Mellel 2.2 adds better citation support

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.

Except many journals don't except LaTex files, at least in the social sciences. Sad but true. Word or plain text only.

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.

How does it compare to NeoOffice / OpenOffice?

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.