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Mellel 5.1 update


R. Mansfield

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For those of you who are Mellel users (or watchers), Eyal Redler updated Mellel to v. 5.1 this week with some pretty significant features. 

As mentioned before, I don't get any kind of kickback or anything from Mellel. But it's the best academic word processor for macOS I know of, so I always like to support them.

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I'd second that!!!

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  • 3 months later...

Mellel 5.1.2 Update (Build 51204, May 27, 2022)

  • Fixed an issue that caused showing tab stops truncated when dragging from the tab well.
  • Fixed an issue that caused Mellel to hang in some rare circumstances when editing a header/footer.
  • Fixes an issue that caused the marker selector to be hidden when editing an Auto-Title in the outline.
  • Changes to trial prompt for registered (expired license) and unregistered users.
  • Allowing to upgrade after entering an expired registration code.
  • Fixed an issue that caused Mellel to become unresponsive in some rare cases of dragging an image over a citation causing it to wrap around the image.
  • Improved handling of opening documents with malformed tables, fixing tables when opening.
  • Updated German (reform) hyphenation dictionary.
  • Fixed an issue that caused Mellel to fail to open documents containing empty (abnormal) floating elements (images/text boxes).
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  • 3 months later...

I reinstalled Mellel on my Mac this weekend. I’m probably going to use it as my “everyday” word processor (I was using Nisus Writer Pro, and I’ll still keep NWP around for RTF files). I just love the performance and stability of Mellel, that I want to incorporate it into my daily workflow.

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21 hours ago, Nathan Parker said:

I reinstalled Mellel on my Mac this weekend. I’m probably going to use it as my “everyday” word processor (I was using Nisus Writer Pro, and I’ll still keep NWP around for RTF files). I just love the performance and stability of Mellel, that I want to incorporate it into my daily workflow.


I've been using Mellel for the last 5-6 years as my primary word processor. I find that it's become more user-friendly over the last couple of iterations. It's very stable. I don't know as it's crashed once. I've now written two books using it and the conversion to docx has gotten a lot better over the last few years. There are a couple of things I miss in Word, but when Microsoft went to a rental basis, I really didn't want to feel like I was basically being reduced to a milk cow. It's especially good in handling non-European languages (e.g., Greek and Hebrew). No regrets.

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I keep a perpertual-license copy of Word around (although I believe my work offers me the Microsoft 365 version free now) just to check compatibility with other Word users before sending them a doc. Otherwise, I try to avoid Word as much as possible.

 

I was using Nisus Writer Pro as my “everyday” word processor. I’ll probably promote Mellel into that position, especially due to the iPad syncing feature. Mellel just feels so solid and robust. I’ll keep NWP around for working with RTF docs.

 

I keep Pages around primarily for page layout stuff (when I need a “nice looking” document). I got so used to only using Pages for that back in the early days that I never have adapted to it as a full-fledged word processor.

 

I’m still using Nota Bene for my academic word processor. I started using it during my brief time on Windows, and I’m already too pulled into their ecosystem to change to something else for academic writings. It still does well for my papers.

 

I tried NeoOffice and LibreOffice in the past but dropped them. They’re just not up-to-par with what I need.

 

I still use Scrivener and Ulysses in my toolbox as well. Scrivener for larger papers I need to plan out, Ulysses for smaller papers, blog posts, etc.

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10 hours ago, Nathan Parker said:

 

I’m still using Nota Bene for my academic word processor. I started using it during my brief time on Windows, and I’m already too pulled into their ecosystem to change to something else for academic writings. It still does well for my papers.

 

 

Just out of curiosity, Nathan, how have you found Nota Bene's compatibility with Mac? I was thinking of switching to it at one point—it seems to be the gold standard for academic writing, especially in biblical studies—but I read varied reviews about the Mac version which, from what I understand, is like a Wine version of the native PC program. Seeing the price, I didn't really feel like going in that direction.

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It runs under a custom variant of CrossOver now (used to run under the free WINE). The newer versions since they moved to CrossOver have been better. It occasionally has an issue under CrossOver, but still very usable.

 

If you’re in Mellel’s ecosystem, you might be better off with it, but NB does offer a free trial you can take for a spin to see if you like it. I believe I can also offer discounts since I’ve bought all their future betas.

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A few thoughts to the recent comments above.

  • Mellel has also become my primary word processor over the years. Even if I'm making a few quick notes, I usually turn to Mellel. I still have MS Word but mainly just use it to open documents sent to me in emails--not that Mellel couldn't do that, too. 
  • I think if you've got Mellel + Bookends, you've got everything Nota Bene offers in a much better interface without legacy code going back to the 80s. The creator of Bookends told me he's never seen such interconnectivity between software as there is between Mellel and Bookends. 
  • I agree that Mellel is easier to use than it used to be, but it admittedly has a learning curve for the uninitiated. It's not Microsoft Word. If it merely duplicated Word, what would be the point? I have been using it off and on since v. 1, and I remember reading early on that the Redlers wanted to rethink the word processor from the ground up, not necessarily giving into conventions of what had been done before.
  • If I haven't mentioned this before, Mellel is now compatible with Antidote, which is a much less expensive alternative to Grammarly. I use Antidote daily across a variety of programs.
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Can Bookends import citations (such as in RIS format)? I could always pick up Bookends and import my Nota Bene/Ibidem (Ibidem exports to RIS) citations into Bookends as a backup in case CrossOver goes awry and I need to use Mellel+Bookends. 

