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Article #1282

Re: Word vs. Nisus vs. FM vs. WN

#1282
From: Michael Peirce
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1992 01:18
38 lines
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In article <owen-100892120844@astmac1.geology.washington.edu> (comp.sys.mac.apps), owen@astro.washington.edu (Russell Owen) writes:
> 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.

I wouldn't call FrameMaker a word processor.  It's just to big/complex/slow
for doing regular word processing things like writing letters and
other short documents.

Don't get me wrong.  FrameMaker is excellent for creating big documents.
I used it to create the Smoothie manual and it worked very well.

But it was the first Mac program I've used in a long time that required
me to read the manual - twice!

The way I worked with it was to write the text in MacWrite II, then
bring it into FrameMaker and use it's powerful formatting features
to create the book.

I'd compare FrameMaker to Pagemaker or Quark more than word processors.

--  Michael Peirce      --   peirce@outpost.SF-Bay.org
--  Peirce Software     --   Suite 301, 719 Hibiscus Place
--                      --   San Jose, California USA 95117
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!decwrl!claris!outpost.SF-Bay.org!peirce
From: peirce@outpost.SF-Bay.org (Michael Peirce)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: Word vs. Nisus vs. FM vs. WN
Message-ID: <D2150035.aola93@outpost.SF-Bay.org>
Date: 11 Aug 92 01:18:01 GMT
Reply-To: peirce@outpost.SF-Bay.org (Michael Peirce)
Organization: Peirce Software
Lines: 37
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