Assemble Dissertation in Mellel

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

I’m getting closer to the stage where I’ll be assembling my PhD dissertation. Here’s how the workflow has been so far:

 

1. I’ve typed my rough drafts of each chapter in Scrivener (in a separate project file). Scrivener has allowed me to freely move stuff around and work with the text until I’ve been happy with it.

 

2. I’ve then exported the text out of Scrivener and imported it into Nota Bene, with each chapter being an NB file, formatted to Turabian. This is where the double-spacing, Turabian footnotes, etc., have been applied. I probably could have used Mellel and BookEnds at this stage (any may in a future project), but since I’m already trained on NB/Ibidem, I used it for formatting this dissertation.

 

3. I then exported the files out of NB into Word, where I’ve done post-formatting polishing on the chapters so I could send each chapter over to my supervisor for review. There’s a few minor cleanup areas I’ve had to do once getting it into Word format so it’ll look good on his PC.

 

4. I’m going to need to assemble all of my dissertation Word docs into a single dissertation document and export to PDF, all my current chapters, plus the title page, bibliography, front/end matter, etc. 

 

During this stage, I don’t know if I want to rely on Word for Mac to handle this. I’ve been burned way too much with Word in the past (on Windows and Mac) to try throwing a couple hundred pages of content at it.

 

I’m wondering if I should instead assemble the dissertation in Mellel, and if so, are there any pointers I should follow. I know Mellel would have rock-solid performance and stability, plus the “page style breaks” might give me more flexibility in getting the final formatting and polish more to my supervisor’s liking. 

 

I likely won’t use NB’s manuscript assembly feature this time around since I’d probably have to do some post-processing if I did. It might be useful for a manuscript I’d send to a book publisher, but I don’t see myself using it for this project.

 

Thanks!

[R. Mansfield]

What styleguide does your school use? You may want to check to see if there's a pre-made template available for Mellel in your styleguide, or one that is close that you can modify.

 

Either modifying an existing template or setting one up from scratch might take an hour or two, but will be worth the time invested. I know that many like to wait until the end to format; but anytime I've been writing formal content, I found it easier to apply styles as I go. 

[Ben Gladd]

My two cents: just use Word and Accordance. I know, I know--there are programs out there that are more flexible, but, everyone uses Word (publishers, diss advisors, etc.). I've written so much the last 15 years, and that's partly due to the simplicity of my workflow. The more complex the workflow, the more problems arise. 

 

Use three things: Dropbox, Accordance, and Word. 

[Michel Gilbert]

In the process of switching everything over to my M1 mini I’ve thought a lot about word processors, and I offer an additional two cents worth:

 

I agree with Ben that for dissertations and publishing, practically everyone uses Word. Even if your school is one of the rare exceptions, it will only help prove the rule.

 

But I don’t necessarily agree that other programs are more flexible. Yes, many programs have features that Word doesn’t. But overall, arguably, Word has the most features. So, which program in the end has a more “ready capability to adapt to new, different, or changing requirements” (Merriam-Webster), that is, is the most flexible? In my opinion, Word works the best across different platforms, even virtual ones. That’s why everyone uses it. 

 

Nathan, I am in the majority that has written/edited and published books of over 200 pages with Word. And by the way, Word has style sheets and can handle long files. I regularly work with files longer than 2000 pages, and with the Hebrew Bible with 1574 pages (corresponding to BHS).

 

My search for something to replace Word for my own work began when Microsoft forced me to sign in to use all of its features. Anything that ends up published, whether as author or editor, still ends up in Word. But I use other word processors for my own work, Thankfully, Word plays nice with the programs I use the most, EditPad Pro, Classical Text Editor, Nota Bene, and now Libre Office. By the way, Dr. Holmstedt used to write his books in LO; I don’t know if he still does.

 

Regarding what I said earlier about Nisus Writer Pro, I looked at the copyright information and it is based on Libre Office. So I tried LO again and prefer it to NWP. I have used Mellel, mostly for large Hebrew files, but LO works just as well and I prefer its UI and how much more I can customize the toolbar and language settings. 

