Nisus Writer Express has the write stuff
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Dec 7, 2004 at 12:15am
Nisus Software’s Nisus Writer Express, now up to version 2.1, is an excellent word processor for the Mac. It’s fast, affordable and doesn’t consume the resources of Word. Though it still doesn’t pack the punch of the original Nisus Writer, the latest version of Express packs more punch than did Nisus Writer Express (released in 2003).
Nisus Writer Express has several features that I find really useful, such as the Document Manager, which (as the name implies) “manages” documents in a single folder, Nisus Documents (which is stored in your Documents folder). Documents will be autosaved with filenames equivalent to their first few words, and a Preference option can direct the word processor to automatically place new files in the Manager. It’s a convenient, well-implemented feature.
Nisus Writer Express is also extremely flexible, allowing you to customize and rearrange most elements. You can add and remove icons from the Toolbar—or hide the Toolbar completely. In the Tooldrawer, you can use the Palette Library to add, remove and reorder your writing tools to your heart’s content. Plus, you can define your own keyboard shortcuts so you can access every menu item without opening a menu.
The word processor is also well organized in its layout and design. It presents editing and formatting controls in a toolbar across the top and a slide-out menu on the side of each document’s window instead of being buried under menus and submenus. At the bottom right corner of a page are small icons that provide quick access to endnotes and footnotes, style sheets, languages, clipboard and the magnification feature. And inserting foot and/or endnotes is as easy as selecting “Insert” and then “footnote/endnote” and typing or pasting text.
What’s more, Nisus Writer Express simplifies the use of style sheets. You can view and update your styles using the Style Sheet view. To edit a style, just switch to the Style Sheet view and choose the style you want. Then use palettes and menus to apply formatting as usual. Sample text that you can edit is shown for each style, which lets you immediately see how your style will look.
Nisus Writer Express 2.1 also does a better job of importing and exporting Microsoft Word files than its predecessors. Additionally, it has built-in support for Rich Text Format and can also handle plain text, Unicode, AbiWord, RTFC and PDF files.
The word processor can purportedly handle up to 180 different languages. I only use one (English) but if you need multi-language support in one document, you can mix and match them.
The creation of tables is also easier to use than in any other word processor I’ve tried. To add one, you just use the Insert Table toolbar item, choose the style and draw the table. You can then use the Tables palette group to edit table settings such as padding, borders and shading.
Nisus Writer Express had the best find and replace tools around. The PowerFind feature offers a streamlined way to describe patterns in your text without having to learn a programming language. Cleaning up formatting is also a breeze. “Info Tags” at the bottom of the document window offer visual information on the formatting applied to text. When you click on these tags, an options menu lets you change or remove the formatting. You can even select all the ranges in a document with the same formatting; this makes it easy and fast to apply changes to an entire document.
There are a few things that I wish were different in Nisus Writer Express. There were times when I selected an entire document and changed the font size only to find that not all of it was altered. Also, Nisus should include a grammar checker, at least (since some folks don’t like them) as an optional add-on. And maybe it’s just me, but the fact that the magnification tool has 128 percent instead of 125 percent bothers me.
But, overall, Nisus Writer Express is fast, flexible and as friendly as the Mac itself.
Nisus Writer Express costs US$59.99 for a downloadable version and $69.99 for a CD.
System requirements: Mac OS X 10.2.8 or higher
Macsimum rating: 8 out of 10
Have a product you’d like us to review? Drop us an e-mail at daseller@earthlink.net
Article Information
Comment on this Article Print this Article Email this Article Digg This
Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
Recent Articles
