Macs get their own writing program

For many of us, writing with a word processor is our daily bread, if you will. For those of us using the Apple Macintosh, that’s meant working, for the most part, with Microsoft Word (part of the Microsoft Office v.X suite) or AppleWorks, the multipurpose program once known as ClarisWorks. Now, there’s a new program in the mix, and it bears investigation.

Nisus Writer Express, from Nisus Software of Solana Beach, Calif. (www.nisus.com), is a “Cocoa-based” word processor for Mac OS X. By “Cocoa-based,” it means that it works natively in the Mac operating system, instead of through a kind of interpolation between the program code and the OS.

In plain language, Nisus works more cleanly and clearly, and a bit faster in many instances.

By “Express,” the program’s architects have created a stripped-down word processor that doesn’t — yet — support fancy tasks such as footnotes, right to left text input, line numbering, integrated tables or a thesaurus. This isn’t the word processor to use if you’re doing mail merge letters. In short, it’s decidedly not for everyone.

Which, by this reviewer’s reckoning, may be a good thing. The “word processor for everyone,” which on the Mac side is generally Microsoft’s Word v.X, is far more expensive than that $59.95 list price of Nisus Writer Express, is far more complicated and has a ton of features I don’t normally use in the course of a day. If I want to get into a body of work, get out, and get on with my life, how much time do I want to invest in Microsoft Word?

Perhaps less than I might have otherwise, since Nisus Writer Express will read — and write — Word-format document files, meaning I can collaborate with colleagues, or edit their documents, and still end up with something everyone can share. Once the footnoting issue is solved, this should cover about 80 percent to 90 percent of what I do in the course of a work week. Perhaps it would be a higher percentage for you.

The Nisus screen is clear and uncluttered; there is a palate of tools that slides out at the right side of the screen. One palate is for writing tasks, including formatting text and paragraphs as well as tracking the number of characters and words in a document. Another concentrates on the formatting tools (good for putting the finishing touches on a print document) and a third will track the details of various sections in a document. The palates can be hidden if desired.

Other major features are straightforward, such as cutting, copying and pasting text, as is an undo and redo function. The software’s spell checker taps into a dictionary that’s a part of OS X, and this seems to work rather well. Document headers and footers can be created, although such features are applied to all pages, not just individual ones, so you can’t create one header for page one, another for page two and so on.

Nisus will also “auto-save” your work in a “document manager” that lets you preview (and rename) files. It is a good way to avoid a total loss of work should things go awry. And along with the Microsoft Word format, the program defaults to saving documents as “rich text format,” or RTF, files, and can edit and save text files.

Those who are accustomed to the earlier Nisus Writer products — word processors of combined heft and grace that claimed a loyal, persistent core of users over the years — may bristle at the lack of some features. But no matter. The future, Apple Computer has declared, belongs to OS X, and this program is a good component for that future.

E-mail MarkKel@aol.com or visit the writer’s Web page at www.kellner.us.