[R. Mansfield]

The good thing about Mellel is that it has excellent MS Word export. The Redlers have worked really hard over the years to get that right. I've yet to see recent versions produce errors when exporting to Word.

[Frank Jones]

My concern with Mellel is not the program but it's document format. I want my files readily accessible when/if something happens to me. I really want to go to Mellel but that concern is in the back of my head. How viable is the company once Eyal is passed? I really want to be convinced here ...

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

@R. Mansfield The school has moved to stock Turabian 9 for all their papers and dissertations. They used to use a modified version that combined Turabian, SBL, and some custom stuff. They’ve tossed it all now and gone to stock Turabian 9 and just use SBL as a guide for spelling/capitalization.

 

The second piece of good news is my Word docs I’ve been sharing with my supervisor are already formatted for Turabian 9, so even if I can’t get my hands on a template, I already have the chapters formatted in the proper format. I just need to change the page numbers when I assemble them, and assemble the front/end matter. Even if I have to format that little bit of content manually, it wouldn’t take much effort.

 

They also want the final form in PDF instead of Word, so I don’t even have to worry about post-export cleanup since as long as I can format everything the way I need to in Mellel, once I PDF it, I’m set.

 

If I can bring everything into Mellel, assemble it, and perform some minor formatting tweaks, I’d be willing to try it. I know Word is considered “the standard”, but I’ve always been burned by it, Mac and Windows. On the Mac, I’ve had papers corrupt (thank God for backups) and had issues with Microsoft 365’s login system, and on Windows, even simple papers corrupted, and I’ve had issues with Hebrew on both platforms. It’s what drove me to Nota Bene when I was on Windows. Now that I’m back on a Mac, I’m trying to use Mellel more due to its better performance/reliability. I’ve been burned one too many times by it where I just don’t know if I want to trust assembling my dissertation to it, especially since the final form will be PDF, so I don’t have to hand over a multi-hundred-page Word doc (I’ve only had to export to Word for each individual chapter so my supervisor can markup comments on the document, once he’s done with that, I can use anything that’ll format it and export to PDF).

[Michel Gilbert]

FWIW, maybe one cent instead of two, Unicode Hebrew has worked in Word for Windows since Office 2003 (which I still have on disk; Office 2007 is still installed on an old Dell desktop, which I used for Hebrew teaching and writing for over a decade). I know Word for Mac had problems with rtl languages, but Hebrew has worked in it for a few years now.

 

Someone might be interested in this: I attached a screenshot of the end of the Hebrew Bible in Word for Windows 11 ARM in Parallels Desktop on my M1 mini. It took me less than five minutes to import a plain text file of BHS and format it rtl, aligned right, in Ezra SIL, ending up at 1348 pages (without any further editing).

 

In any case Nathan, I wish you had asked about the problems you were having. Before I joined these forums, every HB or Jewish scholar I knew (as teacher, colleague, or friend) used Word and Unicode Hebrew, except one (Dr. D. I. Block) who used NB. 

 

 

[R. Mansfield]

2 hours ago, Frank Jones said:

My concern with Mellel is not the program but it's document format. I want my files readily accessible when/if something happens to me. I really want to go to Mellel but that concern is in the back of my head. How viable is the company once Eyal is passed? I really want to be convinced here ...

 

You would probably get better answers asking on the Mellel forums. As for the format of Mellel files, they are basically just zipped archives that can be opened with Archive Utility.app on any Mac. Internally, there's just an XML file. 

 

31 minutes ago, Michel Gilbert said:

except one (Dr. D. I. Block) who used NB. 

 

Funny story about that. I edited all the scripture references for Dr. Block's two-volume Ezekiel commentaries (my name is mentioned in the preface of both). When Dr. Block was ready to turn in his manuscript to Eerdmans, they wanted the digital files, not just a printed-out copy. Of course, it was in NotaBene, back when it was still a DOS program in the mid-to-late 90s, long after Windows had replaced DOS. Dan tried various methods of exporting, but NB didn't offer very good methods of export for a document that long (the original draft was actually much longer than the ones published, which were pretty extensive as is). In the end, Eerdmans had to purchase its own version of NB just to publish Dr. Block's commentary. And from that point forward, Eerdmans was willing to accept NB files. 

