ANNOUNCING
Nota Bene 10 is our totally reworked next-generation version that runs natively on 64-bit versions of Windows, without requiring virtual mode. It is now available in a “beta” release. While not every feature is yet implemented in its entirety, all the basic modules are now working, and the program has been tested and improved through over a dozen preliminary releases, and is now solid enough, useful enough, and, frankly, exciting enough for us to now make it available more broadly, even if not yet in final form.
Click here to see
10 Breakthroughs in Nota Bene 10
(with screenshots)
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Click here to see
NB 10 Update FAQ
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Click here to see
General Information about the Current NB (Version 9)
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In the words of some of your colleagues:
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“I've now used NB 10 Beta 4 with Ibidem to edit a 76-page ms. containing 109 endnotes. It was accurately converted to RTF (Word opened it and it was a faithful reproduction of the NB original) and then it also printed to PDF without a hitch. That's a lot of bibliographic material to handle, but the suite did not complain.”
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“It’s terrific to have Orbis again (I’m coming to the end of a book and need to keep searching the chapters I have written). It’s working perfectly in beta 5.”
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“Many thanks for Orbis . . . great to see! I created a textbase for the notes related to my published work and it all works fine (and fast!).”
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“NB10 beta 5’s manuscript files and PDF printing works like a charm! Thanks again!”
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So whether you've been running NB in virtual mode on 64-bit Windows while anxiously waiting to use Nota Bene, Ibidem, and Archiva directly on Windows 7, or you've been working fine using NB on a 32-bit system, all the while eagerly looking forward to the next-generation of Nota Bene, the wait is over.
While version 10 is only available in a "beta," which means that it remains a work in progress, over a dozen “alpha” and “beta” versions have been tested by a large number of NB users over the course of the last year. This extensive testing on a wide variety of systems has enabled us to discover and address most of the serious issues (crashes, lockups, etc.). While issues remain, including some printing problems (but only for a small number of people), most of the other issues have been encountered and reported by only a couple of people, and are believed to depend on specific configuration settings and document-specific formatting. We’ll still work to fix these, of course, but they should not impact most users. Overall, we think that you will find the program to be quite stable. In the words of one user, “NB 10 has been holding up very well as I use it for serious work.”
SOME CANDID COMMENTS FROM USERS
“This morning I installed Nota Bene 10 on my 64-bit
Windows 7 desktop. I'm just an hour into this, but Wow!
NB 10 looks fabulous and it's running fine.”
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“I have now downloaded NB 10a and have been using it regularly since the weekend. There are some issues, most of which you have already noted in your release notes. They are largely cosmetic from my point of view and I'm sure you'll work them out. . . . But the real good news is that I have not had a single crash yet.”
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“LOVE the new version.”
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“Very nice job you are doing on 10.
I couldn’t be happier. . . I have been playing with 10. As I said, I really enjoy working with it. It is a nice piece of software.”
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“I like the NB10 very much and cannot wait for the . . . final version.”
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“I kept my old computer with NB9 and used it until the second release of NB 10, which I have been using [now in its twelfth release] for most things.”
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“Hopefully V 10 will give Nota Bene a tremendous boost in sales and users, which you richly deserve.”
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“Yesterday I installed NB10 on my laptop and my desktop.
I'm thrilled with it.”
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“I ended up writing in MS Word and formatting all my footnotes from scratch (since my current laptop is running with a 64-bit OS without the capability of running a virtual XP within in). Pain-in-the neck! I'm looking forward to being able to use Nota Bene again for academic writing!”
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“I see that NB10 is getting to the level of a graphic word processor
able to attract new users.”
[Editor’s Note: You can still run NB 10 in a clean screen,
without toolbars, icons, pop-ups, etc.]
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“I don't envy your work to get 10 right, successfully out the door, and another in the long line of great accomplishments in NB's history over the last almost 30 years! But I sure will await with anticipation [future] versions.”
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“Looking forward to NB 10 avidly...”
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In many ways, then, the biggest problem with the beta is not lack of stability (although we cannot guarantee that it will be problem free), but the fact that it is incomplete. But while details remain, almost all major features are now essentially working, except insertion and editing of images and objects, including frames.
In addition, various dialogs, or portions of dialogs, including some of the new toolbar icons, right-click pop-up menus, side dialog bars, etc., are not yet fully implemented. You will find these non-functioning options scattered throughout the program. But the dialogs that are most necessary should now be working. You will also see that NB Help (F1) is still the v9 version. You should be able to get the help you need (most existing features work the same way), but screen shots will not be up-to-date and there may be some discrepancies.
In order to make it easier for you to start using the NB 10 beta immediately, we have designed it so that it can be used interchangeably with NB 9:
- If running on 32-bit Windows, you can install it into the same folder as NB 9, and access the same files, and use the same Ibidem databases
- If running on 64-bit Windows, you’ll obviously want to install NB 10 on the host system, not on the virtual machine, but you can still access the same files, and use the same Ibidem and Archiva databases
This convenient setup means that you can start using NB 10
without any worries — you can use NB 10 as little or as much
as you like, returning to the installed version of NB 9 whenever
your needs or preferences dictate. It’s really that simple.
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There’s no reason to wait to get started on the new break-through Nota Bene — you’ll enter a whole new world of convenience (and, finally, beauty — we think you’ll love the radically enhanced interface, especially since you have near total control over how it appears) while being automatically notified and provided with an option to download and install new releases to the beta and/or the final release version, when it is ready.
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