MailBITS/16-Nov-92

We'd like to welcome our new sponsor, Nisus Software, publishers of Nisus, Nisus Compact, and the programmer's editor QUED/M. You can get an index of their information files (and find out how to request files) by sending email to <sponsors@tidbits.com>, or to automatically receive a 38K file containing all six information files, send email to <nisus-all@tidbits.com>. This file will not pass through the AppleLink or America Online gateways, so users of those services must request files individually.

Among other useful information, Nisus Software's files include news about the just-updated QUED/M, Nisus hints and tips, using Nisus foreign-language versions (the only foreign language word processor available in the US, according to MacWEEK), descriptions of Nisus Software's other products, and instructions on how to get free demo versions of Nisus and Nisus Compact.

Many thanks to Nisus Software for supporting TidBITS!

Mail.Test Mistake -- Last week Yoshiki Shibata accidentally sent a message to our mailing list that slipped through the LISTSERV's setting that allows only me to post to the group. The LISTSERV promptly distributed it to everyone on the list. Yoshiki apologized immediately, and certainly meant no harm. If you haven't replied to the message already, please don't - all replies come to me, and I've received some 300 responses.

Interestingly, the text of Yoshiki's message was essentially, "How are you?" and the vast majority of the responses were an optimistic, "I'm fine," although a few people qualified that statement. The winner was Phil Ryan of Melbourne, Australia, who wrote, "And I am quite well, were it not for the problem of trying to rewrite a Ph.D. in Physics, do a Law degree part-time, and work full-time, as well as be a father to two under-fives." Glad to see so many people doing so well. :-)

On a related note, there's a chance that Internet users will see two copies of this issue. I know some of my mailfiles are being duplicated, and my mail host and I hope to solve the problem soon, so please don't inundate me with notices if you receive the issue in stereo. Thanks!

Word 5.1a patcher available -- On Friday the 13th, Tony Huang posted to the Info-Mac digest, saying "Believe or not, there's already a updater for the newly-released Word 5.1. Word 5.1a fixes a bug in Word 5.1 during fast-saving when headers or footers are involved."

Order the free updater from Microsoft Customer Service by calling the number below, or download it from sumex. The 10K file is archived on <sumex-aim.stanford.edu> as:

info-mac/app/word-51a-updater.hqx

To address the prevalent net question about spending $15 on the upgrade from Word 5.0 to 5.1, we at TidBITS feel the upgrade is worth it for the serious Word user. Although the tone of the program has not changed, Microsoft reportedly fixed a number of bugs and added a few features, perhaps most important of which is the ability to print even or odd pages. Welcome to the 1990's!

Microsoft Customer Service -- 800/426-9400

Information from:
Tony Huang -- tonyh@lynx.msc.cornell.edu