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Mac Word Processors - Sort of Off Topic
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Posted by Daly de Gagne
Aug 9, 2010 at 03:23 PM
I have been so busy with outliners for my new Mac, I have not much looked at word processors. I did download Open Office, Mellel, and Scrivener. I wonder if there’s advantage to also checking out Nissus and Mariner, or the Mac WP.
Any thoughts?
Thanks.
Daly
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 9, 2010 at 03:44 PM
I think it depends on what you want to use the word processor for, Daly.
I find I rarely use a word processor on my Mac—I don’t consider Scrivener a word processor, but a writing program.
If you intend to do a lot of writing in the word processor, then I think Nissus is a good choice. If you just need it for putting the finishing touches on documents you write in other programs, Pages—the word processor that is part of Apple’s iWorks suite—works well. Mellel is complicated, but powerful. If you think you are going to be doing a lot of work in the w.p., then Mellel might be worth checking out—otherwise skip it, since you’ll have to devote a lot of time to learning its techniques.
You may be able to get away with just using the free Bean, which has most of the basic word processing functions.
Steve
Posted by Daly de Gagne
Aug 9, 2010 at 04:14 PM
Thanks Steve.
I notice you didn’t mention OpenOffice - is there an issue with it?
I will look at Nissus.
Since I started this thread I took a quick look at Scrivener. I can use the Binder to open folders for my blogs, and to write items, which show up outline style.
That could be worth looking at, because sometimes there will some research items backing up what I write.
Daly
Posted by Hugh
Aug 9, 2010 at 05:14 PM
I use an earlier version of Word for the Mac to polish Scrivener documents. It’s a sluggard to load, resource-intensive to use, not very Mac-ish to handle and not very “pretty”, but when dealing with outsiders it’s hard to avoid the global standard.
The consensus of the Scrivener forums, if there is one, is that Bean is adequate for most simple short-form purposes. It’s “nice to use” and is free. For long-form writing Nisus is regarded as very good (among other virtues, its macros are excellent), unless you’re writing a thesis or a textbook, when Mellel is the champ. But (to expand what Steve says above) Mellel’s help manual is 300-pages long, offering all kinds of functionality that most people will never use, and so isn’t for the faint-hearted. Ulysses uses semantic editing, which I haven’t been ready to put in the time to learn.
Apple’s Pages is well-regarded, sitting somewhere between Bean and MS Word in complexity, and of course is well-known for its short-form publishing functionality. The most recent version has very simple outlining, and marginal comments that can be imported into Word.
I have tended to regard Mariner Write as old-fashioned and limited, but I don’t know whether these prejudices are justified.
Bean: http://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html
Nisus: http://www.nisus.com/pro/
Mellel: http://www.redlers.com/
A discussion of Mac word processors here: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=8227
H
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 9, 2010 at 05:16 PM
Daly,
I tried Open Office when I first got back to Mac. It felt kind of clunky, and I didn’t need all the other applications. iWork, while it costs something, is reasonably priced and I like it better. But your mileage may vary.
Steve