Word Processor
Developer: RedleX
Shareware: $49, $35 (Educational)
Version: 2.1.3
Release Date: 2007-01-22
Last Updated: 2007-02-06
Pros: Stable; great outline/auto-numbering features; Produces visually consistent documents through the use of styles.
Cons: User interface needs time to get used to; Requires third-party software to incorporate equations in text; Not recommended for scientific writing.
Description
Over the last two years or so Mellel has taken the (academic) Mac community by storm and it is also my personal tool of choice whenever I have to write an academic text, no matter if it is a short assignment or a thesis (in fact I did write my entire Masters with it and I will also use it for my PhD thesis). Its maybe biggest advantage, its stability, might be unspectacular but when you work with large texts you will definitely appreciate it. You can easily open a 70000+ words document and still scroll happily through it without any performance issues and the fear of losing unsaved changes. But hey - why should you scroll your way through your opus magnum anyway when you have such a beautiful outline feature? It not only helps you to keep track of your work, but in combination with the auto-numbering system it also excels in restructuring your document. Let's say you want to move sub-chapter II.5.iii.b) behind sub-chapter V.1.iv.a) - just drag it there in the text or in the outline panel and Mellel will not only instantly re-number all headings correctly but also take care of their formatting.
Have you ever used styles in Word? If yes -
congratulations, because most Word users do not even know
what styles are. If you are one of them: styles structure
your document in a set of different but strictly defined
formats. For example you write your chapter headings in one
(Helvetica, bold, indented), your regular text in a second
(Times, plain, left-aligned, double-spaced) and your
quotations in yet another style (Times, italic, indented,
single-spaced). Now, if you want to change all regular text
into Helvetica you do not have to search for, mark and
change every single instance, but you simply change the
font attribute of the regular text style from Times to
Helvetica. Well, sure, styles have been around forever and
can be found in any major word processor, but whereas it
takes an average Word user three years to understand and
make use of styles, Mellel is basically built on them and
the program will only make sense to you if you use them
properly. If you do, you will end up with beautiful
documents which are visually coherent and clean. The
downside is that the user interface might seem a bit clumsy
to those who are not into using styles. If you prefer to
(or have to) use twenty different fonts in a text or change
the paragraph spacing every second page then Mellel is not
for you - it can do that too, of course, but then again you
can use TextEdit for that...
Enough of styles - let’s see what else is there: great
list features, works superb with Bookends and Sente (better
than Word...), full screen view, saves in a xml-format and
exports to Word (okay) and rtf (better), multiple note
streams, tables, the most sophisticated search and replace
functions...
Sounds too good to be true? Well, unfortunately even
Mellel is not perfect. Firstly while it does export
comfortably into Word and rtf, it does not do so perfectly.
If you want to send your piece to a journal to publish,
then you might face the small but possible risk that your
final document will not look like it did in Mellel, or at
least that your precious styles definitions will be gone in
Word, making further editing a pain in the backside. And if
you are a scientist whose texts include at least five
equations a page - stay away. Mellel supports equations
only through a third-party software, MathType. Then the
user interface... I kind of like it, the outline panel is
great and it features magnetic palettes which you can stick
together, but for some strange reason the developers never
changed the main toolbar which sits on top of each window
and shows a rather arbitrary collection of available tools.
And again, as good as the styles feature is, it does
require a bit of getting used to. Generally you should take
the time to work yourself through the excellent yet heavy
manual if you want to get the most out of Mellel. But if
you still need help - the support forum on the developers
website is useful and the developers, the Redlers brothers
from Israel, also provide a great support.
Other Reviews
mac.pocket.at (in German)
Useful Links
Mellel User Forum
Wikipedia Entry