NotaBene

< Next Message | Back to archived message list | Previous Message >

Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 2844

Posted by jonathan.probber
2005-02-23 19:32:05

Daly - My two cents:

I used NotaBene (DOS) extensively through grad school, for two reasons. First, it’s a descendant of XyWrite, the best WP that ever was. Next, its integrated bibliography/citation features are unparalleled. I didn’t use Orbis much, but it was fine when I did.

After I left school, I switched to NB Windows. For reasons we’re all familiar with in this forum, I choked on the Win version, which was cluttered, slow and distracting relative to NB DOS. I might have been too hasty; if you spend some time with it, NB Win can become the same command-driven, unobtrusive writing machine that NB DOS was, and XyWrite defined.

If your writing involves footnotes, reference lists, citations etc. go for it. But get Bookwhere too, which downloads references from libraries using the Z39.50 (?) standard, formats them and passes them to Ibidem for in-text citations, footnotes, etc. I laboriously entered all of my references in Ibidem by hand, but after that, it was smooth sailing. Everything was formatted automatically to my chosen style (APA), which was invaluable.

The built-in outliner mode is a bit clunky, but certainly usable.

Let us know what you think after you fool around with it.

Best,

Jon

PS Where’d you get the deal? :>

Back to archived message list