Nisus Writer Express 2.5 review

In a market dominated by Microsoft Word's dancing paperclip, it's nice to know there are still companies turning out small, efficient word processors that just let you get on with the job at hand - writing. Nisus Writer Express is one such product.

Nisus Writer Express is a word processor based on Apple's Cocoa API, and so makes use of Cocoa's Text Object, a set of routines that handle the way text is drawn on the screen and allow the incorporation of such niceties as true ligatures, subscript and superscript. The other nice touch is that any time that Apple improves the Text Object, those changes are incorporated immediately into Express. It also uses Rich Text Format (.rtf) as its native file format, so document portability is greatly increased.

Nisus Writer Express uses the sliding drawer interface, which puts a tool 'tray' at the side of the current document. This holds palettes relating to various aspects of your document, and it's set by default to four layers: Writing, Text Formatting, Tables and Sections (for long-document creation). However, this section is highly customisable, and can be tailored to your writing practices by adding new layers and dragging palettes from the Palette Manager onto the trays. It's all very ordered and intuitive.

Speaking of ordered, version 2.5 also supports lists: bulleted, numbered, outline or tiered. Just select the return-separated text you want, choose the List style, and you're done. You can set numbered to be continuous throughout a document or to restart each time another text block intervenes. Lists are also defined by styles, in the same way as other text blocks, so can be tailored using the splendid Style Sheet editor, where you can change bullet styles and following characters.

Nisus Writer Express is now LinkBack aware. LinkBack is a framework defined by Nisus, the Omni Group and BlackSmith that allows you to place 'live' elements into a document. A graphic placed in a Nisus document will update automatically when the original document is altered. This is basically System 7's Publish and Subscribe for the 21st century. In a related area, Express can open a document as a template by clicking the 'Open As New Document' button in the Open dialog.

On top of this, you get robust Word.doc support, QuickFix for common typos, multiple clipboard support and, with Tiger, support for true right-to-left language input (multiple-language support has always been a big feature of Express).

Nisus Writer Express 2.5 confirms the worth of a great application that does exactly what it says on the tin - and then a bit more as well. Further, given it only costs $70, it really is a writer's best friend.