Does anyone here still use Nisus Writer Pro?
People used to swear by it, but I donāt hear it mentioned much these days. I only mention it for the sake of completenessā¦ and nostalgia
I bought a copy of it intending to use it for final formatting for print of documents generated in Scrivener. The reason being I hate Microsoft Word (and have since it came out as an MSDOS product) and itās free clones such as LibreOffice, and Pages is too anemic. As it turned out, Iāve havenāt had to create any long form documents that need to look nice for print. It is a very nice program though, but for very convoluted document management.
I used Pages and Scriverner for my dissertation and love both.
But Iāve gotten to the point now where I used Word for pretty much everything, except when I have to use Google docs for collaboration. The reason Iāve switched to Word for writing is that I always have to send work in to journals in Word so was having to export back and forth and frequently losing footnote citation formatting. Plus Endnote drop in citation manager works with Word. But more than that, I was finding that my folders about specific projects contained files in 3+ formats (not including notes in Evernote) and I got worried about how many formats Iāll be able to open if I revisit a topic a decade from now. I already have old files in Clarisworks, previous versions of Pages and even MacWrite.
So the short answer is I do long form writing in Word and grumble about it.
When I wrote my masters thesis (2011]) I used Scrivener. I could not imagine managing a work of that length in any word processing app. Scrivenerās abilities (which have improved since 2011!) with organizing, rearranging, taking sections from a nugget of an idea through multiple revisions, and keeping reference materials right inside the fileā¦ are a major advantage.
If I had to send things to to people in Word, Iād probably just roundtrip the info each timeā¦ even if I had to do it manually. If your advisors are just using comments, perhaps you donāt have to bring anything back into the Scrivener, just keep the two windows open and make edit in Scrivener, or add Scrivener comments based on the Word ones. But of course you folks know your individual situations better than I do.
After using Scrivener and Ulysses, I just canāt understand using any other tool for at least the formative stage of a project.
Personally, after using the new Scrivener this spring on a complicated project, for the first time since 2011, I appreciate the new version a lot. But I did have considerable trouble getting my text out of it and into Markdown. So Iāve downloaded Ulysses and plan to give it a whirl on my next project. If the I/O is better (and Markdown is ānativeā basically in Ulysses, so I expect it to be) and the organizational aspects are close enough, I may make the switch. I am hesitant with the subscription, because I donāt necessarily always have big writing projectsā¦ but I did some math and even if I constantly maintained a subscription it wouldnāt be a lot more money, and if it helps me do my work faster, then itās a worthwhile expense/deduction.
You can reimport a commented Word file into Scrivener and see all the comments there. But if your editor/teacher wants to track changes in Word you will have to stay there from that point on, I guess.
You can use Ulysses quite happily for this. All my writing projects are plain text files in folders within Dropbox and Ulysses handles it all fine on both iOS & Mac.
Another vote for Scrivener. I used to use Ulysses for shorter writing projects and Scrivener for longer ones. The subscription change to Ulysses cut me loose from that app and now Iām exclusively in Scrivener. Wonderful programme and keeps you writing too.
I use Ulysses for notes and lots of short stuff. Ulysses is ālightā enough to just get words down. Build a friendly home or use inbox with lots of tags/keywords. It syncs well between devices with iCloud.
That said I still explore, Drafts 5, but my aim is to have fewer apps on my iPad. More of a generalist/non-clutter approach.
Why add another app for short stuff? What does the app add to your life?
OP here, I have narrowed my choice of writers down. I have looked at Ulysses and Scrivener both and I think those are to advanced for my needs. My goal is to do blog posts (both personal and business, when I get to that) and maybe short stories once in a while. I figured I would update this topic rather than start another. I hope to do most of my writing on my iPad.
Choices:
1Writer
Editorial
Byword
Maybe Scrivener, maybe. I would rather not do a subscription to Ulysses.
I used Scrivener to finish my first book and pull together the second. I donāt think itās quite as good as some of the comments above suggest, but itās good and I like it.
Ulysses is my first choice, but I gave Byword a trial. Liked the app and WP publishing ability.
I got a lower Ulysses subscription rate for life since I had bought an older version. (discount no longer offered)
Subscriptions ā I donāt recoil at the word. That said, I used Evernote from its birth and then sent them money on that model. Many useful features including an excellent web clipper. But when the features I wanted only came in the highest price tier I stopped paying and began importing Evernote files into Ulysses.
Dang blatherā¦
I hope you find your just right/good enough app.
User app opinions, videos or blog posts are what they areā¦ 10 or15 thousand words of your own work will point the you in the āright direction.ā
I donāt do a lot of long form writing, but looking back, I notice that all my long form writing has been done in vim, usually using LaTeX to make it pretty. I learned vim in college and love the ability to quickly navigate and manipulate text with the keyboard. It count (repeat a command X times) and macro features.
I know only Editorial of the three, which is great but hasnāt been updated frequently anymore. Iām pretty sure the other two are great as well.
One thing to consider: Even though you might be writing only short texts, the extra features of a software like Scrivener can still be helpful. You can store reference material, organize your work with keywords and so much more. And a shortstory can be planned and written in scenes just like a novel. You can make documents for each scene, attach a summary, play around with the order of the scenes, write them separately and in the end compile them as one long text document of choice. But Iām a Scrivener fanatic, so maybe better not listen to me.
It depends. These days I am mostly in word since the writing requires a lot of collaboration. Love the scrivener, though. Some years ago, when I wrote my PhD thesis, I used LaTeX and Texpad. Would love to use Scrivener there, but it is not equipped well for a kind of technical writing with a lot of bibliography, references and images.
I have used Byword for short writing for several years in Markdown. Just this week I composed a few important emails in it. Itās a solid, but intentionally minimalist app.
If you want a touch of help in addition to minimalism, please checkout iA Writer. I prefer it for more complicated Markdown writing, like a blog post. A friend made a sound argument that I should just use iA Writer instead of Scrivener, even.
I have iA Writer purchased and I have tried it but Iām just not fond of their interface. Can you move files around and combine them to a longer writing if you write in pieces, instead of all at once?
@Steve ā not that I could see upon a quick check, although I think thatās what my friend was alluding to. This is why I canāt understand the trend towards apps not having any documentation for their users. I tried to look it up and couldnāt find a good answer that.
(Professionally Iām trying to fix that ā devs please @-me)
@briandigital thanks for checking. I think Iāll keep looking, I just canāt justify the cost of Scrivener or Ulysses. Thatās why I have narrowed the list to Byword, Editorial, 1Writer and maybe even a second look at iA Writer.
Iām not sure I need the automation of Editorial when I have Drafts and Workflow
How do you two use the automation features of Editorial?
And without the activity of updates recently in your opinions would I be better off looking at other writing apps since I have Drafts and Workflow for my automation needs?
I donāt do long-form writing. Byword is my text editor of choice for blog posts and miscellaneous writing. On the Mac I use Text Edit when composing lengthy email because Iām convinced whatever email client I use, it will dump my work into the lost forever hole right before Iām ready to hit Send.
