Doug, et al.

I too lament the loss of Nisus using plain text files-- I wish it  
could have retained that, and put the formatting and graphics in  
a .rtfd package or something.  That still wouldn't be as slick as the  
original resource, but...

Anyhow, I think Gene's complaint is not that he can't open the file,  
but has lost the option of having NWP open the classic files by  
default or by choice in the list of options.

I am using OS 10.4.11, but don't have the same problem-- perhaps  
because I installed and used Kino's fix described in his reply.  In  
earlier versions of the OS, it allowed double clicking classic files  
to be handled automatically.  Now that has broken, but apparently  
still associates the files to something Nisus (classic or X version?)  
so that NWP shows up in the list of choices in the finder Get-Info  
window.  But the files now show AppleScript icons and double clicking  
them opens them in AppleScript.

So my tactic currently is to append .nisus to the classic files, and  
set the Finder (via the Get Info window) to open them with NWP.  It  
has been and still is a painful mess, but I did discover I can search  
for Classic files by putting "Paragon Concepts" in a Finder search.  
You can see that in the Finder Get-Info window under "version", and  
of course I can still drag the files to TextEdit or whatever to see  
the raw text quickly.

So, it is an unfortunate result all the "progress" with less than  
perfect solutions, but maybe this will help.  The challenge is  
knowing how much of what you have and what you want to do with it.

Oops.  I may have written something a bit inaccurate.  I looked again  
and noticed that NWP v 1.3 does not show up in the Finder Get-Info  
choices-- only version 1.2, which I still seem to have installed.  So  
the iterations and permutations grow!  As does my uncertainty of  
exact details.  :-(

But Gene, I think if it works for your situation and needs, which may  
require some reflection, appending something like .nisus to the file  
names may work for you-- IF that will bring up the option to choose  
NWP... or maybe it will take something else to trigger that?

For me, after setting to "apply to all"  they can still be opened by  
Nisus Classic, or TextEdit as before-- but just not by default.  They  
now show up with NWP icons and double clicking opens them with NWP.

Hope that helps,
	Ben Andrus

__________________________________________________
On 2011 Jan 25, Tue, at 10:48 am, Doug McNutt wrote:

> At 16:30 +0900 1/25/11, Gene Reeves wrote:
>> I wonder if anyone has an idea as to why the information panel (at  
>> least in OS 10.4.11) does not give NWP as an option for opening  
>> older Nisus files.
>>
>> I have been using Nisus since before it was Nisus (Solo Writer?).  
>> Naturally I have some old Nisus documents, some of which I  
>> occasionally need to open. If I were to just open NWP, find the  
>> relevant document and tell it to open it, it will. But my habit  
>> when I need to change the application in which I want a document  
>> to open is to open the information panel and change the designated  
>> application there. But when I do that with older Nisus documents,  
>> Nisus 4 for example, I am given a gazillion options. Every  
>> possible text application and some that are not even for that  
>> purpose, is shown as an option--everything except NWP or NWE! Why  
>> should I be able to select Word, Mellel, Graphic Converter, Devon,  
>> Eudora, etc. etc., but not NWP? It's strange.
>
>
> Really old Nisus files are simply TEXT documents with all  
> formatting in a resource fork.
>
> OS neXt attempts to support resource forks in it's UNIX environment  
> but gets worse and worse at it with each release. I doubt if there  
> ever was a resource manager in the OS X toolbox and Nisus-X would  
> need it to recover the formatting. Surely newer versions of Nisus  
> will open a text file though, won't they?
>
> And while I'm at it. . . That feature of working with simple TEXT  
> files remains useful to me even though I  have to run Nisus on this  
> old OS-9 Mac. The idea that a Nisus document can be read by, say, a  
> lathe, a milling machine, or a UNIX shell script was really nice.  
> It's about the only software, other than spreadsheets, which can  
> display tab separated columns on a screen when the column widths  
> just have to be different. Sometimes I miss my 026 keypunch where  
> the tab key works.
>
> -- 
> -->  The best programming tool is a soldering iron <--