Does anybody have any idea what we can expect in the coming months? Will we see version 2.7 before summer? And which new features will it contain? There have been tons of feature requests on this forum, but I don't have the faintest idea which of them will make it into 2.7. The most recent newsletter dates back to august 2008, long before the launch of 2.6 …
Oh, and talking about Newsletters: in the july 2007-edition I read: "Our Mystery Product -- We also plan to release in the near future a nice little application -- free for all. The application will is called PakaPaka Studio and, while we'll keep it shrouded in mystery for the time being, I can assure you that it will produce nothing that is useful, and that would be the reason for its usefulness... ." Is this application still a mystery, or no mystery anymore, because it doesn't exist anymore?
Don't hold your breath. The Mellel development is dead as far as I see it. I would be super surprised if we are ever going to see a version 2.7.... Which is really too bad as Mellel is a kickass program, that could easily be one of the very best programs ever to be made for the Mac - juuuuuuust needs a few more tweaks! But as I said - I would be very surprised if we are ever going to see them.
@kga1978: I sincerely do hope you're wrong, but yes, Ori Redler's last post on this forum dates back to February 3, almost three months ago …
And yes, Mellel could become a myth, if only its developers showed the enthusiasm of the good old days. But since somewhere in 2007, this enthusiasm seems to have gradually faded away …
Ah, that's a very nice example of "false friends" between English and Italian! In Italian, a language with which I am much more familiar than with English, "mito" can also stand for something real which is indeed excellent; and now I realize that the English word "myth" can only stand for something that does not really exist. So yes, I really do hope Mellel will become a legend, not a myth!
Well, if they'd let us know some sort of roadmap for development, things would be so much better. Mellel is my main wp atm, and it's by far the best there is out there, so I'd hate to see it go dead.
Nisus Pro 1.2, the last version of Nisus Pro, came out last November. So Janet is right. And while Ori and Eyal are not presently advertising new developments, this should not be equated with "giving up." Sooner or later, another version will emerge, as will an advertisement (or roadmap). But once they advertise where they're headed, people inevitably will get increasingly impatient to see the new version. So silence is sometimes golden. Let's let them do their work.
Timotheus wrote:
Oh, and talking about Newsletters: in the july 2007-edition I read: "Our Mystery Product -- We also plan to release in the near future a nice little application -- free for all. The application will is called PakaPaka Studio and, while we'll keep it shrouded in mystery for the time being, I can assure you that it will produce nothing that is useful, and that would be the reason for its usefulness... ." Is this application still a mystery, or no mystery anymore, because it doesn't exist anymore?
I would not hang breathlessly waiting for PakaPaka Studio. As noted, it is a very small step for mankind...
kga1978 wrote:Don't hold your breath. The Mellel development is dead as far as I see it. I would be super surprised if we are ever going to see a version 2.7.... Which is really too bad as Mellel is a kickass program, that could easily be one of the very best programs ever to be made for the Mac - juuuuuuust needs a few more tweaks! But as I said - I would be very surprised if we are ever going to see them.
Sob, sob.
I must admit I'm a bit surprised by that. IIRC (and I think I do) Mellel 2.6.1 was released in February 2009, which is not so long ago.
I would not, regarding "road maps" and other stuff concerning future release: We try to avoid announcing that we have something in hand (i.e., a new feature) until it is actually there and working. We also try to minimise promising that we'll do something with a particular release -- this doesn't always go as planned and we end up disappointing people where this could be avoided (I admit I have sinned here before ).
That said, I can say that a main feature planned for 2.7 is flowing text around images. By "planned" I mean that this is already in Mellel and working, but not complete. There are several features that go with and around this feature, but their inclusion depends on the amount of time we'll have when this feature is done.
I just wanted to second the calls against paranoia and despair--there are many reasons for paranoia and despair, but Mellel's development is not one of them. As an earlier poster noted, Nisus's development is going much more slowly (and 2.6 was a pretty damn big jump!) than that of Mellel and I don't think anyone, last I checked, was declaring it dead in the water.
Thanks for your double answer, Ori, and good to hear that soon we will have (or might have) "flowing text around images". Which means that my readers for my students in the future will look definitely better than they do now!
But …… does "flowing text around images" mean what it means, and only that, or does it also imply "flowing text around text" in its various manifestations (e.g. notes not only under, but also beside the text; continuing text blocks across pages etc.). Or is that, technically speaking, something completely different, or something that is not considered of great interest by the Mellel thinking tank?
See it's not so bad after all . I am totally aware that I was utterly unreasonable in my first post, but that was for a very good reason - I wanted to get a response from the whole community to Timotheus initial question.
However, my concern stands that Mellel is no longer having the same priority as before - many features was promised in the past to 'appear' within months, but never showed up. The examples are numerous. Maybe as Ori is mentioning, the Redlers have learned from the past and will in future be more realistic about what they can promise and what the can't. Whilst this is a very reasonable explanation, I am still worried that Mellel has been put on the back-burner with a large enough 'crowd' to support the Redlers with little further development (let's face it - the competition is pretty much non-existing - Mellel is by FAR the best word-processor for the Mac platform).
." Is this application still a mystery, or no mystery anymore, because it doesn't exist anymore?
Which is really too bad as Mellel is a kickass program, that could easily be one of the very best programs ever to be made for the Mac - juuuuuuust needs a few more tweaks! But as I said - I would be very surprised if we are ever going to see them.
). 
. I am totally aware that I was utterly unreasonable in my first post, but that was for a very good reason - I wanted to get a response from the whole community to Timotheus initial question.