Nisus 5.1 with Arabic Language Kit

[Dan Lusthaus]

Since no on else besides Jonathan Silk has responded to this question, I
will throw in my two bits, for what they're worth. I use Nisus 5.0.1 (not
5.1.1) with several language kits: Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Persian, and
Hebrew, and as advertised it is clearly the best program for worldscript
implementation. With Arabic and Persian you have three text-entry methods
for each, two following typewriter keyboard patterns, and one using a
'transliterated' scheme. Nisus is smart, and will shift into the right
language and direction by either selecting the keyboard or font, and it
remembers, so that later visiting various parts of a documents it will
automatically shift into the right language configuration, including font,
keyboard, right-to-left vs. left-to-right, etc.

Like Jonathan, however, I find NisusWriter itself to be over-wieldy, and
sometimes downright arcane, so I primarily use it only for documents that
are language intensive, and use other wordprocessors for most other tasks.

The only advantage to upgrading to a 5.x version is that you will no longer
have to worry about that annoying language key doohickey hardware that the
earlier versions require to be installed on any computer while using Nisus.
But it's a hefty price to pay if you already have a language key are aren't
inconvenienced by using, for instance, both a home and an office computer
and only having one language key.

Take note, that at least in the version of 5.0.1 that I received, Nisus was
no longer supplying Hebrew, Arabic, or Persian kits and fonts with Nisus
Writer, so if you have language software from earlier versions, you'll
still need them.


Dan Lusthaus
Florida State University