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Mellel 6 released (Mac only)
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Posted by MadaboutDana
Dec 20, 2023 at 10:45 AM
Just to pick up on a couple of points made by @Dormouse:
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that the alternatives to Word are all worse – just that they’re not all totally, 100% compatible with Word. And because Word is what my clients use, I have to use it for their work, ensuring that what I produce is 100% compatible with what they want.
For my own personal writing purposes, I don’t use Word. In fact, it is refreshing not to have to go anywhere near it. While I acknowledge that it’s a hugely powerful piece of software, it is also (as you effectively remark) an aggregate – a conglomeration of features piled one on top of another. This is true of all MS apps, in fact, which is why they’re all so enormous (ca. 1GB each). This has obvious implications in terms of efficiency, and probably explains peculiarities like the impossibility of adding comments to e.g. headers, footers, text boxes etc.
For what it’s worth, I’ve only ever had a couple of crashes with Obsidian, and that’s with about 34 plugins enabled ;-) But I’m a comparatively recent convert, and from what I’ve seen, it’s being improved all the time.
In my experience, Word on Mac isn’t that much different (in its current form) from Word on Windows (yes, I do use both, the Windows version in a Parallels virtual machine). The Windows version does have a couple more features (especially with regard to VBA scripts, which is the only reason I run it in a VM), but otherwise displays many of the same infuriating characteristics as the Mac version. Neither of them is particularly prone to crashing, but when they do, oh boy do you know it.
I will say this: Microsoft’s XML file format is vastly more efficient than the various Apple formats used in Pages, Numbers etc. The files from these iWork apps are always enormous, whereas even a large Word document takes up very little space (depending on the graphical content, obviously), largely because it’s massively compressed. Other apps like SoftMaker Office – which I like very much – also produce highly compressed XML files; if I was 100% confident in their reproducibility in Word, I would swap over to SoftMaker Office like a shot. LibreOffice is quite impressive, but suffers somewhat from a similar aggregative approach to Word.
I’ve tried Mellel and other excellent writing apps (Papyrus Writer, for example), but don’t have sufficient reason to use them for my own personal writing work, which is mainly done in Obsidian or Scrivener or increasingly, Lattics (which, despite some annoying traits, is peculiarly satisfying to use). I can see situations in which I would definitely use Mellel, not least because of its awesome indexing capability. But I haven’t produced my own Definitive Work yet, and I don’t need that kind of power to produce articles, blog posts etc.
I’d forgotten WordPerfect was still a thing. Might have to check it out as well…
Posted by Amontillado
Dec 20, 2023 at 12:34 PM
Absolutely agree on the suitability of XML. That’s what Mellel uses, too.
XML also makes for what probably amounts to an open format, or at least it should.
SoftMaker’s word processor is said to be very faithful to Word. I’ve never owned the product, so I’ll have to defer to others.
There is now a free version of SoftMaker at http://www.freeoffice.com. I might have to give that a try on my Linux box.
MadaboutDana wrote:
Just to pick up on a couple of points made by @Dormouse:
>
>Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that the alternatives to Word are
>all worse – just that they’re not all totally, 100%
>compatible with Word. And because Word is what my clients use, I have to
>use it for their work, ensuring that what I produce is 100% compatible
>with what they want.
>
>For my own personal writing purposes, I don’t use Word. In fact,
>it is refreshing not to have to go anywhere near it. While I acknowledge
>that it’s a hugely powerful piece of software, it is also (as you
>effectively remark) an aggregate – a conglomeration of features
>piled one on top of another. This is true of all MS apps, in fact, which
>is why they’re all so enormous (ca. 1GB each). This has obvious
>implications in terms of efficiency, and probably explains peculiarities
>like the impossibility of adding comments to e.g. headers, footers, text
>boxes etc.
>
>For what it’s worth, I’ve only ever had a couple of crashes
>with Obsidian, and that’s with about 34 plugins enabled ;-) But
>I’m a comparatively recent convert, and from what I’ve seen,
>it’s being improved all the time.
>
>In my experience, Word on Mac isn’t that much different (in its
>current form) from Word on Windows (yes, I do use both, the Windows
>version in a Parallels virtual machine). The Windows version does have a
>couple more features (especially with regard to VBA scripts, which is
>the only reason I run it in a VM), but otherwise displays many of the
>same infuriating characteristics as the Mac version. Neither of them is
>particularly prone to crashing, but when they do, oh boy do you know it.
>
>I will say this: Microsoft’s XML file format is vastly more
>efficient than the various Apple formats used in Pages, Numbers etc. The
>files from these iWork apps are always enormous, whereas even a large
>Word document takes up very little space (depending on the graphical
>content, obviously), largely because it’s massively compressed.
>Other apps like SoftMaker Office – which I like very much
>– also produce highly compressed XML files; if I was 100%
>confident in their reproducibility in Word, I would swap over to
>SoftMaker Office like a shot. LibreOffice is quite impressive, but
>suffers somewhat from a similar aggregative approach to Word.
>
>I’ve tried Mellel and other excellent writing apps (Papyrus
>Writer, for example), but don’t have sufficient reason to use them
>for my own personal writing work, which is mainly done in Obsidian or
>Scrivener or increasingly, Lattics (which, despite some annoying traits,
>is peculiarly satisfying to use). I can see situations in which I would
>definitely use Mellel, not least because of its awesome indexing
>capability. But I haven’t produced my own Definitive Work yet, and
>I don’t need that kind of power to produce articles, blog posts
>etc.
>
>I’d forgotten WordPerfect was still a thing. Might have to check
>it out as well…
Posted by Franz Grieser
Dec 20, 2023 at 02:45 PM
Re: Softmaker Office. I’ve been writing in Textmaker (the word processor) for years. I prefer it to Word because it’s stable, fast, is easier to handle (for me) and has Duden Korrektor (a superior German spell and grammar checker). The only thing I am missing compared to Word is Word’s fine outliner. Textmaker does have an outline feature but that is by far inferior to the one in Word.
And copying formatted Textmaker docs into a Wordpress page adds loads of unnecessary HTML code to the page. Which does not happen when you copy unformatted text.
Posted by Dormouse
Dec 20, 2023 at 10:04 PM
MadaboutDana wrote:
>I don’t need that kind of power to produce articles, blog posts etc.
Yeah
If my writing wasn’t longform,
and
If my writing didn’t have to end in a docx at some point,
I doubt if I would use Word either.
It’s very rare for me to use it as a traditional WP.
Though I might agree with this comment from the Obsidian Forum - “The context menu in MS Word is very beautiful and elegant.” Most of my interaction with the program is through shortcuts or the context menu.
Franz Grieser wrote:
>Re: Softmaker Office ..The only thing I am missing compared to Word is Word’s fine outliner.
It is (to me) amazing how they turned that round.
iirc DocxManager/Writing Outliner (both still exist) was set up purely because there was a gap in the market because of Word’s lack of a good outlining function.
I’d concur with the comments on Softmaker and Textmaker. I never had a compatibility issue with it either - but my use probably didn’t stress it much.
Off-topic
I’ve been interested to observe my use of OneNote increase steadily. I’ve always had a love-love-HATE! relationship with it. Lured back in by its convenience as a Word sidekick. Gradually extending a little further. No hate yet, and I feel I won’t get any - not because it’s improved or because the irritating quirks and limitations have disappeared, but because my serious notetaking is now in Tangent and so OneNote limitations don’t affect me much any more.
Posted by Andy Brice
Dec 21, 2023 at 05:04 PM
Mellel is now for sale at 25% off at Winterfest:
https://www.artisanalsoftwarefestival.com/#Mellel