The Nisus Way Errata
This page lists all the errors I’ve found (so far) in the printed version of The Nisus Way. All of these have been corrected in the HTML version.
Sometimes the mistakes were my fault; many times they were the publisher’s fault (a fact which I find only vaguely comforting). These things happen; life goes on. But in any case almost all of the mistakes are really minor. (And before you ask, yes, I do wonder whether “anal retentive” should be hyphenated…) Anyway, since there will in all likelihood never be a second edition of the (printed) book, consider this your source for the canonical truth about what should have been in the first edition.
Note: Errors shown are labeled as (T)ypographical (i.e., merely cosmetic) or (F)actual (i.e., adversely influencing the meaning of the text).
(F) The Table of Contents lists the page numbers for Chapter 16 as being 1-20. Very clever. The real numbers are:
Chapter 16: Nisus Writer and the ’Net....467
Using Nisus Writer for E-Mail..........468
PowerTalk............................468
E-Mail Macros........................470
Authoring HTML Documents...............471
HTML Basics..........................472
HTML Macros..........................475
Summary................................486
(F) p. 8 says that version 1.0 of Nisus featured noncontiguous selection. Actually, this feature did not appear until version 3.
(F) p. 9 discusses a contract between Nisus Software and Apple to distribute Nisus with all Macs sold in Korea. In fact, the contract was with Apple's Korean distributor, Elex, not Apple itself.
(T) p. 9, first paragraph, line 11: extra space between the opening parenthesis and the word “not.”
(F) p. 11, last paragraph, line 4 says “Nisus Software”—actually, it was still Paragon Concepts at this point.
(T) p. 12, line 2: The “o” in “Sound” is italic (should be Roman).
(T) p. 14, first full paragraph, first line, “newsetter” needs an “l.”
(F) p. 31, second full paragraph: Force-justified tabs are also useful for Japanese (thanks to Ken Lunde of Adobe for pointing this out).
(T) p. 32, line 2, there is a period after a comma.
(F) p. 53, Under “Document Linking” head: “Both Word and WordPerfect make use of Microsoft’s OLE technology…” Actually, only the Windows version of WordPerfect uses OLE; the Mac version uses a different (proprietary) document linking strategy.
(T) p. 80, second full paragraph, line 9, “Capitalized” should read “Capitalize.”
(T) p. 85, fifth checkmarked item “As PostScript” should have a registered trademark symbol after it, i.e., “As PostScript®.”
(T) p. 97, second full paragraph, “Force Justify Tab” (lines 9, 13, 16) should read “Forced Justify Tab.”
(T) p. 154, last line on the page, “after” should be in Garamond italic, not Tekton bold oblique. Like anyone really cares.
(T) p. 174, first checkmarked item, “Nudging” should be in italics.
(T) p. 209, first full paragraph, the last line should go above Figure 7.10.
(T) p. 220, (1) second full paragraph should be indented; (2) last paragraph, lines 5 and 6, the terms “Print…”, “To File,” and “Save” should be in Tekton bold to indicate that they are commands.
(F) p. 232, first paragraph, lines 6, 8, and 9-10 say “…click Save Preferences” and “click Revert to Original.” These are menu commands, not buttons, so they should say, “…choose ___ from the Preferences submenu.”
(T) p. 276, last two lines of the last paragraph. The words to and from should be in Garamond italic, not Tekton bold oblique.
(T) p. 299, first full paragraph should be indented.
(T) p. 307, Figure 11.1, has a callout pointing to the “Find Replace menus.” To be absolutely nitpickingly accurate, they are the “Find/Replace menus”!
(T) p. 319, first paragraph, line 10, “0-9” should be Tekton bold, not Courier.
(T) p. 320, first line, “Any Character or ¶” should be Tekton bold, not Courier.
(F) p. 338, (1) first paragraph, line 15, PowerFind Pro expression uses a slash (/) instead of a backslash (\); it should read, “So the new expression looks like this: .:+\t”; (2) sidebar has a missing “*” metacharacter; it should read, “…use the expression [^\t]*\t.” (Also note that the final period in the sentence is not part of the expression!)
(F) p. 345, first paragraph, last two sentences should read: “To change the default glossary file, simply move your current one from the Nisus Writer folder, move a new one into its place, and name the new file Nisus Glossary. To create a brand-new, empty glossary file, choose New Glossary File... from the Glossary submenu.” The word “File” was in the wrong place!
