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We'll soon start beta testing Mellel 2.7, and it seems like a good time to write a little bit about what will be there...

The main new feature we've planned for 2.7 was flowing text around images. We thought this feature might turn out to be a big one, but it turned out to be huge...

There are two parts to flowing text: one is flowing text around "floating images" (that is, images that are placed "over" the text) and flowing around inline images (that is, around images that are 'anchored' to a point in the text). Although inline images have been part of Mellel for many years, flowing text around them turned out to be trickier than with floating images.

The end result, though, is simply gorgeous -- images move smoothly. Much more smoothly than with any other application in our corner of the woods. Apart from professional pride (which is important too!) smooth movement means accurate and smooth positioning of images.

While at it, we have introduced many improvements in other areas. For example, auto-titles can now be entered anywhere -- not just at the beginning of a paragraph. There are other nice improvements there (including some of the most wanted on our improvements list).

Other things we hope to have finished and ready by beta time are background images and, perhaps, even text "boxes."

Great news. Thanks for the sneak peek under the tent. Look forward to this upgrade.

Thanks, Ori, for the great news! I'm really looking forward to the new version!

And I dearly hope text boxes will make it to this version too. And I hope it will be possible to connect text boxes with each other, so that the text can flow through a series of text boxes, like for instance in Indesign. That would really be fantastic, and appreciated, I'm sure, by many!

Ori Redler wrote:While at it, we have introduced many improvements in other areas. For example, auto-titles can now be entered anywhere -- not just at the beginning of a paragraph. There are other nice improvements there (including some of the most wanted on our improvements list).

If you can still find the time for a tiny featurette, could you also add auto-titles to the Replace Styles dialog?

shades wrote:Great news. Thanks for the sneak peek under the tent. Look forward to this upgrade.

I would not go into more details about the upcoming beta (in response to those of you who asked about such details) but I will try to keep people in the forum up-to-speed with the new features (I did not do that in the past, which is a shame).

Sounds great! I hope Mellel-managed image placement will be compatible with these new features, and I presume that Mellel will be smarter about keeping captions and figures as a single unit than Word is...

DRM

Great news, looking forward to playing (and working, of course) with the new Mellel 2.7 beta.

How far around the corner is »around the corner»? Can hardly wait.

Ori Redler wrote: Apart from professional pride (which is important too!) smooth movement means accurate and smooth positioning of images.

You've certainly earned yours, and deserve it. I guess for new users Mellel can be a bit of a challenge, but once you're used to it, its flexibility and level of detail is compellingly addictive. I occasionally tend to see what else is out and about town... it always ends in frustration.

Thanks guys!

Wonderful! I'm sure Mellel's image flow will kick Word's a**, as every feature in Mellel has done so far. Can't wait to see it. Looks like I won't have to learn TeX for my dissertation's final draft after all…

Looking forward to the beta; when does it come out?

ok, but I hope you'll forgive me if I keep begging and pleading for independent (translation) columns (or table-rows-across-pages, which would accomplish the same thing), as well as… hmm… undo reform!

The undo non-feature is an absolute crime.

I'm also hoping 2.7 will have the keyboard shortcut flexibility that has been mentioned (in an email).

Great news...waiting for the release!

Great great great. That's just the feature I need now, in the current stage of the (huge ) text I'm writing! Now, that is - oh, I would like to try it as soon as somehow possible...
Will the beta testers from 2.6 automatically be advised when the new beta for 2.7 is available? If not, PLEASE inclue me in the new beta list...
impatiently yours,
Martin

Were talking about one big corner ey?