The new Nisus Pro contains

For all things Mellel

Moderators: Eyal Redler, redlers, Ori Redler

raymond
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 315
Joined: Mon Dec 26, 2005 9:33 pm

The new Nisus Pro contains

Post by raymond »

apprently, features which we are looking forward to be in Mellel. I wish Redlers wouls intriduce them soon.
Timotheus
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 285
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2005 4:36 pm

Re: The new Nisus Pro contains

Post by Timotheus »

But … which features exactly are you talking about??
shmulik
Already downloaded the guide
Posts: 33
Joined: Mon Jul 02, 2007 3:02 am

Re: The new Nisus Pro contains

Post by shmulik »

We already have track changes! And I really like its implementation in Mellel, personally. I can't see what else--from my perspective (professor in the humanities) the Nisus updates have to offer me. But certainly, many people will disagree, and I'm glad for that because Nisus is great.

More and more, I use Word for what I used to use Nisus (putting everything into standard fonts/formats, final proofing) before sending an article off to a journal (everyone is going to open it in Word, may as well send a .docx, I figure, formatted in Word). This probably has to do with Word 2011 being moderately tolerable for the little time I spend using it. It seems that now I use Mellel for things like book reviews, letters, cv, syllabi, and the rest--manuscripts scholarship, lecture notes and lesson plans--mostly happens in Scrivener, with an export for final formatting in the case of manuscripts. So in a sense, I like to see Mellel maintain its idiosyncratic path, since I don't need from it a replacement for Word (which seems to be much the path pursued by Nisus).
rpcameron
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 980
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2005 12:48 am
Location: IE, CA, USA

Re: The new Nisus Pro contains

Post by rpcameron »

shmulik wrote:We already have track changes! And I really like its implementation in Mellel, personally. I can't see what else--from my perspective (professor in the humanities) the Nisus updates have to offer me. But certainly, many people will disagree, and I'm glad for that because Nisus is great.
Nisus Writer Pro supports comments with track changes, something Mellel lacks. Also, comments can be exported as part of the PDF, which will show up as a PDF notation.

Also, Nisus's PDF export generates a TOC in the PDF, as well as clickable hyperlinks between references. Images can be linked: an embedded image is a reference to a real file, and when that file updates, the embedded image dynamically updates, too. Hyperlinks can be inserted between different places in the text, or to other files or websites.

Other features that have often been requested of Mellel that are present in Nisus include paragraph/line numbering, indexing, true multi-lingual spellchecking, and several others.

While Nisus does not have the superior RTL text support that Mellel offers, I believe that Nisus truly deserves investigation if you do not need Arabic or Hebraic text support.
— Robert Cameron
raymond
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 315
Joined: Mon Dec 26, 2005 9:33 pm

Re: The new Nisus Pro contains

Post by raymond »

Shmulik,

You seem to "like" Word, for obvious reasons. Why, you, (in plural) in the academic world in Israel, require that works of a student would be presented to you in font David which is owned by MS פונט קנייני, and you are not choosing free Font? Yםu force students to steal.
Last edited by raymond on Mon May 23, 2011 3:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Timotheus
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 285
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2005 4:36 pm

Re: The new Nisus Pro contains

Post by Timotheus »

@rpcameron: I agree that for those who don't write in languages like Arabic, Hebraic, Farsi etc., Nisus is a very attractive choice. Nisus 2.0 is a very good upgrade, and now the application has a whole range of features which are still lacking in Mellel: besides the ones you mention, there are for instance watermarks, a vertical ruler (which for some seems to be very important), floating text boxes, multiple clipboards. Not everyone will need all those features, but they are all there, without being obtrusive.

On the other hand, I must say that in some respects Mellel is still superior to Nisus:
- for working with very long and complicated documents with many hundreds of footnotes etc. etc., Mellel is still clearly the better choice. But let me add that in this respect too the upgrade to version 2 is a giant step into the right direction. Working with long documents with many footnotes was a nightmare (not to say altogether impossible) in Nisus 1; in Nisus 2 the delays when moving around the cursor are acceptable, once a table of contents has been created in the navigation pane.
- Nisus has no two pages view; Mellel has two up, four up and a spread view.
- Full Screen view in Nisus is still rather elementary; in Mellel, it is excellent.
ahankinson
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 83
Joined: Tue Oct 25, 2005 5:37 pm

Re: The new Nisus Pro contains

Post by ahankinson »

I just had a look at Nisus Pro 2. It does indeed look *very* nice. The track changes and comments features seem to be especially well done. I'm also very curious to try out its various levels of compatibility with .docx and .odt.

I still feel that Mellel's method of handling styles and auto titles is superiour, but the Redlers should absolutely take note of the things that the Nisus folks are doing.
nicka
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 677
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2005 2:55 pm
Location: Oslo
Contact:

Re: The new Nisus Pro contains

Post by nicka »

Nisus's PDF export generates a TOC in the PDF
Yes. I'd really like to know if this is even in the roadmap for Mellel. Much requested, but as far as I know still no comment on this from the Redlers...
DanZac
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 148
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2007 2:45 pm

Re: The new Nisus Pro contains

Post by DanZac »

nicka wrote:
Nisus's PDF export generates a TOC in the PDF
Yes. I'd really like to know if this is even in the roadmap for Mellel. Much requested, but as far as I know still no comment on this from the Redlers...
I agree.
tedg
New to all this
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Jan 12, 2010 3:13 am

Re: The new Nisus Pro contains

Post by tedg »

I have now evaluated NWP 2, and I will be sticking with Mellel.

The PDF TOC is nice, but index generation would be nicer.