[Ron Webber]

Hi Nathan. Just take the advice of your committee chairman. If anything goes sideways he is also affected by your choice and already has much “skin in the game.” Best wishes.

 

BTW: Mellel is superior to anything if you have Hebrew in the text.

[Ben Gladd]

One more thing: I do great deal of "tracking" edits and using the "comment" feature in Word. I use these features when I'm editing a contributor's project, and all the publishers I've worked with over the years also use these features. For example, I'm editing a massive 900k project with Baker, and the "tracking" and "comment" features are our bread and butter. We simply couldn't produce this manuscript without them.

 

I'm certain that other platforms have something like this, but I'm unsure if they will be seamless when converted. In any case, it's something to keep in mind on the back end of the project. 

 

[Michel Gilbert]

30 minutes ago, Ben Gladd said:

One more thing: I do great deal of "tracking" edits and using the "comment" feature in Word. I use these features when I'm editing a contributor's project, and all the publishers I've worked with over the years also use these features. For example, I'm editing a massive 900k project with Baker, and the "tracking" and "comment" features are our bread and butter. We simply couldn't produce this manuscript without them.

 

I'm certain that other platforms have something like this, but I'm unsure if they will be seamless when converted. In any case, it's something to keep in mind on the back end of the project. 

 

 

Yes, exactly. I just worked with 55+ authors as an editor (along with others), copyeditor, and indexer, and we simply couldn’t do the work without track changes. And the problem with converting from other platforms is that there are always hidden artifacts that wreak havoc with the formatting, especially during proofing when docx is imported to InDesign. You can’t explain how or why, and you just have to start over and copy and paste the original into Word as plain text and reformat again and reimport.

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

Thanks everyone for the discussion. To answer @Michel Gilbert’s post about asking for help with Hebrew on Word for Mac and the issues I had with Word for Mac, the answer is there wasn’t any real way for me to get support with Word. My professor at the time didn’t have time to troubleshoot my issues (plus he was heavy on Mellel I believe). As long as I turned in a PDF with working Hebrew, that was his concern. Microsoft’s support is also abysmal. Even something as basic as a licensing issue I went round and round with sub-part support and never did get it resolved until after my classes were over with. After that, I had already moved on.

 

Contrast that with NB, Nisus, and probably Mellel, and I’ve been able to get better support during my time using them. With NB, the lead developer will even allow me to email over a file that has issues so he can look at it and determine if there’s a bug in the program he needs to resolve, plus there is a support community that assists with other stuff. When I used Nisus for academic papers, their support even tweaked my school’s template at the time to make sure it played well with Nisus (I didn’t ask them to do it, I basically showed them the template and asked them where in the app I needed to make the tweaks, but they went the extra mile for me). Mellel support and forums are probably good too (I just haven’t needed them yet the more advanced I’ve been with word processors).

 

The bottom line is, the smaller apps seem to have better support and better communities for support if something horribly wrong does happen. With Word, I feel like I’m totally on my own, and there isn’t anywhere solid to ask for support. If there is, I’d love to know about it for the times I need to use Word.

 

We are using track changes on Word docs for the individual draft chapters. In this stage of it, we need to use Word for that particular feature (we could use other apps, but Word would be simpler). Once we have the “final text” ready to assemble, pretty much my supervisor is going to be fine with whatever app I use as long as I can output a PDF in Turabian format. He just needs a final document to open, and he doesn’t have the time to stress over the details. That’s my area to worry about. 🙂 

[Michel Gilbert]

On 10/25/2022 at 11:57 PM, Ronald Webber said:

Mellel is superior to anything if you have Hebrew in the text.

 

If anyone on this forum can prove to me that Mellel can do something in Hebrew that Word can’t, I will switch. Of course, features common to all languages are excluded. This challenge is not about features, which Word has more of, but about Hebrew itself. 

