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Wishlist 2008

Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 8:46 pm
by transalpin
Two years ago, Ori Redler posted a list of five new features scheduled for 2006 (among them cross-referencing).
Is there such a list for the next 12 months? What’s on it?

Suggestions in the Nitty-Gritty forum have been piling up. Those are my personal favourites:
What are other users’ priorities?

Re: Wishlist 2008

Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 10:17 pm
by Timotheus
I'll be a very happy man if at the beginning of 2009 Mellel will have, besides cross-references:

- text flow around images
- a better implementation of footnotes / endnotes
- indexing
- a two pages view
- a better implementation of tables

That would really be a dream come true!

Re: Wishlist 2008

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 1:40 am
by DanZac
- xref (obviously)
- text wrap around images
- True WYSIWYG reference management. I'm grateful for the boosts to the Mellel+Bookends/Sente that came to us this year, but we are still not at the WYSIWYG stage yet (in the way that Word+Endnote has cite-while-you-write). Mac's have a lot of juice and these are solid programs. I'm sure they can figure out how to get to the cite-while-you-write point for Mellel.
- importing and exporting of Word. I wish we could magically make Word disappear, but we're still stuck with it, and stuck with publishers that insist on it.
- track changes
- A simplified way to handle style sets, footnote styles, paragraph styles, character styles, blah blah blah. There' got to be an easier way to lay that stuff out for us to manage. I love Mellel and can't do without it, but it is the program that makes me the angriest too.
- Quicklook integration
- be viewable and indexable in DEVONthink

Re: Wishlist 2008

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 2:59 am
by gpolberd
If these recommendations will have some influence, I should say that I really would like better importing and exporting to Word, and Quicklook integration, whenever possible. I also would like the ability to create an index.

Re: Wishlist 2008

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 5:38 am
by jannuss
You've all forgotten my number one need-to-have: improved columns/sections
-- asymmetric columns (ability to place the gutter wherever I want)
-- text flow (column 1 on page one flows into column 1 on page 2, etc.)
-- linking across columns (line xx in column 1 linked to line up with line yy in column 2)

Besides this, in the nice-to-have list I'd add
-- line numbering
-- QuickLook

Finally, I could take it or leave it, but others have been screaming for
-- table cells that scan pages

Janet

Re: Wishlist 2008

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 8:22 am
by frvs
As already pointed out, index capability, and Quicklook literacy. Besides (I wonder how on earth Mellel came this far without this rather basic feature, which is long overdue) end-of-chapter endnotes.

Re: Wishlist 2008

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 10:38 am
by gnoli
1. Indexing capability
2. End of Chapter Endnotes
3. Better cooperation with DEVONThink

Would be enough, in my opinion.
Grüß Gott!

Re: Wishlist 2008

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 11:25 am
by Reiner
not to forget end of chapter bibliographies.

Re: Wishlist 2008

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 12:19 pm
by nicka
We're a demanding lot, aren't we? Mellel users, I mean. The minute Ori tells us what's coming, we list a bunch of other stuff we want.
Actually, though, I think that's a good thing, and I have confidence in the Redlers' ability to come up with the few tweaks needed to put Mellel well clear of the field for academic work.

But I still can't resist saying what I think the most necessary additions are...

1) Cross-references (and from what Ori says, they are being done exactly right).
2) Import/export to/from rtf or docx with paragraph style names.
3) End of chapter notes.
4) Indexing.
5) Ability to produce pdfs with hyperlinks for cross-references, notes, table of contents entries etc.
6) The ability to run a Find Set on a selection rather than the whole document.
7) End of chapter bibliographies.

Re: Wishlist 2008

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 12:38 pm
by nicka
And three little things (I imagine) that could be knocked off along the way:

Proper small caps, as above (and a preference to never see fake small caps ever -- I'm still amazed that they were included)
Resizable dialogue boxes (especially the Find Set one)
An option to use OpenType superscript/subscript when available, and to substitute Mellel-generated subscript/superscript when it isn't

Edit: typo

Re: Wishlist 2008

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 1:43 pm
by signinstranger
nicka wrote:6) The ability to run a Find Set on a selection rather than the whole document.
It would also be a good thing to speed up Find Actions a tiny bit. They are unbelievably slow...

Re: Wishlist 2008

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 1:59 pm
by nicka
It would also be a good thing to speed up Find Actions a tiny bit. They are unbelievably slow...
Good point. Even just a progress bar would be good. I once did a find and replace to switch all ad hoc bold text to a character style variation in a 300-page document, and I thought Mellel had crashed. In fact it was working fine, but very slowly, and invisibly...

Re: Wishlist 2008

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 7:28 pm
by miles11
I'd like to be able to open a second view of the same document in its own window. These could be tiled vertically or horizontally.

While writing in the primary window, we could refer to text at a (any) different location, in the second window.

Re: Wishlist 2008

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 8:21 pm
by macsailor
miles11 wrote:I'd like to be able to open a second view of the same document in its own window. These could be tiled vertically or horizontally.

While writing in the primary window, we could refer to text at a (any) different location, in the second window.
I second that.

Re: Wishlist 2008

Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 3:37 am
by DanZac
of course, I forgot that one. Split screen view!