Forum

BACKGROUND

Mellel excels at big documents. Big documents include edited books and other manuscripts in which it may be desirable to have citations and endnotes at the end of chapters rather than at the end of the entire manuscript.

SPECULATION/SUGGESTION

I would think that endnotes and citations would (or could) both know where they are in a document relative to autotitle chunks, assuming autotitles are used. That suggests that it might be possible to specify that endnotes, and bibliographies from a bibliographic program, would be at the end of the autotitle "chunk" that the author knows corresponds to chapters. Part of this would probably require coordination with the bibliographic program developer (e.g., for Bookends), but it strikes me as possible.

INTERIM, NOT-TERRIBLE OPTIONS

A second best option would be having endnotes appear at the end of sections (not currently possible, I believe). I don't believe that the bibliographic option exists for that. Word allows endnotes to be at the end of sections or documents. Compatibility with Word is undercut by Mellel not allowing it. The section-rather-than-chapter option is troublesome if one needs internal sections for horizontal pages or some such.

INTERIM, WORSE OPTION

A distinctly third-best approach would be to easily assemble a manuscript from separate files. In Word 2011, that is pretty speedy and elegant using a command something like "Insert File (browse to find the file)". I don't believe that exists in Mellel; copy and paste could be used, but is rather clunky and error-prone. I would think that adding the option to Mellel would be rather easy.

Among the many problems with breaking the document up into chapters are (1) configuration control if you're working with multiple authors (the changes should really be made to the individual chapters and a new composite created from time to time, but editing is seldom a nice, neat linear process); (2) undercutting one of Mellel's strengths, which is the ability to work conveniently with single large manuscripts without crashes or corruption.

THOUGHTS?

Personally, I would regard this as a high priority enhancement that would give Mellel some competitive advantage (if the by-chapter bibliographic option were included) and that would make compatibility with Word easier if only the chapter-endnote option exists.

I would love this too, and I agree with your ordering of ways of achieving it, but I think there might be a better way still. That is, just have a placeholder you can drop in wherever you like that is a command to collect and display all the endnotes since the beginning of the document or the previous marker. (And the same, mutatis mutandis, for bibliography.) That would be less systematic than tying it to auto-titles, but more flexible.

Yes. The "dump it here" command was how the best ever word processor used to do it. (that would be XyWrite).

Bump: this is a much-needed feature. Great idea.

Are there perhaps any further thoughts or developments on this. I'm increasingly seeing this as a much- and urgently needed feature. Is an "end of section" placement option impossible to implement? If ms+word can do it, surely the Redlers and mellel can do it.

Just a quick word of support for anything that would make this possible. I don't need it myself right now, but I surely will at some stage.

Declan

I've just found out that my book manuscript is supposed to be delivered with end notes at the end of every chapter, so I would like to support this feature. I am planning to copy and paste into different files, manually resetting starting page numbers. And deleting replacing automatic cross-references with manual ones. Is there an easier way?

Count me in. In fact, I'd settle for some way to interpose headers between sets of notes for distinct sections. Indeed, it's hard to imagine how one could look at a series of endnotes of a document divided by sections, see endnote 315 immediately followed by endnote 1 with no explanation, and not see the need for some fix.

I fully support this request. I lived blissfully in Mellel while writing a book that came out n 2008. However, when the time for formatting that MS according to editor specifications came, the lack of end-of-chapter notes in Mellel entailed exporting a carefully crafted MS into another word processor, with all the messiness involved at this late stage. I then expiated in sweat and exasperation all my former bliss. In fact, I was so irked then that I dropped Mellel and looked for word processors that would be decently compatible with MS Word and would do end-of-chapter notes—two basic requirements in serious writing software, one would think. Now—at long last!—the ability to properly export to Word brought me back. I missed Mellel, and I find myself again blissfully working on a book MS. But, yet again, I'm aghast to find that even after 12 years that glaring lapse—no end-of-chapter notes—is still there. Please, developers, get your act together on this. It's way past time! Please.

Fully agree this would be a welcome feature that, as stated, would lead to another competitive advantage for Mellel.