 

I use Word in Windows and it does have more features than Word for Mac, e.g., Alt-x to toggle the Unicode values, which instantly shows whether you are dealing with Unicode Hebrew in the first place. In my experience using Hebrew on computers since 1989, most problems occur with copy and paste, and this feature alone helps to sort things out.

 

But I haven’t had any problems with Hebrew in the Mac version for a few years now. I don’t remember which version fixed the rtl issues but we discussed it on the forums a few years ago. I’m typing this in Word for Mac. Here I am typing a-z, switching keyboards between English and Hebrew:

 

Abcd ֶשׂגה hijkl מנֹפ qrs תֻו wxyz

 

By the way, I can’t find strikethrough in Mellel, in the guide or in the menus. Am I missing something?  

[R. Mansfield]

4 hours ago, Michel Gilbert said:

If anyone on this forum can prove to me that Mellel can do something in Hebrew that Word can’t, I will switch.

 

I would recommend asking that question on the Mellel forums. They have really advanced users there who could answer that question quite well, I imagine. 

 

4 hours ago, Michel Gilbert said:

By the way, I can’t find strikethrough in Mellel, in the guide or in the menus. Am I missing something?  

 

Palette: Attributes: Character: Line

 

[Michel Gilbert]

Thanks for helping me find strikethrough. 

 

I’ve been on the Mellel forums, with A.D. Riddle advocating for me, and the developers eventually figured out a tortuous way to do something that took a couple of mouse clicks in Word. Having used Mellel and visited their forum, I’m confident that I won’t have to make the switch. 

 

I’m not trying to convince anyone to switch to Word. But Nathan’s original post mentioned it and I wanted to give my perspective, and to just say again that Mellel is not better at Hebrew. So if it’s not better, people must prefer it for other reasons, perhaps a bad experience with the old Word for Mac (and who can blame them), or a preference for palettes, which seems more of a Mac thing to me as compared to ribbons, etc. It also comes down to personal preference, including how intuitive one finds a program, first impressions as it were. 

 

I’ve used Word since around 1992 (Word 6.0), so I find Mellel to be very unintuitive, probably the most unintuitive program I’ve ever used. I would never have looked for strikethrough where it is, since it’s always been a font style along with bold, italic, and underline. And the number of clicks, and the lack of macros drives me crazy (or are they hidden somewhere too?). I tried Mellel based on recommendations in the forum, and I’m glad I did, but I found it is not for me. I still use Mellel, mostly to export large files I created in it a few years ago, and once in a while for a quick note. 

 

As a forum member who tries to help, and as a believer (am I allowed to say that here?) I would hope that most would find this at least interesting, and sometimes helpful. Forums aren’t the best means of communication and I think we can draw conclusions from a computer screen that we wouldn’t in real life. 

 

Now it’s back to chopping and stacking wood, preparing for apocalyptic-like winter storms.

[R. Mansfield]

2 hours ago, Michel Gilbert said:

I’ve used Word since around 1992 (Word 6.0), so I find Mellel to be very unintuitive, probably the most unintuitive program I’ve ever used. I would never have looked for strikethrough where it is, since it’s always been a font style along with bold, italic, and underline. And the number of clicks, and the lack of macros drives me crazy (or are they hidden somewhere too?). I tried Mellel based on recommendations in the forum, and I’m glad I did, but I found it is not for me. I still use Mellel, mostly to export large files I created in it a few years ago, and once in a while for a quick note. 

 

Michel, for what it’s worth, I’ve been using Word just as long. First word processor I ever used was the one in Microsoft Works for DOS, which I found incredibly intuitive for its time (late 80s). I got WordPerfect 5.1/DOS in 1990 to use in seminary. I absolutely loved it. I went through all the tutorials in the workbook. Memorized the keystroke combinations (shift-F7 to print!). Ordered the special fonts disc so I could have Hebrew and Greek fonts). To this day, I’ve never gotten rid of my WP51 floppies (saving them for the Apocalypse, I’m sure). However, I really wanted to move to a graphical user interface which became viable on the PC with Windows 3.1 (3.0 did not have good fonts). WordPerfect for Windows 1.0 when released was horrible. I made the switch to MS Word for Windows in 1992. In fact, I even had the 6.x DOS version because MS was giving it away for free at the time. I played around with the DOS version but the Windows version was what I wanted to use. 

