Writing software testing rambles

[zimena]

As we all know, I’m always intrigued by new writing software. Or, well, sometimes I’m also intrigued by things I’ve seen and tried out already, especially if it’s been a while since I’ve last used that thing.

You know how I also love pretty stationery, pens, paper, etc? Writing software is just the extension of that. I guess you could argue that I’m sometimes more interested in the software than in the actual writing, though I am trying to change that.

Either way, my current interests are Ulysses and Nisus Writer. The main similarity between the two is that they’re both writing software. Other than that, they’re fundamentally different.

I had a subscription to Ulysses for a time some years ago, but I had abandoned it because it ended up being an endless time sink where I could play around with settings and filters and grouping of files endlessly, but I got little writing done, and it wasn’t a “fun” environment that helped motivate me to write more or more often. However, since that time, they’ve been sending me newsletters periodically, and I recently got interested again. I wanted to get a trial version again, to see whether there were enough changes to keep me interested.

However, before I got on to that, I stumbled over Nisus Writer again. Nisus comes in two versions - called Express and Pro, respectively - but for me there aren't many reasons to bother with the Pro features. As far as I've seen, Pro has more advanced styling with possibility for adding things like a Table Of Contents, possibility for seeing an Ease Of Reading score for your text, as well as support for more file formats. For the way I usually want to write, though, Express is more than enough. This text, for example, is written in Nisus, before I'm going to copy it and post it on DW. (No, this is not usually how I write DW posts, but it's part of the testing process, okay?).

So, the differences first. Ulysses is essentially an advanced markdown editor which keeps all of your writings in its own library. Inside Ulysses, you can move your texts around, group them however makes sense to you (and assign different icons to each group), filter the list of documents (called "sheets" in Ulysses-speak), and of course export the text to whatever format makes more sense to you if you need to do anything to it besides seeing it on screen. The whole Ulysses environment is infinitely customisable, with not only endless colour themes to download, but also a large number of export styles. On screen, though, it's all just text, with markdown formatting. There are a few cool perks, though - such as a word count goal tracker, and the possibility of adding your own notes field beside the actual text view. You can, of course, also use tags/keywords, if that's your thing.

This is all very different from Nisus Writer, which is more similar to a traditional word processor. Every document is in it's own file, and even though Nisus has its own (quite nice) document manager, it doesn't actually hide any of your files in some strange "library". everything is in files and folders, the way I'm used to. Oh, and another nice feature: Nisus saves your work in RTF files, unless you specifically want any of the other supported formats. So, no weird proprietary file formats there.

To me, Nisus feels like a much more familiar environment right out of the box. Ulysses might be modern and sleek and cool, but Nisus is "normality" without being too bloated and full of unnecessary, confusing bugs-disguised-as-features. Also, another important point for me: Nisus has excellent multilingual support. And if I indicate that a portion of the text should be in, say, Czech, it will automatically switch my keyboard to the Czech layout while I'm working in that part.

Oh, and if you think that Ulysses somehow "wins" because of the customisability, it doesn't. Nisus is also very much customisable - from moving elements around in the toolbox/palette dock, to changing the colour of everything, including the page background. It also distinguishes print options from display options, which means you can easily use light-on-dark colours on screen, and still get printouts that look how you would expect on regular white sheets of paper.

Some pros and cons about each, because I made this list while deciding which one was more interesting for me right now:

Ulysses pros:

• Elegant interface.
• Markdown can be interesting and sometimes useful for removing distractions.
• Indefinitely customisable.
• Active development team, constantly adding new features.
• Sync to mobile phone and/or iPad.
• Subscription fee includes usage of the app on all kinds of devices - computer, phone and iPad.

Ulysses cons:

• Stores files in its own, hidden library. Cannot easily get individual files from outside the program.
• Markdown editor, must export document to see page layout etc.
• Expensive over time, because of yearly subscription fee. Also, seemingly unfair exchange rate/pricing for Norwegian customers.
• Uses its own language for what is essentially the same concept as files and folders, calling them sheets and groups.
• Time sink. Endless settings, lots of reasons to fidget around with things in the app, but not actually that motivating to WRITE in.
• I've seen a number of users complaining about the mobile sync feature suddenly stopping to work. Risk of losing work this way.

Nisus pros:

• Express or Pro option, where the cheaper one seems to have all the necessary features for me.
• One time app purchase. Can get a discount for upgrades to new versions..
• Familiarity. Looks familiar, but can still be customised to my liking, with cooler colours and menus.
• Multi language support, including smart keyboard layout switch.
• Has a "special characters" palette, for easy access to special characters that you otherwise tend to wonder how to type: degree sign, copyright sign, special signs indicating some currencies, or even special diacritics from languages you don't type in often enough to have the keyboard layout installed.
• Files and folders are… files and folders. Also, the native Nisus file format is RTF. Standard names and formats all the way.
• WYSIWYG editor. It's actually nice to see your document grow as you write, see where page breaks are, see fonts and formatting that are nice to look at… these are all mostly good things to me, not distracting.
• Styles are available and easily configurable via a separate style editor. Also, can be exported or imported as you wish. Standard settings for new files are configured via template files.
• Sync between computers works seamlessly. Also, you can set your own preferred folder for storing synced settings and documents. Using iCloud is not required.

Nisus cons:

• No mobile sync or mobile app available. This is a mac-only software.
• Working with tables is… shit. Changing cell width can move everything out of place, and actually moving the table feels like it works completely randomly, suddenly landing outside the page margins - or partly outside the entire page, with no obvious way to fix the problem. Sometimes this results in what feels like an unfixable amount of problems, making it easier to start over with a blank document, and try to remake the table there. Also: no autofill option, no cell formatting rules etc.

It's quite easy to see from the above that I much prefer Nisus, and most likely I'm going to buy the full (Express) version. I'm not a big fan of Pages (which comes included with macOS), and I only ever use it to edit some documents that I already have in its format, so a proper word processor that actually feels enjoyable to use is something I have missed - maybe even more than I realised until now.