In article <236@hsvaic.boeing.com>, george@hsvaic (George Williams) writes: >I also tried the demo, though only briefly... Is this demo disk generally available? Charles Martin // martin@cs.uchicago.edu
hoepfner@heawk1.gsfc.nasa.gov (Patrick Hoepfner) (04/14/91)
hedstrom@sirius.UVic.CA (Brad Hedstrom) writes: [ ... deleted stuff ... ] [When you read a MS Word 3.0 or 4.0 file from Nisus] >> table formatting is not preserved. >You're right, it doesn't (I just tried it). I'm assuming that to >preserve the Word table, Nisus would have had to implement Word's >Table functionality (probably using the same data structures). >I would imagine that since Word's tables aren't PICTs (one can't copy >and past them except as text, all formatting is lost), they are >proprietary data structures that Microsoft isn't too keen on divulging >to its competitors. Nisus could provide the table funcionality by what ever means that it would like to and I don't think that MS could sue over the ability to create tables. Remember that Lotus tried to sue someone over the look- and-feel issue because their competator had used rows and columns. The judge ruled against Lotus because the row-and-column metaphor was tied to the way that spread sheets worked (also Lotus didn't invent it, they stole it from someone else.) If Nisus wanted to provide the table functionality, there is no legal reason form them not to. I personally would like it if Nisus provided the ability to read RTF files and use Claris' XTND file format reading and writing technology. +--------------------------+---------------------------------------+ / Patrick Hoepfner | NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center \ / America Online: PatrickH9 | Internet: hoepfner@heasfs.gsfc.nasa.gov \ +-----------------------------+------------------------------------------+
sphynx@cs.mcgill.ca (Alain BIENVENUE) (04/23/91)
HELP! Here in Montreal, Canada there seems to be a new Macintosh virus. We had all the protection, but suddenly files were bad ( error -127), some floppy got erased, some were ejected. We ran all public and commercial anti viral software but even if some of them found a virus, they didn't knew what to do with it. We cant even get a dump of it with virex. We cannot reformat everything since the virus is deadly and very virulent. A lot of hard disks are affected. We have to isolate it but we do not even know where to start. Right now, i'm writing a program to get data on the hd without mounting it, since if i mount the hd, my boot floppy ( even if it's locked) will get damaged! Where should i start? Alain Bienvenue or Francois Dion (sphynx@bart.cs.mcgill.ca) or if you have acces to fidonet: Christopher McCulloch, 1:167/170