When I switched to using the Mac as my main platform in 1998, I stayed with Microsoft Office. I still have MS Office via subscription, and I imagine I always will. I’m usually in it every day at some point because that’s what most folks who work for Accordance use.

However, I started using Mellel in the dark days when Word for Mac could not properly handle right-to-left languages like Hebrew. Yes, I know this isn’t an issue, thankfully, anymore. I wish I could find the anecdote I’m about to describe so you could read the original for itself, but I’m sure it’s from well over a decade ago, and I have no idea where I first read it. Anyway, my understanding is that the Redlers’ initial vision was to create a word processor for the Mac that would excel at technical and academic writing, and handle extremely long documents. They specifically worked with other developers for clean integration with bibliographic reference databases (MS Word has this built in now, but it’s not as flexible as it needs to be in my experience). They added not only paragraph styles but also character styles, which at the time, I believe was only available in something like FrameMaker. And the big thing they did was to “rethink” the word processor. By that time every remaining alternative to MS Word worked a lot like Word and did so in the hopes that potential users would be able to migrate quickly. Not so with Mellel. They rethought the interface completely and how things could be done. The result was a word processor on the Mac that, at least at the time, could not be touched for its purposes by any other Mac word processor. It was like NotaBene for Windows but without the decades-old legacy code and clunky interface.

 

More than likely, it’s this rethought interface factor that makes Mellel feel so unintuitive to you, Michel. Where you would look for some feature in Word is definitely not where you’re going to find it in Mellel. This rethinking of the word processor, for better or worse makes the Mellel interface quite different from Word and most word processors. It takes a good bit of time and patience to get up to speed on it. Tutorials and even digging into the manual are kind of a must. 

 

For some of us who have taken the time to learn Mellel, there’s a kind of love for it that makes it our go-to word processor. It may or may not be rational or have anything to do with how it stacks up against the current version of MS Word. And I’m sure it’s overkill for some tasks I use it for. Just yesterday, I finished writing the November Accordance newsletter in Mellel. Then I had to zip the folder containing the Mellel file, all the images, and a version exported to MS Word because our designer uses Windows and send it to him. So, why not just write it in Word? I could have. There was nothing Mellel-specific about the content that required me to use it. It’s not that I know Mellel better than Word. But I just prefer Mellel, so that’s what I used.

 

 

[Michel Gilbert]

Rick, very informative, and thanks for the trip down memory lane. 

 

I think that Mellel could draw me in if it featured macros and greatly expanded the customize toolbar options, especially to include macros; at least I would give it another try. 

 

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

Good comments Rick and good discussion Michel!

 

Microsoft Word was the first word processor I used (Word 97 on a Windows 98 machine since my PC came with it). I used Microsoft Office for years without much of a thought.

 

When I had to start looking at other word processors is when I switched to a Mac and started typing in Hebrew. At the time, Word for Mac didn’t support RTL. I tried Mellel since a lot of Accordance users on here praised its Hebrew support. At the time, I loved the performance/Hebrew support, but I found it difficult to use. I ended up buying Nisus Writer Pro since Microsoft Word’s licensing literally gave out on me, and Microsoft Support couldn’t resolve it. There was a bug in an Office update that caused it to toss the license and require re-activation every time I opened the app, until re-activation finally gave out and stopped working since it was activating too often. A future update finally resolved it, but Word had already burned me in the middle of a semester where I didn’t trust it anymore and stuck with Nisus for my academic papers during it (By the way, Nisus has good Hebrew support and macro support as well).

 

I’ve also used Pages along the way, but only for page layout documents. I think of it more as “Microsoft Publisher for Mac, only easier to use”.

 

When I spent some time on a Windows PC, I tried Word again, this time it corrupted a Hebrew assignment and crashed about 13 pages in. I managed to restore from a backup, but it still butchered my Hebrew when I sent it to the professor. Word burned me a second time, and that’s when I looked elsewhere. I tried WordPerfect (it was actually worse on Hebrew and couldn’t handle it at all), then I tried Nota Bene and fell in love with its academic integration.

