One year ago Joe Kissell reported on the unfortunate limbo state of Nisus Writer and Nisus Writer Express word processors. The subset of users who have relied on Nisus Writer for decades, particularly for its ability with double-byte code necessary for Chinese/Japanese/Korean bilingual documents (I translate Chinese Buddhist texts into English) are staring at the possibility of the next MacOS update breaking Nisus’s code. Has there been any news about the wish to either make Nisus Writer open source or perform the necessary surgery under the hood to make the software compatible with the new Apple hardware?
Mellel does double-byte code and I own it; I could dedicate a computer to never updating beyond Tahoe System 26+ but I would prefer to use a writing tool that is neither unfamiliar nor mothballed.
Maybe someone will take on the challenge of using A.I. to develop a clone. As discussed in another thread, the process has begun with many Adobe and Microsoft apps.
I don’t shed any tears for Adobe or Microsoft, whose behavior toward consumers certainly can feel abusive, but I’d much rather see Nisus Software find a way back to fully supporting its products than be faced with clones. On the other hand, if the Nisus apps truly have become abandonware, maybe cloning is a legitimate option.
There is no news, unfortunately. Second-hand reports suggest someone claims to be working on something, but I know no specifics. If I were a betting person, I would wager that zero humans are working for Nisus Software right now, that no one has touched or looked at the code in nearly two years, and that the app will be left to fade away. I hope I’m wrong! But things are starting to break in Golden Gate, the company has made NO public statements, and the last update was in the Sequoia era. Sooner or later, it becomes unreasonable to expect something different to occur.
I have visited the site periodically over the last few months looking for any news. Most days, it was impossible to get through, presumably because of the bot traffic. A few days ago, I was able to visit the site – and observe that someone had apparently renewed the domain. Today, after some delay, I was again able to get through. So there is some slight activity there, I think, but the key word is “slight.” There is no hint of the product being either updated or sold to someone else.
For some of us, Mellel is simply not an answer. It has neither macros nor the ability to save a series of regular expressions. I’m converting some of my NWP macros to BBEdit text factories, but text factories can’t do styled text. There is no substitute for NWP! But that doesn’t mean it will survive. I fear Joe Kissell is right.