I do wish Mellel would have better support for image anchoring. That is my only serious gripe.
Declan
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 79
Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2008 11:28 am

Re: The new Nisus Pro contains

Post by Declan »

For the moment, I'll be preferring Nisus. The main difference is in the simplicity with which I can move a Scrivener project into it, and select items by colour or font characteristic, and apply heading styles (which are linked to TOC entries).

I think I'd prefer to return to working in Mellel, but in order to do so, I'd like to see some better way of selecting things by attribute and then applying Autotitles to them. That'd be really nice. What is perhaps most attractive about Mellel is the feeling of solidity it gives. That, and the possibly better integration with Bookends.

It occurs to me that probably Mellel is a more satisfactory place to actually write, but since I am writing in Scrivener, it is integration with that that counts most.
Anyway, having both installed means that I can switch between the two as the occasion demands, or as the products develop.

Declan
DRB
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 65
Joined: Thu Jan 17, 2008 8:20 am

Re: The new Nisus Pro contains

Post by DRB »

It seems to me that there is some confusion here. Many, perhaps most, of the “new” features in the Nisus 2.0 do restore a large part of the capabilities of the pre-OS X Nisus Writer. In the most recent issue of Tidbits, Joe Kissell gives a very detailed study of the features. It occurs to me that many of these features already exist in Mellel, although they may be implemented in a somewhat different way from in Nisus.

The question of a PDF table of contents, which some commentators in this forum have mentioned, is not quite so clear-cut as it appears. If a table of contents is generated in Mellel, it appears in the PDF as a table of contents. I suspect that what people mean is the Sidebar in a PDF. It is true that Nisus does generate a PDF Sidebar while Mellel does not. For that matter, neither does Adobe Acrobat. There are some non-Adobe applications which can add it to a PDF once it has been generated. Acrobat, however, allows you to create for yourself a Sidebar and to edit the content of the Sidebar, while Nisus does not. The ability to edit the Sidebar is very important, and you might notice that in the PDF of my Mellel Tutorial the Sidebar (which I create with Acrobat) is rather different from one generated by Nisus, precisely because my Sidebar is oriented towards finding items, while the Autotitles in the text proper have a somewhat differtent purpose.

Many of the specialist features in Mellel are unavailable in Nisus, though, as Joe Kissell points out, a thorough mastery of the macro system in Nisus can reproduce some or most of them. Similarly, most of the new Nisus features can be duplicated by making Mellel macros (called Findsets in Mellel terminology).

I am very unclear what is meant by “selecting things by attribute and then applying Autotitles to them.” I strongly suspect this is not beyond the reach of the current Mellel, if I knew what this phrase is supposed to mean. Perhaps Declan could explain what he has in mind at greater length so as to show what he means more clearly.

Don Broadribb
Declan
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 79
Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2008 11:28 am

Re: The new Nisus Pro contains

Post by Declan »

Well, you see, autotitles in Mellel define their paragraph styles and those their character styles. So if I apply an autotitle to a piece of text, such as "Subheading 1" it will take on the styles associated with that autotitle. Now, suppose I output some RTF from Scrivener and the subtitles are purple and 15.5 font size, and now I wish all text so formatted to become "Subheading 1": I can only do this manually (i.e. instance by instance, by going through the document and applying the autotitle.
I cannot apply autotitles automatically (ironically) but only manually.
By using Find/Replace I can't designate a certain type of formatting and ask Mellel to change all text formatted in this way to become autotitle "Subheading 1". Of course, I can ask it to change all such text to paragraph style "Subheading 1", but that is not enough to make a TOC or use other possibilities opened up by the use of autotitles. Also using Find/Replace it is rather difficult to identify a particular style and select all instances of it. There is no possibility of selecting all purple text or whatever. Instead, in Nisus, all I do is select all purple text or select all 15.5 text or whatever, and choose the style that I want. If I have told the application that all text that has the new style goes into the TOC then it will.
I think these issues arise more when one is moving an RTF into Mellel from something like Scrivener. If I was starting from scratch in Mellel, I would just use the auto-titles from the beginning.
I hope that clarifies.
In brief, easy selection of all instances of a style and automatic autotitles from Find/Replace would be good features for some future version.
Declan
DRB
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 65
Joined: Thu Jan 17, 2008 8:20 am

Re: The new Nisus Pro contains

Post by DRB »

Thanks, Declan, I begin to see what you mean.

I am unfamiliar with Scrivener, or rather although I have a copy I have never used it. Would it be possible for you to send me an RTF made from a Scrivener text, including a bit which has the sort of problem you described. I could then take a look at it and possibly solve your problem.

By the way, a paragraph style does not have to be linked to a character style. In the paragraph style dialogue under associated character style you have the option of choosing “none”.

My e-mail address is: donbroadribb@westnet.com.au

Don
Declan
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 79
Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2008 11:28 am

Re: The new Nisus Pro contains

Post by Declan »

Thanks for your kind offer. I already have a solution to my issue, which is to use Nisus for dealing with shorted texts output from Scrivener. As I said, if Mellel finds a way of making this easier, I will turn to it, but for the moment I have my solution. Note that I am not claiming that Nisus is superior or anything, just that for what I am trying to do, it currently provides the better solution. Of course, if I was doing something else, Mellel might be the better solution. But I already know that selecting text by attributes is easier in Nisus, as is changing such selected text to a style that will show up in my Table of Contents. There is no need to burden you with seeking a solution, when I already have one.
I posted my comment by way of vaguely expressed feature request. I would be glad to see such functionality added to Mellel, and would gladly return to it so as to enjoy its other benefits. As I said, if I were building a long document from scratch, I would surely begin in Mellel. What I am doing, rather, is preparing a long series of related documents, and it suits me to develop this in Scrivener, and Nisus presents an easier way of preparing the shorter subdocuments (each about 20 pages) for distribution. No problem!
Post Reply