Mellel

Mellel 6 now cost $69.99. Thus it has become more expensive then Nisus Writer Pro $65, although it has only half of Nisus' features. Nisus offers price reduction for Academic $55. Mellel's webpage doesn't mention any price reduction.

This is here to stay for years to come. it's the best RTL (Arabic & Hebrew) pro editor I've tried on Mac or even Windows and Linux.

Interesting alternative, and fromthe trial, seems more user friendly than say Scrivener. That said, it touts "By Academics for Academics" - disagree. Mellel is embedded with Bookends as the reference citation integration - Bookends is a non-starter for serious academics. Bookends does not allow for any importation of necessary style guides. Zotero has them all by default. If you need a specific style for your university.department, you are forced to suddenly become a code editor. --- When Mellel, Bookends or both coose to accomodate flexibility and realistic options, I'll try again. I need a viable alternative to MS Word and the other litany of stuff out there - not headaches, endless forum searches, and silly limitations when completing my PhD.

This is an answer to dgbmunger (Nov 30 2021) who wrote "I'd like some evidence that for a 300 page scholarly book Mellel is better than Pages. (…) I'd really appreciate someone taking the time to post specifics." (1) Mellel has a better outline, i.e. table of contents pane. Bookmarks and auto-titles can be shown together in this pane; thus you can see at a glance where exactly a certain bookmark is in the document. You can also assign "Remarks" and tags to bookmarks and auto-titles and then filter the outline pane based on your remarks and/or tags. (2) Supports live bibliography with Bookends. (3) Can have more than one type of footnotes. This feature is called multiple Note Streams. One footnote can be added by the author, for example, another by the translator, etc. — (4) For those who write novels and stories a so called "story points" were developed to help keeping track of the plot and its progress. Thus you can quickly see where characters and locations appear in the document. Pages is regularly updated, and each update has new features. Mellel's development is extremely slow. It still needs elementary word processing features, such as split view, macros, non-contiguous text selection, shapes, attached captions for images, just to name few. Mellel has been surpassed by Nisus Writer Pro which now has much more features: it's scriptable, has macros and two types of inbuilt text expanding features, supports more languages, has much better Find and Replace feature, allows you to create concordances and various types of word lists; you can search simultaneously for text in multiple languages, it has support for South Asian languages (which Mellel doesn't have) and it has a powerful Document Manager. Nisus has also some special features which make the daily writing process easier to handle. For example, the text expanding feature (called 'glossaries' in Nisus) and Multi-key keyboard shortcuts which allows you to press the command key and then any number of keys for each shortcut. For example, you could press the Command key and then type 'cal' in order to automatically insert a calendar. This makes it easy to remember your shortcuts. Mellel doesn't allow you to do this. I recommend you rather try Nisus than Mellel. If you chose Mellel, be aware that the additional programs you need to buy in order to be able to write like a professional cost extra money (text expanding software like Typinator $29.00 and OmniGraffle for drawing $124.99). Nisus Writer Pro has already integrated these features.

I've been aware of Mellel for several years, but have used Pages for all my writing: articles and books. Its nearly 2022, now, so thot I'd try Mellel instead of using Pages 11.2 and its changed format for me. As starters I've downloaded the Mellel demo and read several reviews, but no review I've read contains specifics as to how Mellel is better than Pages. I'd like some evidence that for a 300 page scholarly book Mellel is better than Pages. The book will have text and visuals, notes and index. I'd really appreciate someone taking the time to post specifics. Thank you. dbing

Overall, this is a great app. There are only 2 things I would like to suggest improving ... 1. the cursor behaves erratically. Very difficult to control using the keyboard and it dances around all over the place. 2. When adjusting the width of table cells, could it leave other unrelated and unconnected tables untouched? Exports great to MS word format.

Really easy to use.

Belated condolences to the Redlers family on the passing of Ori Redler. As for the app, it's up there with the best in class.

Hurray! After more than a month of waiting Mellel 5 has finally arrived here on MacUpdate! Still, it's such a wonderful word processor that is surely worth waiting for. I just wonder why some applications take so long to show on MacUpdate. Would anyone from MacUpdate please tell us the reason. Thanks.

Today (Jul 6, 2020) "Mellel 5.0" saw the light of day. It'll hopefully be released here soon. It's a great leap forward especially if you are dealing with ePUB and can also export its documents with great ease and precision to Microsoft Words Open XML Format. I upgraded with closed eyes because I've been using Mellel for many years on end and it has always kept its promises on developing new features continuously. This is a masterpiece in software engineering especially for those you like me who write in RIGHT-TO-LEFT languages and need those special features to handle texts correctly. Highly recommended.

Mellel and the Mellel/Bookends combination are first rate for writers, especially for those with complex documents. The 5.0 version is a landmark for Mellel because it now exports accurately to Word and ePub.

FYI Mellel 5.0 was released yesterday, July 2, 2020. https://www.mellel.com/blog/mellel-5-0-released/ https://www.mellel.com/release-info/5-0/ Free if your existing license (Mellel 4) was purchased less than two years ago. Upgrade price if Mellel 4 license was purchased more than two years ago: $29 (regular full price $49). Mellel Educational License $39.

Its a great app

The best word processor for me. My favorite word processing program for creating scientific publications on Mac.

For me meanwhile the best word processor. Fast - not very big - reliable - and updated if any error occurs. A big thanks to the developers: thank you so much for this grat program.

I was checking on other applications and just had to see how my favorite word processing program was being treated in the ratings and comments, and rate and comment myself. Let me say this: As a professional researcher and writer, if Mellel were ever to disappear, I would be devastated. I've been using it for over ten years now and can honestly say that, for serious writers (especially those who need to use non-Latin characters a lot), there is no better program. Combined with Bookends and it's exquisite. Even with massive manuscripts, it's very fast. It never hangs, or pauses, or moves slowly through a document. One can have a two- or four-page viewing. One can easily use (and label!) various colors of highlighters. Then there is the outline pane, with autotitles, that helps me move quickly through the documents and keep my conception of it clear. Tracking changes and posting comments is also super-easy. Then there is the great index feature. Why do people even bother with other programs. I truly adore this program! I can't say enough good about it!

Mellel has always been my favorite wordprocessor and Mellel 4.2 has notably enhanced its “table” features. Its developer is dedicated to make it better and better. He listens to his customers’ suggestions and carries them out without fail. What is so great in this process is that he doesn’t charge extra fees for all his hard work. All these significant changes occure in abosolute silence and unlike some other developers the version number doesn’t jump from 4 to 5 in a matter of a month or two to oblige customers to cough up more for the new version and all features that were missing before. This what I like about this developer and his work. His support is second to none and his application runs smoothly on all Macs. What do we need more?

Release notes for Mellel are here: https://www.mellel.com/release-notes

In the past, a significant Mellel shortcoming was how it handles tables. Apple Pages was far (far) better.

Is that still the case??

After an early assessment of Mellell I think it is quite good although I am yet to discover how to bold, underline etc. The way to those basic enhancements is not obvious to a new user.