Hello Geoff
Geoffrey Heard wrote:
> I'm wondering what's happening with NWP's immediate competitors? Has
> anyone been following any of them? I don't mean Word -- it's the 500 kg
> gorilla -- I mean the other smaller WPs.
Well Geoff, I do better like a 500kg gorilla than the big monster called
Word.:)
> I know one that could have been a competitor -- Papyrus. It's just came
> to a dead stop in
> English at v.12.5 in about 2005 (I think) with some obvious improvements
> needed, while it has moved up to v.17 in German. I've been following it
> because I was interested in its database function ("was" beibng the
> operative term here).
Yes, Papyrus stopped with the ver. 12.5.6 in 2007, but they released a
new probably German only Papyrus Office 2011 v. 17.0.2 dec.23 2010, so
at least in German it's still alive. - I think it's the same as with the
old Hansa FirstOffice which also suddenly disappeared from the
atmospheres, but it's still around - now mostly based as a web based
Java compilation. I have tried the latest version and I'd call it
something very nasty - "#€"#€"#€ - translate to what you prefer
yourself.:-) - It isnot good!
The other 'Big German' - RagTime is still around, but nearly only used
for top-professional use nowadays. The last update - 6.52 was released
last year for both Mac and Win, and it's working just great, - but it's
expensive like that... - I have and still use the ver. 6.0.x from time
to time and I still like it. - But both the learning and using curves
are rather steep, so you do have to know what you're doing - else
everything might be spoiled...
> But what of Mellel, mariner Writer, etc? Are they upgrading? Are they
> bashing down people's doors?
MarinerWrite and MarinerCalc are also around. Latest ver of Write is now
ver. 3.8 and something like ver. 5.6 for Calc. I know they are working
on a brand new and totally rewritten cocoa version, but they want to do
it right from the buttom.
I know this cause I've put in my ticket to be the Danish translator when
it's out, and until that I 'only' translate the MacGourmet Deluxe,
though I've run into some severe problems with all those .nib files that
isn't that easy to open anymore, because they are automatically compiled
so older versions of XCode can't open them. This means that when I
upgrade to SnowLeopard the app also would be restricted to be 10.5.x and
10.6.x only apps and not 10.4.x, 10.5.x and 10.6.x apps.:-(
OK, there of course still are the three large compeditors - NeoOffice,
OpenOffice and StarOffice. These three are doing great and as far as I'm
aware of now have more than a 1/3 of the market totally seen on alle
platforms. I use the OpenOffice on both Mac and Windows and it's really
great to know that no matter /where/ the docs are created they will
always be the same no matter on which system you open and edit again.
M$ claims the same about Word, but I can guarantee that this is one of
the biggest lies I ever have seen. - A guy here called me in the middle
of the night and nearly cried that he was unable to open and edit an
article that he had to have ready for the next morning to go into press.
- He has mad the main doc on his Mac using MSO2004, edited it on his
parents in law's Windows 7 base machine using MSO2007. When he tried to
open it, the Mac simply crashed. I asked him to send it to me right away
and I then spent 4 hours to try to rescue it and I succeeded - luckily
because I have the BBEdit 9.x which was the only app that was able to
open the full document and show the whole content, So I copied out the
main text and created a new document in NWP. The only thing I had to
change was the special Danish characters æÆ, øØ and åÅ that all were
marked as reversed questionmarks, so thanks to the 'Find & Replace' in
NWP I could change any of them just by copying the false character and
then replace with the correct Danich character. All characters were
replaced _correctly_. - Tried the same with my MSO2008 - here only about
half of the characters were replaced correctly...
He got his article back and delievered it to the press next morning -
thanks to BBEdit and NWP! - But how NWP were able to differ the same
reversed questionmark with the _correct Danish æ, ø or å - that's still
a riddle to me... - I can only explain it the way that the reversed
question mark hides more than one character.:-)
> And what on earth do people think is actually happening at Nisus? My
> take on the software market (in fact, just about any market these days)
> is that you need to keep pushing your product(s) forward with face
> lifts, incremental upgrades, etc.
>
> it's all very well to have a bunch of supportive customers, but they're
> not much use to you if they aren't buying anything because you're not
> giving them anything to buy! :D
Well, I think smaller changes and add-ons will occour - such as being
able to increase font sizes larger than 128p using the arrows and not
having to type in the wanted size. This feature is especially needed
when you're using deco fonts.
What Brian proposes such as an AppStore version...hm... I donot think
that this will be a good idea. This will cause that you will not be able
to use the program on any other computer or system that it is downloaded
to. We can already see this now that Textwrangler has been released in a
AppStore version. This version is only usable on OS X 10.6 and therefore
also only on Intel Machines. - And why on earth should Apple be the
decider to what _they_ think will be good or not for use on an Apple
computer? - OK, they of course at the same time guarantee that the app
will be working. But many of us are still using non-Intel Macs - and why
on earth aren't we also allowed to use these cheaper apps?
And I sure donot hope that Nisus are so stupid to go into that kind of
business! - /IF/ they should do anything they should instead 'reduce'
the NWE to a minimum and release this app - maybe called NisusMini for
the iPhone/iPad AppStore. This will sure give quite a lot better
usability making text documents - especially on the iPad instead of that
pice of crap that now is available on that one. - And of course such a
'NisusMini' version MUST have all the main features and also include the
possibility of being able to use full scripting - else it would be
worthless...
Cheers, Erik Richard
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Erik Richard Sørensen, Member of ADC, <[log in to unmask]>
NisusWriter - The Future In Multilingual Text Processing - www.nisus.com
Openoffice.org - The Modern Productivity Solution - www.openoffice.org
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