How Mellel has failed me
Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2018 6:04 am
Dear All,
I would like to tell you a story.
I wrote a scientific article in the combination of Mellel and Bookends with some issues but overall it was a pleasant experience. Until exporting. First of all, Mellel does not support .docx export. From the supported file types, I could only choose .rtf or .doc. I tried both.
My article in .mellel format is approximately 17 MB. It has equations, pdf graphs and one tiff figure. Upon exporting it to either .rtf or .doc the file size increased to 156 MB! My settings included the convertion of vector graphics at 300 dpi which is a standard quality for scientific journals.
I have tried to downgrade the dpi of vector graphics to 100 dpi. The file size got down to something 77 MB, but... When I opened it in Microsoft Word to correct the misalignments and saved the changes, the file size bumped up to 198 MB... Besides, the equations, which were imported vector graphics (because Mellel does not have equation support even if they boldly show equations in a scientific document in one of their examples which you can see during the trial!), are basically not readable.
I have tried not to open the file in Microsoft Word and smuggle the misalignments to the journal. Nope, when you export the document and have numbered equations, the number shoot somewhere way off. In my case, into the middle of other paragraphs with Mellel trying to nicely wrap the text around "(1)" and so forth. That is not acceptable.
So I tried grouping the numbering and the equations. Guess what? You cannot select two obects like equation (vector image) and text (numbering in the (1) format) which means Mellel does not support grouping! Or it is somewhere in a convoluted place and I was already sick and tired of that software to look for it thouroughly...
All this happened on the they of submission.
Phew, now I feel better: (i) I have unloaded my frustration with the software, (ii) I warned other scientists trying to write their paper in Mellel.
Some more issues I have mentioned in the beginning:
1. I used Bookends extensively to build my bibliography with Live Bibliography function of Mellel. At some point, I had to change the style of bibliography due to the change of the journal. When I wanted to unscan the document via the icons in the inspector, they were greyed out! Not clickable. After some search, I have found a duplicate function for unscanning under EDIT > BIBLIOGRAPHY. Guess what? That worked! The icon does not work but the menu does! I asked in the support and they say the icons do not work when Live Bibliography is switched on. But the meny item does work with it on. Where is the logic?
2. Trying to do the numbering of equations was a nightmare... Basically, you do not have any option except for adding a new text box which you cannot easily align (no guides), will most likely cut the text if you do not manually expand, and 100% it will jump in some strange place when you try to export to any type of file except PDF. Okay, that does happen in other programs as well. But there, you can group such equation and the number and they stick together. At least, if they moved upon exporting or changes, you can easily adjust just one item.
---
If any of the issues are easily solved in Mellel, I will be more than glad to hear about the solutions. I do not claim 100% it is impossible. It is, though, 100% not obvious to find.
Kind regards,
Mateusz
I would like to tell you a story.
I wrote a scientific article in the combination of Mellel and Bookends with some issues but overall it was a pleasant experience. Until exporting. First of all, Mellel does not support .docx export. From the supported file types, I could only choose .rtf or .doc. I tried both.
My article in .mellel format is approximately 17 MB. It has equations, pdf graphs and one tiff figure. Upon exporting it to either .rtf or .doc the file size increased to 156 MB! My settings included the convertion of vector graphics at 300 dpi which is a standard quality for scientific journals.
I have tried to downgrade the dpi of vector graphics to 100 dpi. The file size got down to something 77 MB, but... When I opened it in Microsoft Word to correct the misalignments and saved the changes, the file size bumped up to 198 MB... Besides, the equations, which were imported vector graphics (because Mellel does not have equation support even if they boldly show equations in a scientific document in one of their examples which you can see during the trial!), are basically not readable.
I have tried not to open the file in Microsoft Word and smuggle the misalignments to the journal. Nope, when you export the document and have numbered equations, the number shoot somewhere way off. In my case, into the middle of other paragraphs with Mellel trying to nicely wrap the text around "(1)" and so forth. That is not acceptable.
So I tried grouping the numbering and the equations. Guess what? You cannot select two obects like equation (vector image) and text (numbering in the (1) format) which means Mellel does not support grouping! Or it is somewhere in a convoluted place and I was already sick and tired of that software to look for it thouroughly...
All this happened on the they of submission.
Phew, now I feel better: (i) I have unloaded my frustration with the software, (ii) I warned other scientists trying to write their paper in Mellel.
Some more issues I have mentioned in the beginning:
1. I used Bookends extensively to build my bibliography with Live Bibliography function of Mellel. At some point, I had to change the style of bibliography due to the change of the journal. When I wanted to unscan the document via the icons in the inspector, they were greyed out! Not clickable. After some search, I have found a duplicate function for unscanning under EDIT > BIBLIOGRAPHY. Guess what? That worked! The icon does not work but the menu does! I asked in the support and they say the icons do not work when Live Bibliography is switched on. But the meny item does work with it on. Where is the logic?
2. Trying to do the numbering of equations was a nightmare... Basically, you do not have any option except for adding a new text box which you cannot easily align (no guides), will most likely cut the text if you do not manually expand, and 100% it will jump in some strange place when you try to export to any type of file except PDF. Okay, that does happen in other programs as well. But there, you can group such equation and the number and they stick together. At least, if they moved upon exporting or changes, you can easily adjust just one item.
---
If any of the issues are easily solved in Mellel, I will be more than glad to hear about the solutions. I do not claim 100% it is impossible. It is, though, 100% not obvious to find.
Kind regards,
Mateusz