Wishlist 2008

[stephenandamanda]

Here is a simple one. When making a change to a style set (global), the program could ask you if you want to make it a document specific set. I find that quite often I want to make a small change in the style set just for that one document; and making a document specific style set is a pain in the bottom. Obviously you would need an option to turn it off for those that don't want to be bugged about making a document specific set.

My two cents.

Stephen

[Luhmann]

Here, in no particular order, are my priorities for forthcoming features:

# True live-updating of WYSIWYG references when using Bookends.
# Sparkle auto-updates
# Improved style management GUI
# Faster better integration with .doc or .docx format
# Full support and integration for Word and Open Office's collaboration features (notes, changes)
# Better Leopard integration (spotlight, quickview, etc.)

Looking forward to the new version of Mellel when it comes out!

[nadinbrzezinski]

Well, I did it, I bought my copy and I am impressed

There is still one feature (or probably two) that I'd like to see implemented

1.- Track changes... I know they are a bear to implement. I get it. But coming from the WIN side of the house to Mac I use them. Yes I use Neo Office for that, but still. I will NOT load word on this machine and I-works implementation is decent but not good. Granted, if the document is short enoug I just use whatever word processor I have open at the moment.

2.- side notes.... now I-works is amazingly good.... while Neo's not so good.

Those are my top priorities to bring this WP to the level of its competitors. In fact, as far as I can tell, that is all it needs.

Granted, we still have a WIN machine (hubby is a gamer), and our copy of Word 07 is used mostly for.... layout these days.


Nadin

PS othewise I do love working on a stable WP and together with Scriverner... (and avenir for time lines) this should prove a fruitful relationship

[dansheffield]

My number one feature would be Indic script support, even if it is just rudimentary. At the moment, my dissertation is split between Mellel (for chapters using Arabic and Persian sources) and NeoOffice (for chapters with Sanskrit and Gujarati sources), but life would be so much easier if I could do everything in Mellel. Also, increased column flexibility would be nice, since at the moment the only way that I can figure out to format Persian poetry correctly is to use tables. It'd be much easier though if one could simply go across columns with each line break. I've tried using tabs, but this doesn't work with kashida.

Looking forward to new features,

Dan Sheffield
Ph. D. Candidate in Iranian Studies
Harvard University

[DavidH]

I’m a new user, attracted in the first place largely by Mellel’s OpenType support. I’d enthusiastically second transalpin’s suggestions, especially those calling for OpenType (large and) small caps and superscripts. Mixing large and small caps in a head or subhead in the manner good text fonts are designed to afford shouldn’t become more difficult when the font is in OpenType format.

I’d also like to see some sort of access to the ornaments built into OpenType fonts.

[petrus]

I’d enthusiastically second transalpin’s suggestions, especially those calling for OpenType (large and) small caps and superscripts. Mixing large and small caps in a head or subhead in the manner good text fonts are designed to afford shouldn’t become more difficult when the font is in OpenType format.

I’d also like to see some sort of access to the ornaments built into OpenType fonts.

You can already accomplish all of this. In order to activate opentype small caps, or any opentype feature, just select that feature from the opentype menu on the "Character Appearance" palette. You can define character style variations with different opentype features, or create an entire character style with different opentype variations.

As for ornaments, I am able to insert the ornaments included with Adobe Garamond Premier Pro and Adobe Jenson Pro. First, the character style must be set to the font in which you wish to insert the ornament. Secondly, the ornament should be inserted directly from the Macintosh system Character Palette [command + option + t]. In the upper left-hand corner, in the "view" dialogue box, select "glyph." Scroll to find the ornament, and insert. Note that the typeface must be set to the variation the ornament is located under; i.e. if you want to insert an ornament in the italic variant, make sure the typeface is already set to "italic" in Mellel.

As for "small caps" versus "all small caps," this may possibly be a function of the typeface. For example, selecting "All Small Caps" in Garamond Premier Pro and in Adobe Jenson Pro does produce all small caps. However, using Monotype Van Dijck, it does not. Using that typeface, selecting "All Small Caps" produces small caps only when the shift key is not pressed.

[Mart°n]

I’d enthusiastically second transalpin’s suggestions, especially those calling for OpenType (large and) small caps and superscripts. Mixing large and small caps in a head or subhead in the manner good text fonts are designed to afford shouldn’t become more difficult when the font is in OpenType format.

I’d also like to see some sort of access to the ornaments built into OpenType fonts.

You can already accomplish all of this.

