Nisus Writer Pro - Manual (Page 493)

Appendix IV
From Nisus Writer Classic to Nisus Writer Pro
The Nisus Men of the Past
In January of 1989, twenty years ago, Nisus Software Inc. (then under the name Paragon Concepts
Inc.) released the first version of Nisus (The Amazing Word Processor). It truly was amazing with
features that all current word processors and the Mac OS have finally begun to implement. Here are
some of the images used for the splash screens of those early versions
Figure 439
Early versions of “The Nisus Man” image
Making the Transition
Concurrent with the release of Nisus Writer Pro, all new Macintosh computers sold by Apple no
longer support the Classic environment. Those people who have used Nisus Writer Classic will need
to bring their files into Nisus Writer Pro.
Open Multilingual Nisus Writer Classic Files in Nisus Writer Pro
Every individual bit of text in a Nisus Writer Classic file has a font (with a particular character
encoding) associated with it. If that font is known to Nisus Writer Pro, it will always use the
encoding associated with that font. However, if the font is unknown, then Nisus Writer Pro needs to
make a choice. You can override whatever choice Nisus Writer Pro might make by choosing the
encoding from the Pop-up menu in the Open dialog.
▶
Choose the appropriate encoding from the Encoding pop-up menu in the Open dialog.
For example, if you know that your document is primarily Japanese text, choose Japanese
encoding.
!
It is extremely unlikely (perhaps impossible) that a non-Mac encoding was used; after all, you created
the old document using Nisus Writer Classic which is a Mac-encoded file.
Open a Nisus Writer Classic Document with the “esreveR” style
Long before the days of the Apple Language Kits that supported Hebrew and Arabic with their right
to left text, Nisus Writer Classic offered a style that would display text in esreveR. This was always
imagined as a temporary work-around. Nonetheless, people have legacy files with text using very old
fonts that use this style to display “correctly”.
Beginning with Nisus Writer Pro 1.3, when you open (“import”) a Nisus Writer Classic file that has
text in this style, that text is detected and the character sequence is reversed so that the sequence
appears correct on screen.
The macro Reverse Text may help correct the old files