Nisus Writer Pro – The way to go for RTL on the Mac

Doug Chaplin has been considering switching from a PC to the Mac OS and asked about various programs on the Mac platform, in particular which word processor to use. Below is the comment I posted and I thought I would share it here as well.


Nisus Writer Pro, without a doubt. I used the old NW for years, wrote my doctoral thesis and my book in it. (Actually, if you Google my name and Nisus you will find archives from email lists going back to 1994 where we discussed NW issues and solutions.)

The new version is very good and, having helped to test Mellel early on, find it much more elegant and easy to use while actually being far more powerful (so I am told, I never have need for GREP, etc.). It does RTL very nicely, you can customize all sorts of commands, searches, formats, etc. and plays well (so they say, again I haven’t tried it) with Sente, etc.: “Bibliography tools such as Bookends, EndNote, and Sente work easily with Nisus Writer Pro.” http://www.nisus.com/pro/

Finally, the guys and gals at Nisus are incredibly personable and responsive (as are the Mellel folks, to be fair, great people). I have found that they reply to my emails within 24 hours to help me with any question or issue.

In sum, the new Office is very nice, especially Entourage if you need Exchange, and Word is very good for what it is. BUT if you need RTL and the best word processor (Word is far more, and too much imho, more than that) then I think Nisus Writer Pro is well worth the dosh.

I should also add that since almost everyone else in my office uses Windows I have to use Word when we are tracking changes, but if it is just a normal Word document then NWP is able to open and edit that document with very few problems. I use it as my default.

On presentation software, I have not really used Keynote and I have hundreds of presentations already in PPT so I am not looking to switch soon (although I have the app). The new PPT is very nice, imho, and I am very happy continuing to use it.

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