.ODT Support

[Kajover]

Hey!

I just wanted to ask if the actual version (or an upcoming one) is supporting the .odt format (read/write). I know that Mellel uses an XML-based format, but still I did not find an answer to this specific question.

Here in Europe most of the authorities and especially the courts are switching to this new format which was inofficially "declared" to the new format for EU authorities by the Europ. Commission.

This is a main reason why I did not buy the software till now.

Thanks in advance

[rpcameron]

The Redlers have stated that they had no intention of making ODF a format for Mellel, at least as a "first-class citizen". However, since Mellel's format and ODF are both XML-based, it should not be too difficult to write an XSLT to convert between the two. However, at the moment there is not intention of accessing ODF files from directly in Mellel.

[Kajover]

This is really a pity in times were the intercompatibility between apps finally became almost perfect because of "one" format.
What do you mean with "first-class citzien"? Is there any roadmap for the program? Were did they state that? Is there a developer who knows for sure something about an implementation or a convertion tool?

Thanks again

EDIT: By the way... how can I view 2 pages of the same document in one window?

[Mart°n]

This is really a pity in times were the intercompatibility between apps finally became almost perfect because of "one" format.

Intercompatibility was never there and probably will never be there. Each conversion between two formats causes some kind of loss. This is true for image formats (Photoshop, PaintShop Pro, Fireworks, Pixelmator…), Video editor formats (Final Cut, iMovie, Adobe Premiere), Audio editor formats (Soundtrack, Logic, WaveEditor, Audition) and Text formats.
This is because every text (image, sound, video…) editor does support different features and even the same features are implemented in a different way. Mellel, for example features a very sophisticated style handling which could not “mapped” or converted without any loss to any other format. It is possible to write a converter to open and save a document as a .doc or .odt file but something will be lost when doing this.
So even if the next version of Mellel will be able to open .odt files, it will not be able to display each and every content of this document as Mellel doesn’t support some features jet (image handling, some advanced table features, formulas via an built in editor, links, cross-references, version-tracking…). If you like to use Mellel as an application to write your own stuff, it could be a perfect fit for your needs, but if you like to buy an word processor that handles .odt or .doc files without limitations, you’ll better look for OpenOffice (or NeoOffice) or Word.

What do you mean with "first-class citzien"? Is there any roadmap for the program? Were did they state that? Is there a developer who knows for sure something about an implementation or a convertion tool?

The developers sometimes give some insight in what is planned for the next release. The only thing we know, is that cross-references are planned or Mellel 2.5, but this release was delayed for about 8 months now which makes it hard to estimate a final release date. There are some often wished features beside cross-references (take a look at the “wishslist 2008” topic but none of those wishes was confirmed by the developers to be included in the or one of the next releases.
“First class citizen” means that an .odf converter was not very high on the priority list of neither the Redlers (the developers) or the users of this forum (compared to other requests). Maybe this has changed since then but I don’t know.

EDIT: By the way... how can I view 2 pages of the same document in one window?

That’s not possible with the current version of Mellel.

[rpcameron]

This is really a pity in times were the intercompatibility between apps finally became almost perfect because of "one" format.
What do you mean with "first-class citzien"? Is there any roadmap for the program? Were did they state that? Is there a developer who knows for sure something about an implementation or a convertion tool?

When Mellel initially was released with an XML file format, the Redlers solicited opinions from the user community. Several comments were made asking why Mellel needed its own XML format, instead of using the already established OpenDocument Format (ODF). In response, the Redlers commented that there were certain features they wanted Mellel to support that were not possible or compatible with ODF.

Because of this disparity between feature sets of the two formats, only formats that support every feature of Mellel will be a "first-class citizen". Secondary options such as exporting to ODF may be supported in a future version, but it will not be supported as a primary format. As far as another implementation or conversation tool, anyone is open to write their own Mellel -> ODF XSLT, but I do not know of what that exists presently.

[Kajover]

Thank you. I think I'll give Mellel a shot and if documents are going to be send to someone on a pc e.g. I'll use Open Office (maybe a copy paste from the .mell document content).

[Stephen Still]

it should not be too difficult to write an XSLT to convert between the two.

Actually, it's non-trivial at best, largely due to problems with the implementation of ODF in OpenOffice, the dominant UA for ODF. For example, ODF specifies two types of lists: a style of XML list which is very similar to Mellel syntax, in which the depth of the individual list item is specified in an attribute, and a style which is very similar to HTML, in which the depth of a list item is determined by its position within a nested series of <ul> or <ol> elements. Unfortunately, OpenOffice only supports the latter, and converting between the two for arbitrary depths is very difficult. It _might_ be possible in XSLT -- but it's certainly not beginner stuff.

OpenOffice's implementation of page and section styles is also a little bizarre. There is extensive reliance on "auto-generated" styles (which can nevertheless be preserved in the document format) which creates an incredibly messy set of styles.

There are other issues. I haven't touched this in a while.

On a more positive note, I did get as far as putting together a rudimentary Mellel -> ODF converter. My last rough version from late May is here. Forgive any weirdness/brokenness — this was the result of my personal fiddling. It is not intended for public consumption. Note that to create a file readable by OpenOffice, you need to compress it as a jar archive. The source of my little shell script to do this looks like this:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
xsltproc -o /tmp/mellel2odt/ /Users/stephen/workingsource/mellel2odt/mellel2odt.xsl $1/main.xml
echo "Copying $1/Images to OpenDocument archive";
cp $1/Images/* /tmp/mellel2odt/Pictures/;
jar cvf test.jar -C /tmp/mellel2odt/ . && mv test.jar test.odt && open test.odt;

where $1 is a command line argument specifying the mellel document you want to convert. It is probable this will need a little tweaking. Caueat emptor (data tua ardeant fumoque ascendant).

[shmulik]

This might seem a silly solution, but what about saving as RTF, opening in OOo or Neo and then saving in ODT? It's a bit of an extra step, but really not much of one.

[signinstranger]

On a more positive note, I did get as far as putting together a rudimentary Mellel -> ODF converter. My last rough version from late May is here

Thanks for sharing this. You don't happen to have a Something -> Mellel converter lying around somewhere? I failed miserably when I tried to make my own.

BTW: A new version of mellel2tex.xsl can be found on my website. There's also a Mellel -> MultiMarkdown converter, that might come handy for future users of Scrivener

[fastmiso]

Thanks very much for this, singinstranger. I can't wait to try out the Mellel->MMD!

[Stephen Still]

On a more positive note, I did get as far as putting together a rudimentary Mellel -> ODF converter. My last rough version from late May is here

Thanks for sharing this. You don't happen to have a Something -> Mellel converter lying around somewhere? I failed miserably when I tried to make my own.

BTW: A new version of mellel2tex.xsl can be found on my website. There's also a Mellel -> MultiMarkdown converter, that might come handy for future users of Scrivener

No, unfortunately there's just not enough info on what elements are actually required to make a document that Mellel will like. One could probably reverse engineer it given time, but a DTD or schema would be much more usable. I did try once, and rapidly gave up!

[signinstranger]

There's also a Mellel -> MultiMarkdown converter, that might come handy for future users of Scrivener

There's a new version of Mellel2MMD on my website:

http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~mrosena/mellel2mmd.zip

It seems to be much more reliable than my own Mellel2TeX converter, so I would recommend its use for most documents.