Does anyone use this and is it worth the investment for academic writing? Have you used it in conjunction with Logos?
Use what? This?
Nota Bene has been around since the dark days of DOS. On a Mac I think Mellel is sufficient with whatever else you might need and pocket a nice amount of change. Most of the reason for a specialized program like Nota Bene has long since faded away.
I used it to write two theses and it performed quite well for that purpose. N.T. Wright uses it to write all of his books--that shows you what it is capable of. It handles large documents well.
Lingua Workstation is the version you want--it handles the extra languages. Greek & Hebrew texts copy over perfectly from Logos. You have complete control over everything--if something is not displaying right, you can just go into code view & remove the excess formatting (like bold or size or what not).
There is a database for entering all of your sources' bibliographic information. You do this only once, then you call it up whenever you want to insert a citation. It comes loaded with the formatting for many different style manuals, formats, and conventions. If you write your document, say, in MLA style then decide you want Turabian, a few mouse clicks will convert the entire document. Same thing with footnotes--if you want inline references instead, it can convert them over automatically.
It is also capable of indexing any text documents you have and making them searchable. I use this for organizing my reading and notes; you can attach individuals files to your bibliographic entries. I generally keep these open while I'm reading in Logos, cut & paste useful quotes into it, and give them a #hashtag for easier future searching. (I've never used Logos' built-in notes function.)
I generally have been happy with it and consider it a decent investment; upgrades to new versions are reasonably priced. A few caveats, however:
Those points aside, it is a good product.
Gordon Fee used it and loved it, wouldn't use anything else. I don't know much about it, though I did help him reinstall it once when he had some computer problem and called me as his tech support specialist. I think he knew one of the people who wrote it, a former student of his? Anyway, not that Gordon Fee endorsing software would be a reason to use it. But FWIW. This info is some years old now anyway. Not sure how the program has developed since then.
One of my friends used to verbally clobber me every time I mentioned new software. The learning curve is a real time sinkhole for him. One time I was glad I didn't listen to him, but he was right about the sinkhole of one's expectations.
Surprising that this product still exists! I used it more than twenty years ago, was not wysiwyg, and was fast.
