Mellel for Thesis (or not)? Page numbers, TOC...

[Thule]

I am about to begin write my Master of Science Thesis but I am quite new with Mac OS X. Thus, I need to choose a word processor. Mellel is one of the alternatives. The other options are MS Word, NeoOffice - and maybe even DocBook and LaTeX with an approriate program.

I am sure that Mellel handles all the basic formatting tricks. The real challenge is the structure of the thesis.

The thesis has three parts:
- Part 1: title page (no page number)
- Part 2: abstracts, preface, TOC etc (Roman page numbers: i,ii,iii,...)
- Part 3: actual content (Arabic page numbers: 1,2,3,...)

Page numbers (and restarting numbering at the beginning of each part) doesn't seem to be a problem: http://forum.redlers.com/viewtopic.php?t=1340

BUT... The Table of Content (TOC) in Part 2 should only include pages in Part 3. (In other words, TOC in Part 2 is TOC for Part 3.)

Is this possible in Mellel?


As a footnote: This 10-day waiting for forum account activation after registration is really annoying. When I registered on Sep 23, I would have been ready to buy Mellel right away (if TOC thing was possible). Now, with Microsoft's Technology Guarantee & free Office 2008 (since Sep 25), it will much harder to sell Mellel to me. I am familiar with MS Office from my several years with Windows. Therefore, it feels safer to buy MS Office than Mellel (and I am sure that Word handles all the TOC tricks).

I haven't yet purchased any of the programs although I have occassionally used NeoOffice. (NO feels still too clumsy to be the final choice for my thesis.) Thus, I am still open for suggestions...

[loquat149]

After YEARS of using Windows machines, I bought my first Mac last May, mainly because I needed a new laptop and couldn't find one that was guaranteed to run Windows XP and was not about to try Vista. I figured a Macbook Pro running Bootcamp was the best Windows machine available. I'd already written 99% of my 200+ page dissertation in Framemaker for Windows. Previous versions of this document had passed through LaTeX and an earlier version of Framemaker. This document makes HEAVY use of imported graphics (PDF and TIFF), a few typset equations, and LOTS of citations. After a week of using Framemaker via Bootcamp I was ready to find a copy of Framemaker for OS X. Since there wasn't one, I tried Mellel and have not looked back since! A little cut-and-pasting between bootcamp and OS X and I have a beautiful document that's MUCH easier to edit and manage using the Mellel-Bookends package. If you don't need a reference manager, you can get Mellel as a student for US$35. I'm made TOC's similar to the one you've described easily in Mellel. Forget about Word, try Mellel, you won't be sorry.

Dave

[verma]

BUT... The Table of Content (TOC) in Part 2 should only include pages in Part 3. (In other words, TOC in Part 2 is TOC for Part 3.)

Is this possible in Mellel?

Yes. You can define what type (levels) of autotitles you want in your TOC, and decide not to label the items in part 2 as part of the autotitle system you use for part3, for example.

Welcome to Mellel!

[matthias]

As to the TOC question:

In short: Yes this ist possible, as Verma already pointed out.

I do the very same thing you need with the following set up. I use structural auto-tiltes only in what is part 3 in your example. For headings like "preface", "abbreviations" and the like, which would be in part 2 of your example, I use tag flows only. If you don't want to have the headings of part 2 simply uncheck the box "Include in TOC" for the respective tag flows in the auto-tilte set up window.

[Phil82]

Do you need cross references? That is what stops me from using Mellel in my thesis, and no I won't whine again about how long I've been waiting for this feature .

In its current form, Mellel works really well for short academic papers where you can reference everything manually. For long thesis length documents, it's better to use something else.

[Thule]

Thanks for all the answers.

Do you need cross references? That is what stops me from using Mellel in my thesis, and no I won't whine again about how long I've been waiting for this feature .

In its current form, Mellel works really well for short academic papers where you can reference everything manually. For long thesis length documents, it's better to use something else.

This can really be one drawback for Mellel. My M.Sc. Thesis is my first longer scientific document of any kind. (You don't need to be B.Sc. and write any B.Sc. Thesis before M.Sc. where I live.) In shorter texts cross-references haven't cause me any problems thanks to the "manual method".

I think I will eventually purchase MS Word (i.e. MS Office) due to its familiarity and my good experience with it (from Windows).

But... yeah, there's a but ... I will probably purchase also Mellel. (Who said that all the students are really poor? )

Seriously... Bookends might be a nice add-in for MS Word (and Mellel) and I am considering buying it too. After all, the student license is only 69 USD. But with 20 USD extra, you get also Mellel, which, in my opinion, is a great deal. With the weak US dollar, that (89 USD) is just 63 Euros here.

BTW, this is a little bit off-topic... Does somebody know if the student license of Mellel (or BE) has some restrictions (e.g. no commercial use)? Not really a problem for me but nice to know.

[macsailor]

Thanks for all the answers.

Do you need cross references? That is what stops me from using Mellel
BTW, this is a little bit off-topic... Does somebody know if the student license of Mellel (or BE) has some restrictions (e.g. no commercial use)? Not really a problem for me but nice to know.

The only limit I can think of, is that you are only allowed to write one thesis a year and that only in one subject.

Just kidding. AFAIK there is no restrictions whatsoever regarding the academic license of Mellel.

[aechallu]

As a new user you may not be aware of the marker functionality. You not only can highlight text fragments with different marker "streams" (Mellel is all about streams...) but you can also easily navigate through the markers. Markers make it really easy to deal with simple cross-referencing. For my dissertation I didn't keep references to page ranges but to structural elements (e.g. "see table ___") and it was really easy to do. I only have about three instances of xrefs to page ranges and when reviewing them I realized I did not need them at all. That's my experience, for what it's worth. If it's expected that you do extensive page cross-referencing in your field or that's your writing style, then Mellel may not be for you. (That depends also on how good you consider the xref implementation in word/ooo; I would go straight to Latex instead!)

I'd be interested in learning how people use advanced cross-referencing in the context of MA and PhD writing. In my field and the scholars I interact with (history, literature, economic history), we really don't pay too much attention to formatting issues. But damned be whoever messes with the citation style or misses a comma before a which!

As regards TOCs, the good thing in Mellel is that once you generate them they behave as normal text. That means you can reformat them to better suit your needs. It gets some manual tweaking to get the TOCs in the style requested in diss./thesis guidelines, but it's doable and easier than in Word. I bet that when Mellel gets xrefs done, TOCs will require less tweaking.

[audiotom]

i recently built a template in mellel for my thesis.
it makes use of roman page numbers for the main part of the thesis and has some different page styles (e.g. the abstract, toc and foreword don´t use roman page numbers).

i also included a style setup for bookends which actually works perfect for me with mellel.

so maybe that would be that document would be a good thing to start with.

so is there any way to upload files into this forum?

EDIT:

here is the download link:
http://nowamedia.de/forums/thesis_arial_12.zip