Experience with / Interest in the Nota Bene word processing and reference management software

[David Goldfarb]

I've been using NotaBene since around v. 2.1 in the mid-1980s (and I
used XY-write II+, which was the core of the DOS version of NB before
that) and recommend it highly.  It continues to be the only serious
word processor for writing in the humanities.

The MLA endorsed it at one point, because even under DOS it could
handle all European languages including Hebrew, Yiddish, Greek,
Cyrillic, OCS, and other European medieval languages, and it could
automatically format documents according to academic style manuals,
including bibliographies.  The downside of all this functionality,
however, was something of a steep learning curve, and if you wanted to
print some of the more exotic characters, you might have had to design
the fonts yourself and learn to download them to a dot matrix printer
(which I did for OCS and Polish).

The current version for Windows is much easier to get started with,
since there are now menus that allow you to work with it like any
Windows-based word processor, but they've expanded the style manual
and database functions, so that it now can format footnotes and
endnotes as well as bibliographic entries.  The key to this is that
you enter bibliographic information into a bibliographic database and
as you are writing, you incorporate references to the database, and
when you select the style, all the right information will be in the
notes and bibliographic entries in the correct order with the right
punctuation, maybe with a little minor manual editing.  So say you
publish an article in a journal that uses MLA style and want to
incorporate it into a book using Chicago style, that conversion can be
pretty much automated.  Also, if you write something new with
references that are already in the database, you don't have to
re-enter that information.

They have also improved the file conversion utilities, so that if you
need to submit a Word-compatible version of a document for
publication, it converts fairly reliably to RTF format, which is
native to MSWord and is recognized by most other word processors and
desktop publishing programs, and there are other conversion options as
well.

The support staff at NotaBene also understand the requirements of
academic writing and publishing, unlike, say, the Microsoft Help Desk,
and if you are having a problem getting your citations to look right,
they'll know what you're talking about.  Or if there is some language
issue or other previously undiscovered software problem the program
can't handle, they will usually fix it in the next upgrade.

-- 
David A. Goldfarb
http://www.davidagoldfarb.com

2009/11/25 David Powelstock <powelstock at brandeis.edu>:
> Dear SEELANGers,
>
>
>
> It's come to my attention that the makers of Nota Bene, the Lexus of
> academic software (see www.notabene.com), offer a discount when several
> people form a "group order." The version of the program that deals
> cheerfully with Cyrillic and many other alphabets is called "Lingua
> Workstation." It's godlessly expensive ($400 with academic discount!), but
> you save a hundred clams when you form a group of 3 or more purchases.  I've
> been playing with the free trial of the program (a suite of programs,
> really) and find it to be a compelling solution for seamlessly integrating
> the collection of references, note-taking, outlining and writing-the
> activities that I keep trying to cobble together using a variety of
> different programs that don't always play nice with one another. If any is
> interested in forming the "SEELANGS" purchasing group, please contact me
> offline at powelstock (atsymbol) brandeis (dot) edu.
>
>
>
> Happy Thanksgiving to all!
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> David
>
>
>
> David Powelstock
>
> Asst. Prof. of Russian, East European and Comparative Literature
>
> Undergraduate Advising Head, Russian Language and Literature
>
> Chair, Program in Russian and East European Studies
>
> GRALL, MS 024
>
> Brandeis University
>
> Waltham, MA 02454-9110
>
>
>
>
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