Should I use Mellel?

[ElefantSau]

Lo there!

About two weeks ago I stumbled across a newspaper article describing what, to me, seemed to be the perfect word processor. Mellel.
Since I'm currently crunching my doctoral thesis, I could very well use a programm that doesn't try to destroy my labour at every turn of the page, every footnote, bibliographic reference or, lo and behold, transfer of a copy to another windows machine.

My thesis is on press-law, so there aren't any formulas involved. I've got a few tables and graphics but the rest is just wall after wall of text. After having taken Mellel out on a quick spin, I found myself really liking it. It seems to be very fast and most importantly, approachable and brimming with helpful features.
To cut a long story short, I've browsed through the forum a bit and found that there seem to be a few issues concerning compatibility with the word format. I would really like to know if this truly is an issue, how you guys deal with it and whether you would suggest I should switch to Mellel.

[Roger]

It sounds like your document, although huge, is a fairly straightforward text document, with a few charts and, of course, tons of footnote and references. If this is an accurate description, your thesis is exactly what Mellel excels at doing well.

As for compatibility with MS Word, the only problem I have run into (with the type of document you describe) is some irregular formatting of table cells - when importing from Word (or Word's RTF) into Mellel. When going from Mellel to Word, the tables are fine.

When importing/exporting between Word and Mellel, I understand that RTF is the preferred "transfer format," i.e. export from Word to RTF, and import the RTF into Mellel, and vice-versa. The reason for this is that both Mellel and Word both have proprietary features that are not included in the RTF standard, and exporting to RTF "flattens" the proprietary features to the RTF format. So if all the features in your document are included in the RTF specifications, you're set to go! But if your current (MS Word?) document includes features that are not included in RTF, you may have to "rebuild" those some features when you import into Mellel.

I recently converted from Word to Mellel, and the most time-consuming part of working with imported documents is making sure I change Word's ad-hoc formatting to Mellel's properly implemented styles formatting. This helps with consistency throughout the document. Once you do this, you can get back down to the real work of writing your thesis.

I hope you find this perspective helpful!

[Boban]

I wish I could go back in time and have the Mellel–Bookends combination to write my Ph.D. thesis. I actually used AppleWorks!

Why is Word compatibility so important? If it's just to send drafts to your supervisor then don't worry, Mellel will be fine.

B.

[pds1602]

In a word, no. Mellel doesn't include cross references and a thesis with manual cross references is going to be pretty impossible. I did mine in Latex.

[Roger]

If you require automatic cross-references, keep your eye on Mellel in the next couple of months. Cross-references have been promised for version 2.5, which is now in Beta testing. As always, do not make a decision based on promised features, but on actual features.

[loquat149]

In a word, no. Mellel doesn't include cross references and a thesis with manual cross references is going to be pretty impossible. I did mine in Latex.

My 255 page thesis was replete with manual cross references, figures, tables, equations, and 20 pages of bibliographic references. Previous versions of this document went from Framemaker to LaTeX, back to Framemaker and finally Mellel. I would've skipped that last trip to Framemaker had I know about Mellel and NeXT, I mean OS X, sooner. LaTeX was a bear since whenever I needed to include some specialized formatting I had to install yet another package, then write a style file, etc. Framemaker is still in the 1990's. Mellel allowed me to combine all 7 chapters in one document with seamless integration with Bookends. It's WYSIWYG is much more conducive to my wordsmithing workflow than writing a LaTeX program, "escaping" all the "special" characters, then compiling a PDF. My god, you can't even follow a dot with a space without inserting a tilde! Compatibility with WORD wasn't an issue for me as I only distributed hardcopies or PDF's. The few extra minutes I spent managing manual cross references was MORE than made up for with the ease and accuracy of inserting figures, tables, equations, and citations and generating the bibliography and table of contents. Trivial compared to all the number crunching that was summarized by each of these elements, but obviously daunting for some folks. BTW, I still use LaTeX, though, to typeset my equations via LaTeXiT.

