What's next for Mellel 3.4?

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ealvarez
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Re: What's next for Mellel 3.4?

Post by ealvarez »

Indexing would be my number 1 feature.

The ability to anchor captions to tables or figures would be great, but I have learned to live without. I can wait : )
Last edited by ealvarez on Thu Feb 27, 2014 8:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
nvalvo
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Re: What's next for Mellel 3.4?

Post by nvalvo »

I would like to see some sort of feature explicitly dedicated to making Mellel work seamlessly on multiple computers. If I had the option to keep things like style sets sync'ed across installs, that would be extremely helpful, either in iCloud (and thus only for Mac App Store versions :roll: ) or via Dropbox or even WebDAV or whatever.

The style sets panel supports making document styles global, it is true. But I feel that approach is fraught with potential missteps. I've been using Mellel since 2003 (!?!?!) and style replacement still intimidates me.
chriggi
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Re: What's next for Mellel 3.4?

Post by chriggi »

+1 for split view!
ymeroz
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Re: What's next for Mellel 3.4?

Post by ymeroz »

Top things which despite everything else about Mellel, tempt me to switch to other word processors:

-- Styles. Document styles and global styles tend to proliferate, and it's very hard to organize them. The minimum, at this point, would be to enable searching for styled text by document style. Right now only global styles are enabled for a search.
-- Import to Windows doc. Many publications want submission in doc format, so that is inescapable. The thing I miss most about export to doc is exporting styles, without which making fies in the doc version is pretty much impossible to do without errors.
-- More complete support for OpenType. Font-specific alternates (e.g. with SIL Charis) are a small thing but quite crucial sometimes. They are fully supported in standard OS X applications (TextEdit, Pages) and in Nisus.

Nice to have things:
-- +1 on preserving document structure as markers in PDF export.
-- A "keep together" feature for table rows.
-- Cascading styles. For example, right now I have a style for body text, another for footnote, and another for headings. If i want to add a 'Small Caps' variation, I need to specify it three times separately, and remember to modify it each time I modify the base variation. It would be better to have a 'modifying variation' or 'cascading style', which links all its unspecified features to theat of the base variation. That's how it's done in Word and Nisus, and it's quite handy.
Marsilius
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Re: What's next for Mellel 3.4?

Post by Marsilius »

I have a retro desire: Using a laptop, I still miss being able to separate palettes and have tiny little bars.

As of now, I can deselect which icons I don't want to see, but I cannot make the actual palette window any smaller. I know I can toggle the palette on and off, but I miss the option of having it smaller. :cry: Maybe there is another solution I have missed? I guess I can do it by adding icons to the toolbar . . .

How about a feature in which you would ONLY see the icons in the palette bar unless you toggled the palette you wanted open. That would be something like this: if you have NO palette chosen at the moment, you would ONLY see the side icons or icon and text.

(Maybe feeling a little foolish now after having posted :oops: , since I updated my toolbar and have it show up in full screen mode and that works pretty well.)

(Oops, one more thing then: is it possible to make the toolbar show up by default when going to full screen mode?)

Best,

Mars
raymond
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Re: What's next for Mellel 3.4?

Post by raymond »

Hello,
I use many Hebrew with mellel and encounter a major problem when exporting Mellel files to Word.
If I export Mellel into Word format and then open the file with Word 365 on Win 8.1 on Parallels, it is opened in Hebrew but many of the text paragraphs are left to right direction, and Hebrew is the right direction 8)
I would appreciate improvement in this procedure. What I am doing now is that after exporting the Mellel file into Word format, I open it with NeoOffice and it is opened wonderfully with the correct direction, then I save as it once again in Word format with NeoOffice, and the outcome is opened by Word on the Windows 8.1 with no problem.
I wish Mellel will enable me the same results without NeoOffice.
One further difficulty: Word on Windows doesn't like figures and images created by Mellel and exported to Word format and I have copy and past these images from mellel into Word. I wish Mellel would overcome these difficulties.
Eyal Redler
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Re: What's next for Mellel 3.4?

Post by Eyal Redler »

We are working on a few improvements in the rtf export for Mellel 3.3.2, we will look into these.
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kjmatthews
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Re: What's next for Mellel 3.4?

Post by kjmatthews »

Marsilius wrote:As of now, I can deselect which icons I don't want to see, but I cannot make the actual palette window any smaller.
It may not be a full solution, but you can already make the palette window a little smaller by choosing the "Icon only" option.
JBB
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Re: What's next for Mellel 3.4?

Post by JBB »

How about fixing the LONG-STANDING bug of variables not being formatted properly (i.e., a long variable value will not line wrap).
nicka
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Re: What's next for Mellel 3.4?

Post by nicka »

Undo for changes to styles, e.g. if I change the point size of Body text character style to 12, then decide it was better at 11, it should be possible to undo with the Menu command or Cmd-z.

Every so often I run into this and each time I can't believe it's never been fixed...
aperriman
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Re: What's next for Mellel 3.4?

Post by aperriman »

A small thing. I would like to see an easier way of applying and removing autotitles. I would like to be able to place the cursor in a paragraph and simply click on the autotitle to apply it to the whole paragraph—at the moment either I have to use the dialogue box or "untitled" is inserted into the middle of the paragraph, depending on whether the prompt for title when inserting option is selected.

And I have not yet found a way to return an autotitled paragraph to a regular paragraph.
Bulow
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Re: What's next for Mellel 3.4?

Post by Bulow »

Undo for changes to styles, e.g. if I change the point size of Body text character style to 12, then decide it was better at 11, it should be possible to undo with the Menu command or Cmd-z.
I don't understand - as far as I can see, this is possible whether you change the size by applying another style or by simply changing the size of a group of letters. It even works after saving.
Bulow
DanZac
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Re: What's next for Mellel 3.4?

Post by DanZac »

Would really love to see Mellel address the poor PDF export. Make the TOC & cross-references links within an exported PDF.

Indexing after that.

Improve tables as well (headers that can show upon multiple pages, as well as the option to keep a table all together).
nicka
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Re: What's next for Mellel 3.4?

Post by nicka »

Reply to Bulow:

I was talking about changes to styles, not to text styling. To see what I mean, make a change to a style (e.g via the menu items Style>Character style>Edit "Body text" [or whatever the name of the current style is]), click 'Save' in the dialogue box, and then try undoing it. You can't. The only way to reverse the change is to remember the old settings and go back in to the dialogue and restore them.
ahankinson
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Re: What's next for Mellel 3.4?

Post by ahankinson »

I'd actually down-vote an "undo" that took style definition changes into consideration. I consider the "undo" to be part of the act of word processing, not as a sort of global buffer for all activities in an application.
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