LEV  Posting guideline #1: "Be detailed and specific"...

Pages '09 is good, no question about it. But it and Mellel are in no way the same beast contending for the same environmental niche.

Mellel offers:

- Cross-referencing (and the best implementation of cross-referencing I have yet seen).

- Structural and far more controllable outlining

- Multiple footnote and endnote streams

- Tight integration with Sente and Bookends

- Immensely powerful, structural use of styles

- Auto-titling

- High-octane control over headers and footers, including "mentions" - the ability to display in the header/footer the current section/subsection etc. of a document

- Powerful document variables

- Powerful find-and-replace, including find/replace by highlight colour

- Extensive typographical control

AFIK, Pages offers none of those things. Pages offers:

- Reasonably simple export/mail/publish as Word or PDF

- Sophisticated layout capabilities

- Simple management of (visual, not structural) styles

- Preconfigured templates

- Change tracking

- Comments

AFIK, Mellel offers none of those things.

Amalgamate the features and we end up with The Behemoth, a.k.a. Word Redux. Both Pages and Mellel do what they do much better than Word. But if I had to be simplistic, Mellel is for the academic or technical or other writer of structured manuscripts, while Pages is for the general or business user who wants to turn out visually elegant but structurally straightforward documents.

Both rule. But they rule different kingdoms.

And then of course there's Nisus: somewhere between the two. Oh, the tyranny of choice...  
(Version 2.6)

PONTER  First a comment about rtfd. This is actually a wrapper, with the file components inside. Right-Click (or Control-click) on the rtfd file and select "show package contents" from the menu. From this subsequent list of files, select the rtf (no "d") that you want. Note, too, that with Mellel, you have to chose File > Import > RTF to perform an import. You should not just "Open" an rtf file.

Mellel is a classic case of "no pain, no gain." It's an excellent word processor, but it has its own way of working. You have to take the time -- usually a day or two of serious effort -- to learn its paradigm. In most respects, I find it easy to use. It's virtually bulletproof, never crashes, and is extremely flexible. But it's different from Word. So is just about every other program, for that matter.

Everything is a trade-off. You may prefer/need some features in Word that are not in Mellel, and are willing to put up with instability, sluggishness, etc. Other folks find the small footprint, extreme stability, and superb long-document flexibility of Mellel to be more important than the extra features in Word. You pay your money (a lot less for Mellel!) and you take your choice. Because of it's flexibility with footnotes and cross-referencing, plus its great control over styles, buit-in outliner, etc. it is especially popular with academics.

The only major downside to Mellel is if you work with colleagues in some sort of group effort based on Word documents. Mellel has its own file format (an XML-based file format, whose structure is openly published, and being XML the contents can always be extracted by any text editor) which doesn't easily go back and forth with people using Word. It can be done, but it's a PITA. And if they are using Word's change markup system, you're completely out of luck. (Sometimes people using different version of Word documents can't exchange files, either!)

If Mellel has no such downsides for you and you're willing to learn it, you will be rewarded. In the end, though, there's no right or wrong. You use the program that you like best/works for you.

Full disclosure: I usually reach for Mellel, but I also use NeoOffice, Word, and NWP, just to keep a hand in. I always end up going back to Mellel. I also use Scrivener, also a wonderful tool, but that's not really a work processor as most people know it.

Good luck.  
(Version 2.5)

ODYSSEUS  Ponter's points are well-taken, but the fact remains that Mellel's incompatibility with the de facto standard word processing document format is a huge disadvantage. The developers at Nisus had the smarts to make rtf their document standard. Yes, it's a problem being beholden to Microsoft, but virtually everyone uses that document format, so unless you do your word processing on a desert island, you're probably not going to be able to rely solely on Mellel.  
(Version 2.6)

GUILE  I was thinking exactly the same thing... But devs are frequently talking about their products saying they're the first/leading/best/essential and so one, that's some business talk.  
(Version 2.6)

SAMADORE  If Ponter's points are well taken, then it is NOT a "fact... that Mellel's incompatibility with the de facto standard word processing document format is a huge disadvantage." To reiterate Ponter's 1st point: Mellel is NOT incompatible with .rtfd.  
(Version 2.6)

ODYSSEUS  Depends on what you mean by "compatible." Yes, Mellel can read the format, but how good is the conversion?  
(Version 2.6)

RUBAIYAT  Try iText Express [free] or iText Pro [US$15].

They are so seriously good! How did they not make your list?  
(Version 2.6.1)

CORPSECORPS  Just because a lot of people have heard of Word doesn't mean it isn't crap (which it is).

Back when Apple commissioned microslough to create a Mac word processor, Word was a beautiful piece of work for several years. Then with version 6 it changed from a Mac-centric app in need of a few functions, to a microslough office-centric, incomprehensible load of excrement.

I haven't done a lot with word processors in recent years, but i once needed to make a nice formal looking little document. I got on a system with Word, not having used it since 6.0, and after 45 minutes i was still struggling with the very basics, and it was obvious i was going to be another hour or more getting the maybe 10 page document into even halfway decent looking form

I gave up. Not having ever used it, i pulled out Pages and had the document looking far better than i imagined, with unplanned graphics and tables in 30 minutes or so.

I swear word was hatched by demons whose intent was to make creating a decent looking document as horrible an experience as possible, knowing they'd be bringing misery to millions.

Mellel falls somewhere in between. As has been said here, it's better for more technical or pro writers, but slitting one's fingers and writing a dissertation in blood would be more pleasant than learning Word.  
(Version 2.6)

LEV  And this is supposed to be helpful how, exactly?  
(Version 2.5)

DAI YI  Did you do anything in particular? I can't get it working after trying most of the suggestions offered on the Redlers forum.   
(Version 2.2.7.2)