Dave

[nicka]

I agree with both of the previous two posts. I wrote my PhD thesis in Mellel last year and kept track of cross-references manually with markers. It was still a thousand times more reliable than Word, and a hundred times easier than LaTeX would have been. The integration with Bookends alone is probably worth any sacrifices you have to make to use Mellel. As is the stability with large, complicated files. As is the fact that styles are totally consistent and rational.
The one serious thing for a text-heavy thesis that is missing is cross-references, and those are coming in the next update. You can bet that those will as much better than Word as the typography is and the autotitles are.

[JimmyMonkey]

I'm very much in the same boat. Ever since losing WordPerfect in my move to Mac, I've been wholly unsatisfied with the word processing options (quite taken back by that, too). I have the new Word 08, and I have to be honest when I say that it is a much better app that Word 04 and very mac-like. It can do pretty much anything Mellel can do and more usually (save for all the Hebrew writers out there who need right to left unicode abilities). That's just a fact and I've learned that Mac people don't tolerate such deviations, but that doesn't change anything in actual reality.

I've just recently had a book proposal accepted and I am in the middle of deciding whether to use Word 08 or Mellel. As much as I know that Word 08 is going to handle everything: two things I've had problems with. The first is that Word can handle the arrangement/alignment of figures and images (much better than Mellel (in today's tech world, I just expect to be able to put an image or a figure wherever I feel like it, Mellel has some small but still real restrictions. The second is cross references ! . . . yes I brought that up because at the end of the day, when all the rhetoric is gone, Mellel can't and Word 08 can quite well (and whoever is writing massive documents and manually generating cross references with Mellel has too much time to spare).

I have heard a lot of people say that Cross Refs may come in the next version of Mellel. Well, show us the goods! Over a month ago one of the Redlers said, in the Nitty Gritty forum, that he was thinking "days" for the release of the 2.5 version. But when I hear that, I think less than a week, not less than a year (maybe). Furthermore, there has been no actual list of new components for Mellel 2.5 published in the Forums, or Newsletters (the most recent of which is months if not over a year old). The Beta has been out for a while and no one is talking about it; we are relegated to old discussions about it's being "fantastic" etc., but not afforded any actually useful information about it, such as "what" is included and "when" it will come out.

I say this because, as with the topic of this discussion, I really really, want to use Mellel and avoid Word 08, but I have to get going with my work. If the Redlers would at least post their thoughts and their "specific" goals and what they expect to include in the new version, we would know whether to run with Mellel or not. With no information forthcoming, I am forced to avoid Mellel and run with a application that has Mellel's gear and generally more. And that's a fact that annoys me a great deal, because I don't like to do anything with MS Word, let alone write my next book with it!

[nicka]

As a beta tester I can't say anything about the beta. On general grounds, though, I think you will be happier with Mellel. Can't laying out figures and so on be done towards the end of the writing (if it's your responsibility at all as author)? On the other hand, cross-references are part of the text and need to be kept track of while you are writing. Word's cross-references are so poorly implemented that it has to be worth waiting for Mellel 2.5 if cross-references are important to you. In the meantime, you can start writing the book in Mellel or Word, or drafting it with Scrivener. You can use some system of your own to keep track of references -- if you get that far before the new version of Mellel comes out.

[verma]

I'm very much in the same boat. Ever since losing WordPerfect in my move to Mac, I've been wholly unsatisfied with the word processing options (quite taken back by that, too). I have the new Word 08, and I have to be honest when I say that it is a much better app that Word 04 and very mac-like. It can do pretty much anything Mellel can do and more usually (save for all the Hebrew writers out there who need right to left unicode abilities). That's just a fact and I've learned that Mac people don't tolerate such deviations, but that doesn't change anything in actual reality.

I've just recently had a book proposal accepted and I am in the middle of deciding whether to use Word 08 or Mellel. As much as I know that Word 08 is going to handle everything: two things I've had problems with. The first is that Word can handle the arrangement/alignment of figures and images (much better than Mellel (in today's tech world, I just expect to be able to put an image or a figure wherever I feel like it, Mellel has some small but still real restrictions. The second is cross references ! . . . yes I brought that up because at the end of the day, when all the rhetoric is gone, Mellel can't and Word 08 can quite well (and whoever is writing massive documents and manually generating cross references with Mellel has too much time to spare).

