by Eolake Stobblehouse

I have been looking for years for a simple and nimble word processor that did what I needed, did not get in the way, and just felt good. Nisus Writer Express is the closest I have come so far, it has a great feel. Believing that we should support alternatives to the MS molopoly, I conducted this interview with Nisus founder Jerzy Lewak.

MacCreator: Playing the devil's advocate here: Since 'everybody' has Microsoft Word, why does the world need another word processor?

Jerzy Lewak: Those who need a different word processor are usually the very discerning and those who need special features that Microsoft Word does not have. Quoting an old review of our product "God is in the details." Those who find that our details work better for them, are our customers.

MacCreator: Please describe the most important attributes of Nisus Writer Express.

Jerzy Lewak: Our philosophy is to make all the features as obvious as possible and as close to the "surface" as possible. We do our best to avoid the dialog inside a dialog experience. We also have some special features that we have pioneered over the years, such as the PowerFind and PowerFind Pro, Multiple Selections, Multiple Editable Clipboards, and Simple and Advanced Macros.

MacCreator: What is this thesaurus I hear about, and how does it work in NWE?

Jerzy Lewak: The database is WordNet developed at Princeton University. It gives you much more than just synonyms. Words are expressions of ideas and we all know that one idea leads to another, so one word leads to another, to another, to another, etc. So that's how the GUI is organized: select a word in your document, hit the "command <" key to look up the first set of synonyms, then click on a synonym and see the next ones in a column to the right, and so on. More than just a list of words and their synonyms and definitions, WordNet was designed by lexicographers to model the complex relationships that exists between words. WordNet and Thesaurus knows the English language. It knows not only what words are related to the word you ask it about but how they are related, based on six different categories. We present all of these relationships arranged in a browser form, much like you browse files in the Finder, so it is easy to navigate to just the word you want.

MacCreator: What is the difference between NWE and the old Nisus Writer, feature-wise, and regarding ease of use?

Jerzy Lewak: Classic Nisus Writer only works under the Classic system. Nisus Writer Express works only under OS X and was built in Cocoa, from scratch, to take advantage of all the features opened up to true Cocoa applications. For example, the Thesaurus is a Services feature and Services are only available to Coca applications. The look and feel of Nisus Writer Express is different because it uses the new OS X tools. Once the foundations are built in Cocoa, feature additions will be much faster. Building it from scratch has such great advantages, but has also some drawbacks associated with the fact that it takes a lot of work to re-build all the features that we have developed in the Classic version. So our first version of Nisus Writer Express is not as rich in features as the Classic version. The new version we are about to go to beta with, ads the most important, the most user demanded features and is a free upgrade. We plan to continue adding features our users most want.

MacCreator: What are the main differences between NWE and AppleWorks? AppleWorks after all is also a simple, effective app in many ways.

Jerzy Lewak:Appleworks is an old program, written in Carbon (which means a port from the Classic System) and so cannot take advantage of the new system features. It is really several products in one, so not well focussed on word processing functions. Nisus Writer Express supports Unicode, has great support for multiple languages, including a language pallet, and has many other features (such as those already mentioned) not present in AppleWorks.

MacCreator: This web site caters to creative computer users. What does NWE do for the creative writer, like the novelist or essayist, etc?

Jerzy Lewak: Our company mission is to create products that enable user's creativity. One way we do this is to remove, as much as we can, the common limitations placed by others on common features. For example, sometimes when copying to the clipboard, particularly when using Append Copy, you may wish to edit the copied text before finally pasting. While others do not let you edit the Clipboard, we have always allowed this. The Multiple Clipboards allow you to do more complicated collections of clippings. The use of PowerFind and PowerFind Pro opens up a lot of possibilities for a one-click way of making lots of editing changes in your document. The Macro language can be used to create your own custom features, accessible through your own custom menus. These are just a few of the creative ways of helping writers with the mechanical parts of the writing process, leaving them more time for the truly creative part of writing.

MacCreator: When can we expect NWE 2.0, and what are the major new features? What will it cost?

Jerzy Lewak:We are about to go to beta with version 2.0. It has numerous added features but the most important are footnotes, endnotes, and tables. In addition it has many other features and interfaces improved, is more snappy, and includes hyphenation plus many other detailed features all listed on our web site at www.nisus.com. Current customers of Nisus Writer Express will be able to upgrade for free. New purchasers will be able to buy it at an introductory price of $59.

MacCreator: How old is the company? How many people are you? What are your goals and philosophy?

Jerzy Lewak: Later this year we will be celebrating our 20th anniversary! We are small but powerful group of only 8 people. I founded the company in late 1984, with a goal that changed over the initial years from educational software to word and text processing. I believe I have already expressed our philosophy manifested in our goals. I will only add that we can only succeed if we satisfy our customers and collect lots of new ones! This means that we have to meet the needs of customers and that is our principal goal.

MacCreator: What do you think went wrong with Word?

Jerzy Lewak: Judging by their overwhelming capture of the market I would say nothing from the point of view of Microsoft. As far as the use is concerned, I sense that Microsoft has to cater to the great majority and being a monopoly, it does not have to be very careful about its user experience. User testing seems to be futile for Microsoft because it is hard to find a user that has not used their product - so the bad user experiences are accepted as normal. We have to be much more careful and we immediately know when we have not created a good user experience. That keeps us on our toes. Microsoft Word is one example of the harmful consequences of a monopoly.

MacCreator: What audience is NWE not for?

Jerzy Lewak: The current version is not for those who just want to edit very large text files, because it is not optimized for large files. The next version will be much better at such tasks, but still not what we would want. Future versions will be able to handle such very large text files.

MacCreator: Any last words?

Jerzy Lewak: We always appreciate feedback from our users. So we ask for it, and we try our best to respond with improvements.

- Stobblehouse