(T) p. 358, second full paragraph, third line. Both instances of the word “Save” should be in Tekton bold to indicate that they are commands.
(T) p. 360, last paragraph, first line, “Execute Selection” should be Tekton bold, to indicate that it is a command; “anywhere” should be Garamond italic, not Tekton bold oblique.
(T) p. 362, the paragraph immediately before the numbered list should be indented.
(F) p. 375, second line, the words “If Count>5 Copy” are underlined. The word “Copy” should not be underlined because it is part of the menu command dialect, not the programming dialect.
(T) p. 380, bottom (“Adding strings” paragraph), in “Let’s say the string adverb has the value very…” the word “value” should be Roman, not italic.
(F) p. 383, first paragraph, last line, “…contents of clipboard 3…” should read “…contents of the current clipboard…”
(T) p. 389, (1) first full paragraph, first line: the “I” of “If()” is oblique but should be Roman; (2) the second full paragraph should be indented. Yawn.
(T) p. 399, last paragraph, fourth line from bottom, “…the a stack…” should read “…a stack…”
(F) p. 410, as elsewhere in Chapter 13, indicates that Nisus Software supplies extensions for Eastern European languages (Czech, Slovak, Polish, Hungarian) along with the Language Key. This is no longer the case, due to restrictions Claris has placed on distribution of Apple's WorldScript products.
(F) p. 413, Figure 13.2, shows the Font menu with various font families labeled. At the bottom of the list, Chinese and Japanese are grouped together. They were supposed to have been separated—Apple LiSung Light, Taipei, Beijing, and Song are Chinese; Osaka (two versions) and Maru Gothic (two versions) are Japanese. Also, note that the Hebrew fonts supplied with Apple’s Hebrew Language Kit are different from those shown here, which were until recently included with Nisus Software's Language Key.
(F) p. 441, second full paragraph ends with “Just list the fields you want on each label, and include a line that says «NEXT» after each label.” This sentence should end with the words “…except the last one.” Otherwise, you’ll get a blank label on every page.
(T) p. 451, last full paragraph should be indented.
(T) p. 453, first (partial) paragraph. The following terms should be in Tekton bold to indicate that they are commands: “InitInit” (line 2); “Define Styles” (line 3); “Style Sheet” (line 6); and “StyleSheet:Header” (line 7).
(T) p. 468, first full paragraph, line 8, “pro grams” should be one word without a space.
(T) p. 485, last checkmarked item (“Convert HTML to text”)—this macro command actually begins with a bullet, not a diamond.
(T) p. 504, margin note reads: “…cloverleaf symbol (1)…” Obviously, that was supposed to be an actual cloverleaf symbol, not the number 1. Duh.
(T) p. 519, next-to-last line reads “…ASCII 13 is (¶)…” The word “is” should be deleted.
(T) p. 525 contains the beginning of Table B.6, though it is not labeled as such.
(T) p. 538, example commands for the functions left, right, mid, and CharToNum should have been in Tekton bold.
(T) p. 545, example command for PlaySoundStack, the “-” and the “>” should go together to form the “arrow” method operator (->). As it is, this appears to be hyphenated.
(T) p. 546, last line, the term “eval” should be in Tekton bold to show that it is part of the command.
(T) p. 556, last paragraph, gives the address listserv@dartmouth.edu. There is no hyphen in “dartmouth,” unlike “nisus-soft.com”; that's just where the line happened to break.
The Merge Macros file contains a “Create Data Document” macro. It steps you through the process of creating a data document for doing a mail merge. The macro asks you to enter a name for each desired field, and simply leave the box blank when you're done. However, on some machines, the macro refuses to quit when the field is left blank, and it just keeps looping. To escape the loop, click OK then immediately press command-period to stop the macro.
NOTE: There’s one more item that is not a “bug,” but is worth pointing out. Some of the macros on the CD-ROM require Frontier Runtime, which is installed automatically by the Nisus Writer installer on the CD. However, the first time you run Frontier Runtime, it asks you to enter your name, company, and initials. So if your first use of Frontier involves running one of my spiffy macros, the macro may not work because Frontier is waiting (in the background) for you to type in your name! Once you’ve done this once, though, it shouldn’t bother you again.
Last updated by Joe Kissell on
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