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ahankinson wrote: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.

+1

I would like that the command Insert > Image will be improved.
Figures inserted now through this command are presented in a too small shape. On the contrary to when these figures are D&D from desktop into a mellel file where they are larger in look.

#1 PDF Export: Automatically generated TOC/Document structure that can be viewed in PDF tools (Preview, Acrobat Reader). This is basically PDFs feature to display the whole document structure, as Mellel currently does with the small show document structure button on the lower left side.

#2 PDF Export: References, Foot- and Endnotes, should be converted to clickable links (e.g. a reference to page 137 should generate a link in the exported pdf that takes the user to that page).

#3 Support for Zotero integration: I am a heavy Zotero user (https://www.zotero.org/). I would love to be able to cite other work in Mellel, directly from Zotero. Currently Mellel supports only Sente and Bookendz. This means, that I have to export my library to an intermediate format (e.g. Bibtex) and import those again. This usually breaks some stuff and is a pain.

PS: Thanks for asking us about our opinions. I love your product.

Currently the feature I am missing by far most in Mellel is the ability to split a document into two windows, and using it on two screens.

Let's say I am working on a large document, and there's a passage in chapter A that I need to compare to a similar one in chapter B. Having one and the same document open on a scrren showing chapter A and on the other showing chapter B would be helpful.

This is what I usually do when working with InDesign (Window -> Arrange -> New Window) or with MS Word (Window -> New Window). So this would be a very nice feature for Mellel too.

I know bug fixes are still trickling out for 3.3, but is 3.4 anywhere near a release?

For me better integration with mathtype for equations especially inline. The current implementation forces too much white space in line spacing. MS Word doesn't do much well but on this feature it is much better implemented.

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

Cross-references are already clickable in PDFs ( to my own surprise).

+1 for clickable ToC and…
+1 for ToC as Document Structure (Bookmarks) in PDF, though.

Text boxes, attachable (as captions) to images … And Indexing … Basically anything that reduces the need to recheck the document manually after changes.

Just a thought: We write texts more and more for digital reading, which often means/would ideally mean: "responsive layout", i.e. a layout that adapts "itself" to the display (size) on which it is read. With its style-sets, Mellel would be perfectly able to cater for this. One could specify different layouts (style sets) for different display sizes. Is Mellel in any way heading in this direction?

If we get a "Mellel reader" built into each document — as once announced —, anybody trying to read a Mellel document would not have to download Mellel, but would be able to open the document right away. Especially for iOS devices, being able to specify different style-sets for different screen sizes would make the reading experience much better.

+ 1 for automatically updating ToC (that can be split into different tables for contents, images, tables etc)
+ 1 for clickable ToC in PDF
+ 1 for indexing

The biggest challenges for me are:

1. The scramble that is cross-referencing. There is a thread on this, which includes cross-referencing by dragging from the outline, searchable cross-references, and some sort of cascading along with the option to see numbering so it is easier to find the cross reference. The bigger my documents get, the more frustrating this is.

2. Repeating header rows on tables.

3. Text flow around tables (which would also solve the attached caption issue of the caption could be in the same table as an image but tables would need tables within tables)

4. Better control over page styles for landscape layout odd/even variances.

If developers are interested in user opinions and want to prioritise, why not create poll in the forum?

Mellel 3.4 can't come soon enough. Mellel 3.3.7 was a disappointment given that it took 4 months to be released and is just a bug fix (and the inverted comma bug has not been fixed yet). I hope a new version comes soon with some real improvements.

nvalvo wrote: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 ) 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.

+1 from me on this. I may be wrong, but I would think that this would be forced upon Mellel as a necessity for the new iPad version. But with cloud computing, being able to sync our preferences and styles is indeed long overdue

I'd also like to see better handling of tables (repeating headers, multiple page tables, etc)

#1 - Better import/export for .docx format. It is nearly impossible to send accurate proofs which contain RTL text to PC users outside of PDF format.

#2 - Cascading styles. This just makes sense and would save a ton of work for the user.

#3 - Minimize Palettes option. The Adobe products are a perfect example of this. Right now Mellel has several options, but none of them actually change the screen real estate by more than maybe 10px. The "Use small size" feature is absolutely pointless in that it changes nothing in regard to the space taken up by the palettes. Please consider an "icon only" option that does just that — displays ONLY the icons until clicked.

tika-tika wrote: 1. The scramble that is cross-referencing. There is a thread on this, which includes cross-referencing by dragging from the outline, searchable cross-references, and some sort of cascading along with the option to see numbering so it is easier to find the cross reference. The bigger my documents get, the more frustrating this is.

2. Repeating header rows on tables.

+1
The cross-reference list simply showing all auto-texts without groups or indention is a joke when you have 100 items in there. Does not have to be drag and drop, simple indention and grouping would be fine.

+1
It is a shame that Mellel can't do repeating table headers when spanning over multiple pages. I am already scared of printing my dissertation one day. Hopefully this will be fixed.

Apart from that:

Keep up the very good work! Until now Mellel has been very fast and really stable. I also enjoy using the Sente integration.

Thank you
Philipp

The ability to copy and paste with the right mouse click, into the Find and Replace windows. And double click to spell check in those windows too. Right now I have to cmd+c and cmd+v and live with no spell check there and this deters work traffic and causes more work.

The ability to double click in the Find and Replace windows to select a sentence, right now only single words are selected on double click.

The Go To Page pop up menu has a comma in the page number for pages over 1000. What displays is 1,000 and when you press Go Mellel goes to page 1, not page 1000.

To have a resizable, and positionable box where all foot notes go into. Allow it to cross over all columns. and be any where on the pages. Default position Page wide, to just above the Footer. Allow a divider line to go on any edge of the box, and shading.