It’s no wonder that Nisus, a very long standing Mac company, would want to bring that feature back to the future. Not sure who maintains it now, but LinkBack is really System 7’s Publish and Subscribe, brought to the modern age. In fact, Omni and Nisus Group have a small connection: LinkBack technology was invented by Nisus, and Omni scooped it up. Each of those three does all the basics, and each does some things better than the other (Mellel, for instance, does multi-language and right to left text better than anyone). As far as Mac word processors go, there’s Word, Nisus and Mellel in the “heavy hitter” category, then everyone else. Handles links in PDF’s better than word, though not perfect. Does things that even Word cannot do (specifically, it manages tables of authorities better than Word does). Nisus started perhaps before OmniGroup, and of the old classic Mac word processors, they appear to have been the only one besides Word that survives as a Mac app (Maybe Mariner write?) “Trust everybody, but cut the cards (yourself)” comes to mind here. PDF editing tools are sophisticated enough now that I have no reason to use Word files “because they are easier to grade” (or whatever other reason might be given to request a Word file). Even though I hold myself to a standard of integrity, the chances that I might muck up something inadvertently while I am grading their document of final record are too high. To make a specific case (here in counter to your note about submitting Word files at your university), I will never accept a Word document from my students as their final report. In essence though, submitting a Word file as a document of record says to me that you accept that it can be changed even without your permission, the changed file can be re-distributed or evaluated as though it is still your document, and you may have to bear the full consequences to rectify any damages that might follow (inadvertently or maliciously) from your record being modified and passed off as yours. Granted, as needed, we can check behind, for example by looking at the date+time modified stamps. This is far easier to do with a Word file than with a PDF file. My concern again is for the situation where someone modifies a document (inadvertently or maliciously) and passes off the changes (inadvertently or maliciously) as still belonging to the original author. In both cases, the changes made are clearly tracked. Always insist however to distribute only PDF files as the ‘hard copy’ of any content you create, especially when that content is to be certifiable later down the line”.Īnd with regards to PDFs, unless the user is proficient in security features, it’s reasonably easy to either decompile a PDF into Word or some other format, or to edit the PDF itself. My answer is this … “Use whatever application works best for you where you are. You framed you question about a word processor in reference to office or legal settings. Alternatives exist to avoid it almost entirely – distribute only PDF files as certifiable content. Whether this kind of mistake is small or big and whether it is made inadvertently or maliciously make no difference. I cannot even begin to imagine the ramifications of someone making a change while reviewing a Word document and subsequently propagating the changed content as though it is the raw source from the original person. The issue is the immutability of the content. Even then, I always also send a PDF file. I never send out such file formats unless someone explicitly asks for them. I am surprised to hear that doc and docx files are being used as “standards” for almost wholesale-level distribution of created content. It is with how folks are reporting that they share files. I have only one concern from what I am reading. Anything from TextEdit to LaTeX comes in to play. My experience is that, what folks use to create content varies from person to person and from task to task.
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