Mellel developers... you out there?

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kerovpyan
Got the styles thing figured out
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:04 pm

Re: Mellel developers... you out there?

Post by kerovpyan »

I join these pertinent remarks. Mellel has become a great app especially because the dynamics for improving it has never faded out. I think the document exchange with word formats is an essential issue. The more it becomes easy and precise, the more Mellel will be appreciated by a larger public.
rpcameron
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Location: IE, CA, USA

Re: Mellel developers... you out there?

Post by rpcameron »

skaertus wrote:Word export has improved a lot and I hope it keeps improving.
This is where a bunch of the confusion about Mellel's Word support comes from. Mellel DOES NOT export to Microsoft Word format. Mellel exports files to RTF, which is a format that Microsoft created to allow other programs to have the same features of a Word document. When Microsoft adds new features to Word—and by extension, to the Word DOC(X) format—it also creates a new version of RTF; the current version of RTF maintains feature parity with Word.

However, RTF is not Word format. Mellel has its own RTF import/export filter. It supports many features of RTF, but it does not support all of the features that RTF permits. (If this is not the case, then someone please correct me. However, one of the most requested parts of RTF import that users as for is supported the named styles; my understanding is that RTF allows for this, but Mellel doesn't support it.)

When you select Word format as an export option in Mellel, you are not receiving a Word format file: Mellel is using its RTF exporter to create an RTF version of your document, then it appends a DOC extension to the file; this makes you—and others you exchange the file with—believe that you have a Word document when you do not. When Word opens this fake Word document, this is what happens:
  • Word attempts to open the file as a Word document
  • Word cannot, because the file is not in a Word format
  • Word scans the beginning of the file, checking for bytes and/or strings that will indicate its format
  • Word will hopefully recognize it as RTF
  • Word then imports the RTF document, and converts it internally to Word's format
In general, this isn't a problem: Word supports every feature of RTF. The problem then comes when that document is modified. If it is saved, does the user save it back to the same file? And if so, does it get saved back as RTF? Or is it going to be saved as a Word format document? And if it is going to be saved as Word format, which Word format? The old binary format? Word XML? Office Open XML?

And when you import a Word document into Mellel, what happens? Mellel asks the operating system to read the file and decode it. What does that mean? If you opened a Word document, and wanted to test its features, you could just as easily use TextEdit and experience all of the features that Mellel supports in Word import. Mellel does not support the Word format, the operating system does. This also makes it quite different, because in every other aspect the same version of Mellel functions the same on whichever version of OS X that it is running on. However, the features that it supports for Word import is different and contingent upon which version of OS X you are running. If you are on 10.6, you will have quite limited support; if you are running 10.8, you will have much improved Word support.

The fact that Mellel's Word support is so spotty is an issue for me. Mellel minimally supports Word import, and only because OS X does. However, since Mellel cannot support Word import the same in every version of Mellel (because it depends upon which version of OS X you run), this makes for a bad user experience. Likewise, Mellel advertises it has Word export when it does not. Mellel exports RTF, and makes you believe you have a Word document. Usually this is not a problem, but it can develop into one. My issue is with the deception manner in which Mellel advertises its import/export support.

If Mellel wants to truly become a word processor that users can depend upon and use for document interchange with other people who do not use Mellel, it needs to fix its severely lacking import/export support. It needs to improve its RTF support. It needs to develop some real Word support so that it can natively import Word documents, and actually export a Word document. And finally, it needs to improve its PDF export to support a table of contents and other PDF features that similar programs already support.
— Robert Cameron
laup
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Location: Topanga, California

Re: Mellel developers... you out there?

Post by laup »

Equations is yet another issue, one that killed my use of Mellel for a current project. My co-authors use Word in Windows. All of us use MathType when writing. However, so far as I know, there is no way for my collaborators to edit my equations, or me to edit theirs. Going through rtf turns the equations into pictures. If someone has found a fix, I'd be delighted to know about it. I don't think there is a solution as yet.
Paul
Declan
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Re: Mellel developers... you out there?

Post by Declan »

I don't really get the impression that the developers worry too much about what is expressed on these forums. Very occasionally they respond, but it seems that they have their own ideas about what is important to develop and what is less important. Given that the product has many strengths (alongside some important weaknesses), it is good to hear that they are still out there somewhere, working on it.

For my part, the important weaknesses involve the ability to select text with certain formatting (output from scrivener or similar), and impose paragraph styles on that text, and – ideally – auto-titles. This has more to do with the "import" part of the process, than the export.

That said, I don't imagine that by expressing (once again) this view, the developers will automatically make it their priority. They don't seem to be taking their cues directly from the forums. In that case, I think we can welcome the fact that they are still out there, and if they wish to work on something for another platform (iOS, I imagine), that's surely a good thing in itself. The fact that I might think x is more important, and somebody else thinks y is, doesn't seem to be of paramount importance for the decisions of the developers, who – understandably – have their own ideas.

Declan
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