🚀 go-pugleaf

Somebody posted asking about Word 5 vs. Nisus. I have a short summary of
features here that may be of interest, and also includes FrameMaker (FM)
and WriteNow (WN). I have tried to show only the most important features,
but I'm sure to have missed some others really care about. A few were left
off (such as spell checking) because all have it. I am missing other word
processors such as MacWrite and Taste, about which I know nothing. Also, I
have tried to be accurate, but may have made some errors. 

My conclusion? FrameMaker is the most powerful word processor in this set.
WriteNow and Nisus are the easiest to use (WriteNow is a bit easier, but
much less powerful). Word is a reasonable compromise in features, but is
hampered by slow speed and poor design. I personally use Nisus for simple
stuff and source code editing, FrameMaker for papers and other things with
complex formatting.

-- Russell
owen@astro.washington.edu
        
                        Word 5  Nisus 3 FM 3    WN 3

Full Undo               ?       yes     no      ?
Multiple Undo!          no      yes!    no      no
Open very large docs    yes     no!     yes     yes
Column Select           yes     yes     no      no
Discontiguous Select    no      yes     no      no

Search by Style         some    yes     yes     no?
Grep (regular expr.)    some    best    some    no?
Find/Repl in selection  yes     yes     yes     no
Clone Case              no      no      yes     no
Search unopened docs    ?       yes     ?       no
        
Hierarchical Styles     yes     no      no      best
Named Char. Styles      no!     painful yes     best
Named Para. Styles      yes     painful yes     best
Start para. where?      no      no      yes     no
Style Sheets            no      no      yes     ?

Space after para        yes     yes     yes     yes
Space before para       yes     no      yes     no
Widow Control           yes     no!      flex.   no

Multiple Columns        yes     yes     yes     yes
Fancier Layout          no      no      yes     no
Graphics Editor         yes     yes     best    no
Margin follows graphic  ?       yes     no      no

Hide margins/pagebreaks yes     yes     no      no
Settable Cmd-Keys       yes     best    no      no
Open any file           no?     yes     no      no
Multiple clipboards     no?     yes     no      no

Tables                  painful no      yes     no
Outlining               painful no      no      no
Equations               yes     no      best    no
Macros                  no      yes     no      no
Glossary                yes     yes     ?       no
Print merge             painful yes     ?       yes
Hyphenation             yes     yes     flex    yes

Auto-# Footnotes        yes     yes     yes     yes
Auto-# Endnotes         yes     yes     usexref no!
Auto-# Paragraphs       no      no      yes     no
Auto-# Figures etc      no      no      yes     no
Cross-references        ?       yes     best    no
Hypertext               no      no      painful no

Doc Linking             ?       yes     yes     no
Publish/Subscr          ?       no      no      no
Indexing                poor    poor    decent? no
Table-of-contents       poor    poor    decent? no
Support for books       ?       no      yes     no
Source code editing     poor    good    poor    poor

Avail for other comp?   PC      none    unix,PC ?
Translation required?   RTF             none!

Speed                   slow    fast    medium  fastest
Ease of Use             poor    fair    poor    good
Power                   good    fair    best    poor
Reliability             poor    good    ?       good
Size                    huge    big     huge    small
Price                   med     med     high    low
Interface               poor    fair    fair    fair
Frequency of Updates    fair    fair    ?       poor