 

The more I use Mellel, the more I see why you use it for your primary word processor. Word is ultra painful. Mellel is so beautifully done.

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2 hours ago, Nathan Parker said:

Can Bookends import citations (such as in RIS format)? 

 

Yep. File: Import references (or something similar). I don’t have it in front of me. 

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Great! I’ll take a trial and see how it goes. Thanks!

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On 9/20/2022 at 4:19 PM, R. Mansfield said:

A few thoughts to the recent comments above.

  • Mellel has also become my primary word processor over the years. Even if I'm making a few quick notes, I usually turn to Mellel. I still have MS Word but mainly just use it to open documents sent to me in emails--not that Mellel couldn't do that, too. 
  • I think if you've got Mellel + Bookends, you've got everything Nota Bene offers in a much better interface without legacy code going back to the 80s. The creator of Bookends told me he's never seen such interconnectivity between software as there is between Mellel and Bookends. 
  • I agree that Mellel is easier to use than it used to be, but it admittedly has a learning curve for the uninitiated. It's not Microsoft Word. If it merely duplicated Word, what would be the point? I have been using it off and on since v. 1, and I remember reading early on that the Redlers wanted to rethink the word processor from the ground up, not necessarily giving into conventions of what had been done before.
  • If I haven't mentioned this before, Mellel is now compatible with Antidote, which is a much less expensive alternative to Grammarly. I use Antidote daily across a variety of programs.

 

I've been curious about Mellel for some time, and I'm a longtime user of MS Word. Thanks for these insights into Mellel.

 

Have you had any experience with using Mellel and Zotero, or is Bookends really the way to go?

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  • 5 weeks later...

One feature Nota Bene has that isn’t in a Mellel+Bookends combo is Orbis which originally searched all one’s NB and TXT documents. Now Orbis+ can also search PDFs, Word DOC/DOCX, RTF, and HTML.

 

However, it seems one can accomplish this without Orbis using DevonThink.

 

@R. Mansfield Have you ever used DevonThink? I'm considering giving it a try.

 

The latest beta of Orbis is working OK on my Mac now, but there was a longstanding bug where PDF searches kept throwing up a security error on my Mac that was super annoying. I’m considering setting up a Mellel+BookEnds+DevonThink workflow in case I need it as a backup if there’s a time that NB and Mac have issues.

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Just now, Nathan Parker said:

@R. Mansfield Have you ever used DevonThink? I'm considering giving it a try.

 

I've been using it since v. 1. Indispensable

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Fantastic. Thanks for the info! I’ll grab a trial of it. It looked good in the past when I saw the demo, but I didn’t get a chance to try it out. It’ll likely be a more robust alternative to Orbis I can keep around.

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There's also a good mobile version of Devonthink finally that will sync over iCloud.

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In other discussions of Linux viability—for me—Accordance, DEVONthink, Mellel, and Bookends are my four horsemen. I won't leave Apple because of these four apps. And I'm glad they're present not only in macOS but also iPadOS.

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4 hours ago, Frank Jones said:

Rick, do all the four programs run native on Apple Silicon?

 

Yes.

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16 hours ago, Nathan Parker said:

Fantastic. Thanks for the info! I’ll grab a trial of it. It looked good in the past when I saw the demo, but I didn’t get a chance to try it out. It’ll likely be a more robust alternative to Orbis I can keep around.

Another vote for DEVONthink -which I am indebted to Rick for getting (you should get commission from them) ... I have enormous databases of pdfs and web articles and it isn't just fast when searching it is instant... amazing. There are many automation features which I haven't really tried out as what I really wanted was something to replace Evernote (for all obvious reasons) and Bear which I really like but which is ultra slow on my intel iMac (though not the iPad) and doesn't have any research features... honestly DEVONthink is amazing

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I was looking for a file the other day and thought, "There must be a better way." I never found what I am looking for.

So, devonthink finds things -- is that it? I need to go over to the website.

How do you use it for Biblical usage?

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DevonThink stores files like PDFs, documents, web clippings, images - it isn’t a finder replacement and you do need to add the items to it but once there it indexes them, you can use tags and other meta-data and it offers a lot of automation features around this… it will also do this for your entire email but I don’t use this so can’t comment

 

for me I have thousands of PDFs which I store in DT - I also clip any webpage that looks interesting to it… 

 

I attach a screengrab of how it works me - this is the database ‘Literature’ and within that a subset on Pound which itself is subdivided… as I say everything is indexed so searching is like searching in Accordance… it can do a lot more than I use it for but what it does for me is essential and the iPad companion app is pretty good as well

CleanShot 2022-10-22 at 23.14.55@2x.png

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Think of it as “google” for your files.

 

I agree with @R. Mansfield. Those four programs are powerful. I’m also staying put on macOS/iOS/iPadOS. Tried Windows and Linux in the past, and neither are a viable alternative for me. I’ll probably pick up DevonThink shortly, then go with BookEnds next. Love Mellel.

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22 minutes ago, Leopold Green said:

. . . you can use tags 

 

Can you tag individual words?

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