No, sadly not. It’s true, that the Small Caps / All Small Caps depends on the font used, but InDesign – for example – offers to set “Small Caps” or “All Small Caps” with every font. So it’s not a font issue but should be an option in Mellel. Otherwise you could not work at all with a font like Adobe Garamond Premier Pro in Mellel.
Also Mellel doesn’t support Glyph-Variants which prevents you from inserting some Glyphs (also Ornaments) that are not available via the different OpenType options in Mellel. You also aren’t able to insert them via the Character Palette or PopChar because Mellel simply doesn’t support this OpenType feature.
As there are other OpenType features missing in Mellel (as the Redlers already confirmed) the feature requests from DavidH are still alive and i second (third…) them.

[petrus]

Also Mellel doesn’t support Glyph-Variants which prevents you from inserting some Glyphs (also Ornaments) that are not available via the different OpenType options in Mellel. You also aren’t able to insert them via the Character Palette or PopChar because Mellel simply doesn’t support this OpenType feature.

It is possible to insert ornaments, using the Character Palette [using the Glyph view] that are not available in Mellel through the opentype features. This does not seem to have been possible before 2.2.7.2, but now it is. The attached image demonstrates two ornaments inserted into Mellel via the Macintosh system Character Palette. I tried to insert these elements before 2.2.7.2 but was unsuccessful. In Adobe Garamond Premier Pro, the unicode numbers are: EIC3 and EIC2, which are allocated to the private use area. I have had identical success with Adobe Jenson Pro. Perhaps in theory it should not work, but in practice it does.

Screenshot 01.tiff

However, I do agree that it would be pleasant to have ornaments and other private use glyphs available via simpler means.

[Mart°n]

I haven’t tested ornaments much and as far as I remember, I was able to insert some characters via the character palette in older versions of Mellel too that were not available via the OpenType options.

What I’ve written about were Glyph variants that could hold some more glyphs/characters/ornaments. If I open the character palette with Mellel being the active application, a small warning sign followed by some words “this application does not support glyph variants” (freely translated from the German version) appears at the bottom of the palette.

If I write in Adobe InDesign with Adobe’s Garamond Premier Pro, I could select some glyph variants form within the InDesign Glyph palette:



If I select this text and copy it over to Mellel (with the same font chosen) I get this result:



which shows, that ligatures (not originally chosen in InDesign) are available but the glyph variants (e in Mellel, superscript e in Mellel, h in Glyph, long-s in Test and t in Test) are neither displayed nor supported in Mellel. So the advance features of some very sophisticated fonts are not available in Mellel which prevents you from creating stunning typographic results.

Edit: I have tried to insert the Adobe Jenson Ornaments you’ve used in your example but failed with my setup. The character palette doesn’t insert those glyphs and displays the warning sign mentioned above. Maybe your setup is different, do you use OS X 10.5 Leopard?

[petrus]

The following screen shot was made of text typed and inserted into Mellel:

Screen shot 02.tiff

The phrase "Mellel Glyph Test" was typed in Mellel, with "stylistic alternates" selected where appropriate. The second alternate "t" and the second two ampersand variations were inserted into Mellel via the Macintosh system glyph palette.
The second screen shot illustrates some glyphs from the italic variant inserted into Mellel via the glyph palette:

Screen shot 03.tiff

However, the combining italic glyphs are produced automatically when the Discretionary Ligatures option is selected in Mellel.

I am running Leopard 10.5.2 on an Intel Macbook.

All the characters produced in InDesign can easily be typed in Mellel. The copy and paste just didn't work.

If I can provide any further information I will be happy to do so.

[DavidH]

Thanks to all concerned for the prompt and helpful responses.

My own experience so far (mainly with Adobe Caslon Pro) seems pretty similar to Mart°n’s. I.e., when using Glyph view in the Character Palette, I get a “no support for glyph variants” warning when trying to insert ornaments. I too am using an older version of OS X (10.4.11) with the newest version of Mellel. So it looks as if OS version is a decisive factor here.

[Reiner]

same problem here with 10.4.11

[Ori Redler]

same problem here with 10.4.11

Which makes sense, as this is missing (the support for this) from Mellel.

[nicka]

Hi Ori,

That's a bit opaque. Do you mean that it's not surprising that glyph variants don't work in OS 10.4? Can you confirm that they do work in OS 10.5?

[Mart°n]

It seems that 10.5 adds support for glyph variants (as Petrus has shown). So this feature is available in Mellel if you have 10.5 but as it is not built directly into Mellel, you could not access it in 10.4 or 10.3.
While this is good news for all who work with 10.5, i still like to see the support for glyph variants added to Mellel itself so that the documents created with 10.5 are fully backwards compatible with 10.4 and 10.3.