Thank you Kino, for those kind words.

When Apple introduced OS 10, Nisus would no longer work so I needed a word processor that would and Kino suggested LightWayText. This worked fine, but was complex and had an almost unintelligible manual. I wrote to the developer with a question, which was answered immediately. They explained that they wished to break into the Western market, but their manual was ridiculed without really assessing their program. I told them to improve the manual and offered to do it.

This should have been a simple task, but there was a factor that I had not thought of. The normal technical English I used was too complex for the Japanese developer to understand. What they wanted were their words in grammatically correct English.

I do not know how successful the LightWayText family of programs is worldwide, but I do know that it has been translated into several European languages - including Danish, thank you Erik. There is a PC version that allows files to be exchanged between Macs and PCs without any loss of feature, and there will soon be an app for the iPad too. 

It would appear that the unusual appearance of their site may not be as ineffective as you think! However, please write to them with your comments.

Doug

Using OS 10.6.6, downloaded via Software Update.

On 6 Jan 2011, at 18:17, Alan & Elaine wrote:

> Hi Kino/Doug
> 
> I fully agree with your comments on the iText site. It will drive away prospective customers; and those who do persevere and download demos are faced by equally off-putting ReadMe docs (despite Doug's good work). Is there any possibility of persuading them to limit themselves to max two (business-like) typeface families and two colours? 
> 
> BTW, Happy NY to you and the rest of the Nisus List. My apologies for being late; I have been out of circulation for a while.
> 
> AlanD
> 
> 
> On 6 Jan 2011, at 17:39, Kino wrote:
> 
>> For relatively recent subscribers to the list, I'd like to tell you that Doug had/has been making every effort to help the developer(s) to improve the English interface. Great job. It is actually better than its native interface (Japanese).
>> 
>> Unfortunately Doug could not convince them of the necessity to improve their site, it seems. They use too many colours, a greater number of colours than Apple, oh well ;-) 
>> 
>> 
>> Kino
>> 
>> 
>> On 2011-01-07 +0900 (JST), at 2:22 AM, Doug Browne wrote:
>> 
>>> On 6 Jan 2011, at 15:57, Andrus wrote:
>>> 
>>>> So I mostly use Text Edit― which would be totally unthinkable without undo!  Now we even have multiple undo!  But why not a way to adjust margins, display non-printing characters, and access to grep? :-(
>>> 
>>> I do not know what features you want, but if you can work with Text Edit, you might try iText Express. It is free too!
>>> 
>>> http://homepage.mac.com/lightway/iText/iTextExpress/TryiTxtExp.html
>>> 
>>> Doug