 

I also spent some time on Linux and tried LibreOffice (and also kept NeoOffice on my Mac during that time). I found it only so-so. I also ran NB under CrossOver which ran decently.

 

When I permanently switched back to a Mac, I brought NB back with me to run under CrossOver, but macOS updates sometimes don’t play well with it, so I’ve been looking for a “backup system” in case a macOS update breaks NB and I need to handle a mission critical project. I’ve re-examined Mellel due to its solid performance, plus I’m also going to evaluate BookEnds and DevonThink. I like that Mellel can sync with my iPad as well. I’ve also kept Nisus Writer Pro around in case I need a quick RTF editor since I’ve spent enough time with it. Pages is still on the back burner for page layout. NeoOffice is gone. I went ahead and invested in a perpetual license for Office/Word when it was on sale for $40 so if the subscription version ever goes awry again, I’ll have a perpetual license backup I can activate. I also keep Scrivener and Ulysses around for other writing projects.

 

During all of this time, I spent a year taking a keyboarding and computer applications course and spent quality time working across multiple word processors in a short period of time where I literally became “word processor agnostic”. I can pretty much open any word processor now and find my way around it without any major issues or learning curve. I’ve spent so much time learning different ones, that I can easily be “at home” in any one. 

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

By the way, if I run into any future critical issues with Word for Mac, I may bring it up here in this forum (if I run into anything, it would only be once in a blue moon). Knowing there are Accordance users who use Word for Mac such as @Michel Gilbert willing to try to assist is refreshing. It helps to know I’m not completely on my own when using Word for Mac.

[Frank Jones]

I have been using Mellel exclusively for the past week. I had a lifetime subscription having tried it years ago. To potentially solve the obscure file format, once the document is essentially finished I have made a PDF of the Mellel file (same name, same directory). Locating all its power is taking some time but I am thoroughly enjoying it. At this point, I am expecting to continue its long term usage. I wish I could put a superscript icon in the toolbar since I use that formatting function every day.

 

Back in my msdos days, I used (and loved) Nota Bene. I went from Nota Bene to Word 6. I lost confidence that Nota Bene could make the transition to windows (and now, a full Mac program). Word was inconsistent and flakey for me (at least several years ago) and I moved to Pages.

 

Using Mellel "feels" like I have all that academic power Nota Bene possessed, since I use Bookends for bibliography. Really appreciated this thread which got me thinking on using Mellel again.

[A.D. Riddle]

Frank,

 

Can you create a superscript Character style, and then assign a keyboard shortcut to it? That would be faster than a toolbar icon.

 

For what it's worth, I still find MS Word is not as "fun" as Mellel when composing a document with both Latin and Arabic scripts, along with all the various numerals and punctuation.

 

A.D.

[Frank Jones]

6 hours ago, A.D. Riddle said:

Frank,

 

Can you create a superscript Character style, and then assign a keyboard shortcut to it? That would be faster than a toolbar icon.

 

For what it's worth, I still find MS Word is not as "fun" as Mellel when composing a document with both Latin and Arabic scripts, along with all the various numerals and punctuation.

 

A.D.

I will have to take a look at this, assigning a keyboard shortcut. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Donald Cobb]

9 hours ago, A.D. Riddle said:

Frank,

 

Can you create a superscript Character style, and then assign a keyboard shortcut to it? That would be faster than a toolbar icon.

 

For what it's worth, I still find MS Word is not as "fun" as Mellel when composing a document with both Latin and Arabic scripts, along with all the various numerals and punctuation.

 

A.D.

 

You can also create a style in the characters palette. That basically amounts to having an icon in the toolbar. I have my most frequent characters there (i.e., sbl Greek, 12 point superscript, 10 point superscript for notes, etc.). The only glitch with a character shortcut is that it also dictates your character size. So if you're using the function with your notes as well, you'll need one for each size.

[A.D. Riddle]

You can assign a keyboard shortcut to a character style.

 

A.D.