Try out some of the unique features of Nisus as you read these instructions:
Features are grouped according to menu categories.
To show the position of the insertion point and the changed file indicator (small pencil), click on this icon. After you click, the arrow will point to the Master Ruler icon. If you click on the Master Ruler icon the arrow will point to the black region which when dragged will split your screen horizontally. Double-click the black region to unsplit. You can also split your screen vertically by dragging the black region near the scroll bar at the bottom of the screen. Double-clicking will also unsplit.
When you started Nisus you probably noticed the Catalog window. It is used as an alternative to the standard Open dialog. Nisus is the only word processor to incorporate this facility. You can select and drag several files and open them simultaneously. You can search through unopened files, switch glossaries, macros, or dictionaries from the Catalog. The Catalog can be copied or saved, and it can be searched for file names with key words. Modeless, the Catalog is available at all times.
Pull down the File menu, stop to see what is inside the Get Info window, check out the preferences. These enable you to customize Nisus to your very special needs. Choose Page Preview and click on the different icons, starting left to right. You can see a preview of the document while it is being edited. Through Page Preview, you can re-position text on the page, change the margin limits, and lay out the page in two-up or side-by-side format. Notice the Preview menu; display the text in columns, too.
The Edit menu allows you to change selections. Select some text, change the case, insert variables. Here you can "Zap Gremlins" and eliminate "garbage" characters in text imported from other operating systems. Nisus lets you delete these nuisance characters automatically, making Nisus especially useful in mixed computing environments. The Undo can undo up to 32,676 text actions made during an editing session, (you might, however, need more memory!!) The editing preferences allow you to set the number of undos. For your convenience Nisus has 10 fully editable Clipboards. You can also append the copied selection to the contents of a clipboard.
Pull down the Search menu and choose Find/Replace. Click and hold the Find Literal pop-up menu to see the other possibilities. These include GREP (Global Regular Expression Parser), the most powerful pattern matching facility of any word processor, allowing the user to specify either a literal or a more general search pattern. Get introduced to Easy-GREP with its pull down menus, a user-friendly version of this unique text pattern matching system. The Find/Replace facility can be font—size—and style—sensitive even in parts of words; text or graphics copied to the clipboard can be pasted into the Find/Replace dialog. Note also the appearance of the Searching menu. Nisus also offers the ability to mark text. Once the user has set a marker, he or she may jump to it using the Search menu, or cross reference to its page, paragraph or line number or to the marked text itself anywhere in the document.
Browse through the Tools menu. The Check Spelling facility is modeless. You can keep it on-line at all times without interrupting editing. American English (shipped standard) British English and many European language dictionaries are available. Nisus is the only word processor to offer a Thesaurus with an on-line dictionary. (Available with American English and British English.) Words in the thesaurus not only have synonyms and parts of speech but also meanings. (This demo does not include the Dictionary or Thesaurus so these features are not available on this demo.)
For your convenience some words have been indexed in this text. To see which words have been indexed choose Hilite Variables from the Display submenu of the Tools menu. See what else can be displayed: Line Numbers, White Space etc., Obviously you chose Show Invisible Text - to make it go away, choose Show Invisible Text again- (Tools menu - Display submenu )the check mark will disappear and so will this message!
Nisus can add a selection of text to the index or add it to a table of contents with a single command. Choose Make Index from the Book Tools submenu in the Tools menu. Click OK to generate an index. Indexing can be for a single occurrence or for all occurrences of the selected text. The Nisus Glossary can store text and graphics. Users can replace a single abbreviation, or an entire selection, with the definition(s).
Open another file and look at two files with Sync Scrolling from the Edit Tools. Play with the choices of the Windows submenu.
Nisus Macros can record menu commands, keystrokes and mouse clicks, and they can also be edited and typed. Use the supplied example macro. The first character of each paragraph will become a Size 18 in Bold Style. Undo that action, (Edit menu). Macros can execute when chosen from the menu, or they can execute automatically when Nisus starts, when Nisus opens a file, when the user switches into Nisus from the MultiFinder®, or even when the user double clicks while holding down a modifier key. This allows the user to tailor Nisus to his or her needs. Nisus is shipped with over 50 macros.
Nisus saves the text completely separate from the formatting information. The text part of a fully formatted document can be opened and edited in any program or desk accessory that is capable of importing a plain text file.
Nisus is the only word processor that allows the user to draw Graphics directly into text and place a picture over text or have text wrap around it. This method allows the user the ability to insert graphics precisely on a page, with no trial-and-error. Go to the Tools menu and choose Graphics Ruler from the Display submenu. You are now in the Graphics layer. Experiment with the tools.
Nisus is the only word processor to handle Multiple Screens on a Mac II intuitively. When the user opens a file or dialog, Nisus places it on the same screen as the mouse pointer.
Since the first release of Nisus, we have added Footnotes/Endnotes (see the Edit menu), automatic hyphenation (Tools menu) and Color styles (see the Color submenu on the styles menu). Unfortunately you will not be able to make hyphenation work without the Dictionary which is not supplied with this Demo version.
