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3.0 Wish List

Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 2:42 am
by ahankinson
Ok, so my last thread was in praise of Mellel 2.9, but in the spirit of moving forward, I figured we can start collecting wishes for the next version.

My biggest wish is the ability to add comments. For the record, I find Word's, Nisus' and Pages' handling of comments cumbersome (lumped in the same stream as the changes) so maybe the Redlers can think of something amazing to make this really great.

Letterspacing would be great too. Maybe the new OpenType features added in 2.9 will help with this?

I know some others have suggested some other features. I've C/P'd them below. Perhaps some of the authors can expand on their requests to help flesh out what they mean (if it's not immediately obvious).

@jannuss:
1. Sections
-- independent text flows (right column on page one to right column on page two, etc.)
-- ability to size columns independently, not merely split the page equally
2. Tables, lot of work needed here
3. Marginalia (I assumed it was coming with line numbering -- have I missed something?)
4. Track changes -- I haven't had the time to check. Is it truly compatible with WORD, both import and export?
5. Special handling for numerous languages -- just recently the Redlers were reminded of old requests to repair problems with Persian and French
etc., etc., etc.

@dapenguin503 (RE: Sections)
parallel columns. In other words> all selected columns are synced such that paragraphs start at the same place on the page. Very useful when doing biligual works such as siddurs and haggadahs. I presently use tables and this gets a bit hairy in cases when a paragraph / section is overly long.

@nicka
indexing, ability to put comments, punctuation, list numbers in margins, and improvements to dialogue boxes and palettes (Find Set dialogue and Bibliography palette are the most in need of work, I think). And nobody in this thread has mentioned letterspacing or export of table of contents to pdf.

@ddauerbach
marginalia would be lovely...

Re: 3.0 Wish List

Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 5:24 am
by simifilm
I don't know how useful it is to have such a list for every new release, but here we go:
  • Language as a an attribute of character or paragraph styles. Currently this is the thing I'm annoyed about most. I want to be able to to switch the spell checking language in the text.
  • "Page brake before" as a paragraph property.
  • The ability to have multiple Auto-Titles on the same level of hierarchy. I often have the situation where a title type (for example a chapter) can be either numbered or unnumbered. Unfortunately, it's not possible to have two variants of the same title which look differently but will be displayed on the same level in the outline pane.
  • Comments which export properly.
  • .docx import/export.
  • Track changes needs improvements: The ability to accept several changes at once is vital. In a document with lots of changes this really becomes a big deal.
  • The ability to print a document without the changes.
  • Also the way Mellel behaves when there are many changes, is far from ideal. A typical situation: I get a document with many changes. Mellel will then display the changes on the left and when there are too many to display an arrow at the bottom allows me to switch between the sets of changes. Now if I don't accept the first changes, I always have to click the arrow the go to the latter changes. If there are many changes in a document, this quickly adds up and wastes a lot of time.
  • Support for multiples bibliographies (primary, secondary …) in one document.
  • BibDesk support.
  • Zotero support.

Re: 3.0 Wish List

Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 11:44 am
by DylanMuir
I would add the old evergreen suggestion of tying captions and figures together, and having "figure styles" that group both and define their layout on the page.

DRM

Re: 3.0 Wish List

Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 12:06 pm
by Timotheus
Let me add just another one:

a word processor that "was designed to allow you to create long and sophisticated documents" (a quote from the site) should absolutely have a split window function. I miss it each and every day.

Re: 3.0 Wish List

Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 7:29 am
by AdamWysokinski
I'd love to see the features mentioned above (listed in descending order of importance):
1. Language as a an attribute of character or paragraph styles - this is the most important to me, I work bilingual and really hate setting the language each time I open my documents.
2. Tables, lot of work needed here - especially easier way of centering the whole table.
3. Support for multiples bibliographies (primary, secondary …) in one document.
4. Export of table of contents to pdf

Plus the following ones:
1. A shortcut to numbered list (maybe cmd+{ cmd+} ?)
2. Easy way to update TOC
3. Closing the Find window with Escape
4. Find picture or graphic (like ^g in Word)

