Filed under: Software, Productivity
Mellel 2.2 adds better citation support
Since switching to an Intel Mac right after Macworld 2006 I've been trying to move away from Microsoft Word on my system, both because I don't like running a PPC app, and because I wanted to escape from Word itself, which I've often found to be ridiculously frustrating (two words: widows and orphans). Given the fact that Word Docs are more or less a de facto standard in academia (in the humanities, at least), it's not possible to get away from it altogether. However, I have started writing my professional papers with Mellel, a powerful, if quirky, word processor from RedleX. Mellel was originally designed to work with Hebrew (and other right to left languages) which have traditionally been under-supported in word processing programs. However, it has grown into a full featured word processor that produces beautiful documents, especially documents that mix different languages with different alphabets. That is, it can produce beautiful documents, if you can bring yourself to understand and effectively use its unique text style and auto-titling systems.The newest release, version 2.2, adds support for more advanced "bibliography integration" and citation management. Mellel can be a useful tool for producing extremely polished final documents, but I've found that you really do have to spend some time with the software (particularly if you're coming from Word) in order to make the best use of it.
Mellel sells for $49 (though an education license is available for $34.99) and a 30 day demo is available.
[Via MacMegasite]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
elbaso said 2:17PM on 3-21-2007
How about LaTeX? It's free (open source?), there are a ton of editors for it (including a nice Textmate bundle), it handles formatting very nicely, and it outputs to PDF.
Of course, learning how to write it is tantamount to learning how to program php, but the rewards might be worth it.
Equations and Bibliography references in particular are really nice in LaTeX.
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Barkin said 3:26PM on 3-21-2007
Since I frequently need to type in Hebrew, Mellel has become a good friend.
It has its own way of doing lots of things (styles, for example) that can make it a bit of a headache. I'd have a hard time recommending it as an every-day word processor.
But if you need a full-featured solution for typing Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi, etc. in OSX, then this is your best bet.
Of course, if MS Word fully supported Unicode (including support for right-to-left languages) in its Mac version, Mellel would be out of business real fast. As it currently stands, maintaining a lack of right-to-left support on the Mac (while at the same time offering full right-to-left functionality in Windows and in Windows-versions of Office) have kept the Mac from making serious inroads in the right-to-left world.
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Word Diggity said 3:42PM on 3-21-2007
LaTeX is great if you've got the time to learn it, but Mellel works like a Mac program (because it IS a Mac program).
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John said 4:57PM on 3-21-2007
But once you learn LaTeX once you don't need to learn it again.
I guess I'm not familiar with how articles in humanities are written. But I can't see much advantage of using word for citations/sectioning/figure numbering/Appendices.
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George V. Reilly said 5:09PM on 3-21-2007
How does it compare to NeoOffice / OpenOffice?
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vincentreusch said 5:47PM on 3-21-2007
Do check out Scrivener by Literature and Latte if you do much scholarly research/writing or creative prose (as in book-length, requiring layers of organization. I've never been so pleasantly surprised. This is what I'd hoped pages would be.
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mitcho said 5:57PM on 3-21-2007
Well, of course, there's also LaTeX, absolutely free. If you feel like learning just a wee bit of coding, you can make beautiful documents instantly. MacTeX makes installation a snap. TeXShop is a great free editor to work in. Use the free XeLaTeX for super-simple multi-lingual and font support. Use the free BibDesk to manage all your citations with ease. It's the academic standard for years and years... this is the tool of pros.
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James said 2:19AM on 3-22-2007
Except many journals don't except LaTex files, at least in the social sciences. Sad but true. Word or plain text only.
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Daan said 5:17AM on 3-22-2007
I have started to use LyX ( http://wiki.lyx.org/Mac/Mac ) for my last report. It gives you the power of LaTeX, but with a easy to use front-end so that you don't have to learn all the LaTeX code by heart. I have had some LaTeX experience, so grasping the concept of LyX was not hard for me, but still, I would recommend it for most word processing tasks.
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