I have heard a lot of people say that Cross Refs may come in the next version of Mellel. Well, show us the goods! Over a month ago one of the Redlers said, in the Nitty Gritty forum, that he was thinking "days" for the release of the 2.5 version. But when I hear that, I think less than a week, not less than a year (maybe). Furthermore, there has been no actual list of new components for Mellel 2.5 published in the Forums, or Newsletters (the most recent of which is months if not over a year old). The Beta has been out for a while and no one is talking about it; we are relegated to old discussions about it's being "fantastic" etc., but not afforded any actually useful information about it, such as "what" is included and "when" it will come out.

I say this because, as with the topic of this discussion, I really really, want to use Mellel and avoid Word 08, but I have to get going with my work. If the Redlers would at least post their thoughts and their "specific" goals and what they expect to include in the new version, we would know whether to run with Mellel or not. With no information forthcoming, I am forced to avoid Mellel and run with a application that has Mellel's gear and generally more. And that's a fact that annoys me a great deal, because I don't like to do anything with MS Word, let alone write my next book with it!

You can sign up for enrolling in the Beta programme if you're really interested.

[signinstranger]

Mellel allowed me to combine all 7 chapters in one document with seamless integration with Bookends. It's WYSIWYG is much more conducive to my wordsmithing workflow than writing a LaTeX program, "escaping" all the "special" characters, then compiling a PDF. My god, you can't even follow a dot with a space without inserting a tilde!

Of course you can. The tilde is a no-break whitespace in LaTeX.

[loquat149]

Mellel allowed me to combine all 7 chapters in one document with seamless integration with Bookends. It's WYSIWYG is much more conducive to my wordsmithing workflow than writing a LaTeX program, "escaping" all the "special" characters, then compiling a PDF. My god, you can't even follow a dot with a space without inserting a tilde!

Of course you can. The tilde is a no-break whitespace in LaTeX.

Sorry for getting off topic here. Well, you "can" but it's a typo because LaTeX interprets 'dot + whitespace' as 'period + whitespace'. In LaTeX the whitespace between words is different than the whitespace between sentences, as it should be. "Dr. H. Morgan perfers Mellel to LaTeX" needs to be written "Dr.~H.~Morgan prefers Mellel to LaTeX" since it is one sentence. Unfortunately, LaTeX code can easily become so littered with markup that it's difficult to read until you compile it, which I find limits the process of creative writing. A work flow in LaTeX only makes sense, to me at least, when one considers it's a programming language.

Dave

[signinstranger]

LaTeX interprets 'dot + whitespace' as 'period + whitespace'.

Well, it depends. If the letter before 'dot + whitespace' is a capital letter it doesn't get any special treatment, because TeX simply assumes that the dot is an abbreviation mark and NOT a period. That means that in "Dr.~H.~Morgan" only the "Dr.~" part is necessary. This default behaviour is exactly the reason why you have to write something like "Mr.~Morgan likes BASIC\@.", because TeX wouldn't recognise the dot in "BASIC." as the end of a sentence. By the way, this whole problem is only relevant for english documents. In german or french texts the increased spacing between sentences is turned off anyway.

Unfortunately, LaTeX code can easily become so littered with markup that it's difficult to read until you compile it, which I find limits the process of creative writing.

I can't deny that. That's one reason why I use a lightweight markup language like MultiMarkdown. MMD is much easier to enter than LaTeX and also very "readable". It's obviously not as powerful as proper LaTeX, as it only provides a basic subset of LaTeX commands, but it's more than enough for most of my documents. If absolutely necessary, I can always resort to using Emacs/AUCTeX, which has a great folding mode for TeX commands:



To get back on topic here, I use Mellel exclusively to edit texts that mix Left-to-Right and Right-to-Left writing systems. Mellel does that beautifully and so much better than any other program for Mac OS X. This may sound crazy, but I only use Mellel as some kind of frontend and leave the actual typesetting to XeLaTeX. The converters on my website were mostly created to make this rather pedestrian workflow a bit easier.