Re: 3.0 Wish List

Posted: Sun Aug 28, 2011 6:02 am
by DavidH
[1] Letterspacing, now that the other longstanding problems with OpenType support having to do with large and small caps have finally been addressed.
[2] A more serious full screen mode, including some visual indication of page margins and some obvious way to access paragraph and character styles (and ideally, the underlying attributes) without leaving the mode entirely. Here Scrivener provides one model of what's possible and appropriate here: use the top or bottom of the screen to call up some equivalent of the needed menus and/or palettes

Re: 3.0 Wish List

Posted: Sun Aug 28, 2011 11:31 pm
by svenh
- select diferent parts of a text
- docx and odt import / export
- zotero and bibdesk support (or copy past from any reference manager in the the reference window and Mellel makes the job to scan the document?)
- support for multiples bibliographies
- language as a an attribute of character or paragraph styles

Re: 3.0 Wish List

Posted: Mon Aug 29, 2011 4:38 am
by jannuss
svenh wrote: language as a an attribute of character or paragraph styles
language is already an attribute of Character styles, but not of Paragraph styles. But, if you have a Character style associated with your Paragraph syle, then its language applies.

Frankly, I've never understood how the language attribute works
-- do you use it in place of switching languages in the flag menu?
-- how does the language attribute work with Main & secondary fonts?
-- many of us have asked for Tirnany (and more) fonts. How would the language attribute work then?

Janet

Re: 3.0 Wish List

Posted: Mon Aug 29, 2011 7:49 am
by simifilm
jannuss wrote:
svenh wrote: language as a an attribute of character or paragraph styles
language is already an attribute of Character styles, but not of Paragraph styles. But, if you have a Character style associated with your Paragraph syle, then its language applies.
Unfortunately, it has no effect on spell checking whatsoever since it refers to the OpenType language tag which is only relevant for typesetting.

Re: 3.0 Wish List

Posted: Mon Aug 29, 2011 3:56 pm
by rpcameron
jannuss wrote:
svenh wrote: language as a an attribute of character or paragraph styles
language is already an attribute of Character styles, but not of Paragraph styles. But, if you have a Character style associated with your Paragraph syle, then its language applies.

Frankly, I've never understood how the language attribute works
The language you choose as part of the character style is only used for OpenType features. For instance, some characters/ligatures are rendered differently, depending on the language (such as "ij", which is not used as a ligature in English, but many fonts do have a special ligature for this when Dutch is the selected language).

Re: 3.0 Wish List

Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2011 8:30 pm
by kjmatthews
1. More robust language-switching. Even assigning language as an attribute of paragraph styles is probably too limiting for many of us, who may switch between various languages in the space of a single paragraph.
2. Support for Lion full-screen mode (retaining current 2-up and 4-up options, which can themselves be much improved) and versions.
3. Indexing.
4. Ability to export PDFs with active links in TOC.

Re: 3.0 Wish List

Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2011 11:50 pm
by Cavi
In addition to all the things above, I will be happy to see in 3.0:
1. fake bold and italic.
2. newer GUI (happy eyes = happy work.. :) )
3. when operating in full screen mode, I will be happy to see different background color (or texture). the whole white hurting my eyes.
4. better import \ export to Word
5. option to add a picture frame (like Pages).
6. the ability to check spelling in more the one language

I must say that Mellel is the Best word processor for me, but if the options that I and those above me wrote will take place in the 3.0 vision, it will be just PERFECT.
:)

Re: 3.0 Wish List

Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2011 5:56 pm
by ahankinson
I'm curious: What's wrong with the current GUI?

You can already change the on-screen colour for fullscreen: Preferences->Document setup

Re: 3.0 Wish List

Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 7:05 am
by DRB
1. fake bold
3. when operating in full screen mode, I will be happy to see different background color (or texture). the whole white hurting my eyes.
5. option to add a picture frame (like Pages).
There is already provision for fake bold, by using the Character Appearance palette. I devote several pages to this in my Beginners Tutorial.
For full screen color background: choose the Page palette, click on Background color, then choose Full Screen from the toolbar.
If you double click on a picture, you will find there is provision for table frames.

Don Broadribb

Re: 3.0 Wish List

Posted: Mon Sep 05, 2011 1:20 pm
by Cavi
ahankinson,
nothing wrong with the current GUI. I just wish it will be more "eye friendly"

Don,
The solution you suggested changed the background of the whole document. I want they the working ground will stay white and change the background.

P.S, why there is no fake italic option??