Interesting article from the co-founder of Scrintal

Posted by Amontillado
Jan 2, 2025 at 10:53 PM

Some of Mellel’s own literature says it’s not for everyone, and my addiction to it is not entirely product based.

When I first looked at Mellel, either version 3 or 4, I had the pleasure of a short email dialog with Ori Redler. At one point, I said that what I was looking for was a word processor with “rational” styles. On later re-reading, my wording was ham handed and harsh.

Ori’s response was gentle and light hearted, suggesting I would have to be the best judge of Mellel’s rationality.

Ori passed away. Fortunately, I had the chance to apologize for unintended offense.

I felt I owed them a license purchase. Mellel’s Auto-titles and other un-Word-like features were confusing. I got a copy of Nisus and was happy.

Mellel kept drawing my attention, though, and I had a need for page styles, something Nisus has never supported. A few things clicked, I finally grokked Mellel, and I’m totally hooked on it.

It’s the styles support that has me happily trapped in the Mellel camp.

Mellel supports global and local styles, and if you copy a document based on a global style to another computer you’ll never notice that what was global on computer #1 looks like a local style on computer #2. Style changes on computer #2 will reflect on computer #1 as local style elements unless you decide to incorporate them into the global style set.

If I’m using a global style, I can make style changes that either apply globally or just to the document. I can fork a style set, basing a new style set on the old one.

Quoting Henley (William Ernest, the poet, not Don, the rock star), it matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

Or so it seems.

The proprietary document format is wonderfully understandable, too. I wrote my own mail merge utility in Python, for example. I started with no knowledge of Mellel’s file format at about noon. By about 3 PM I had mail merges running.

Mail merge is handy, and since I can read and write Mellel documents from Python, I figure my work is about as future proof as plain text would be.

But it’s not for everyone. It is not Word, even though Mellel is Hebrew for “Word.”

If you hit a stumbling block and want extra eyes on something in Mellel, hit me up.

Darren McDonald wrote:
Mellel! Thanks for reminding me of this app! I should try it out
>properly when I work on my next paper.
>For now, I will continue with Scriviner. I can quit put my finger on it,
>but it is something with the layout and navigation that gels with the
>productive part of brain.
>I can relate to some feature (or lack of a feature) in an app that stops
>you from exploring it further.
>Your experience with No Style in Scrivener parallels my experience with
>Mellel in the way pallets appear as detached windows. Also, the design
>of icons is grating on my eye.
>I know in my rational mind this is not a big issue, but it is
>distractive enough for me to continually quit Mellel. It is the first
>thing I check when a new release comes out.
>I repeat what you say that this is a silly issue for me. I should really
>try to give Mellel a better chance.
>If an app works for you, then that it is the obvious choice for you. :)
>