Mellel's Newsletter #3 contains some information about Mellel 1.6, a summary of the road covered by mellel up to now and a somewhat irresolute roadmap for the future. Further down we touch some of the new things Apple introduced this months and, to wrap things up, a tip for Mellel and some nasty and unjustified critique of some writer aids
Table of Contents:
Mellel News:
What's going on:
Mellel Tips:
Mellel News
Mellel 1.6 is here -- After the longest pregnancy in Mellel's short history, Mellel 1.6 is finally here. All the details about this release can be read in our press release. Also note that we will soon (in a couple of days) release a small update, 1.6.01, which will include several bug fixes and some minor improvements and also several language versions.
Mellel's Itinerary -- Version 1.6 marks the completion of the implementation of at least rudimentary support for all major writing systems and languages. It is a good a time as any to take a look into our plans for the future of Mellel.
There are four important areas in which we intend to significantly enhance Mellel's capabilities: book and long-documents features, graphic related options, search capabilities, and import/export options. Our plan is to complete all the major options in those areas by year's end or shortly thereafter.
- Book and Long-Documents: The options here will include adding some missing options like section numbering (1.1, 1.1.a, etc.), numbered lists, table of contents, index, cross-reference, and so on. In addition, we intend to introduce several tools that will offer some outlining and outline navigation capabilities within a document.
- Graphic Related: Here we intend to offer a much more extensive control of images (positioning, resizing, flipping, rotating, etc.), support for columns (and eventually text flow around images) and much more flexible and extensive page style control.
- Search: This will mainly consist of Regular Expressions support and some important additions to our current Find options.
- Import/Export: Well, MS Word document import, for one. And more importantly, a much more extensive RTF support.
- And extras...: In addition to the above, we still have a lot of catching up and filling in of gaps, especially when it comes to enhancing our character and paragraph styles and improved typography.
What's Going On
The G5 "Scandal" -- Never forget who you're talking to -- this is the bitter lesson Apple can draw from its G5 launch debacle.
On June 23rd, during the keynote for its developers convention (WWDC) Apple displayed its new processor, the G5 (AKA IBM 970). The new processor is a huge leap forward for Apple in terms of speed and memory -- giving a much needed shot in the arm to its flagging high-end line of models, especially in areas like science, multimedia, 3D, image-editing, video and music. Good news throughout, only Apple was not satisfied with a mere huge-leap-forward and claimed that the G5 also transforms the Mac into "World’s Fastest Personal Computer." This manifestation of Apple's innate tendency to describe every little step as revolutionary did not go well with some of its eager customers.
One of those loyal Mac users, a shareware author going by the name SPL, was quick to claim that Apple's tests to prove its claim were "rigged" and that Apple deliberately "cheated" in the tests. This claim was cited extensively and uncritically by many computer magazines and news sites. Apple countered his claims, unofficially, in an interview of Greg Joswiak (VP of hardware marketing at Apple) for SlashDot, SPL counterclaimed and in the meantime the new G5 launch got completely marred.
I do not aim to judge if SPL's claims are correct or not. It seems as if he's got many things wrong and did not thoroughly understand some of the issues involved. Apple's grandiose claim isn't too convincing either, especially considering the slippery use of the term "personal computer."
But this is not really the point. It really doesn't matter if Apple rigged the tests because every micro-processor producer repeatedly rigged and is rigging its own tests to the point that all those test are basically meaningless.
Intel (producer of the x86 line of processors used in PCs) was caught with her hand in the tests jar several times and continually tune its processors to perform well on specifically those tasks tested in the SPEC checks. Card producers ATI and Nvidia did the same (cards tuned to certain checks) and AMD, Intel's biggest competitor, simply ditched the numbering scheme based on speed for a misleading line of processors named after their "supposed" speed. As a matter of fact, Apple was unusually candid when it clearly stated that it had commissioned the tests -- Intel usually use "independent" testers it secretly fund -- and even offered an extensive report which included even some less flattering results.
The point of the matter is that Apple is not measured by the same scales other companies are measured. 26 years after its establishment, Mac users are still shocked and owed when it turns out the Apple claimed something that is short of the absolute truth, let alone a blatant lie. PC users expect to be lied to by Intel or Microsoft (To be sure, their expectations are only rarely failed). Mac users expect to hear the truth from Apple.
Mellel Tips
Manage your shortcuts -- Several Mellel users have complained about version 1.6 taking away their favourite shortcut (Cmd+=) for launching Thesauruses like WordNet and OmniDictionary in favour of the Zoom-In option. Well, there's a cure to that in the genteel form of Service Manager. Still in beta (and thus unfit for those who cannot bear the slings and arrows outrageous fortune) this System Preferences addition enables you to change the shortcut to launching services.
Checking up the competition -- Well, not exactly competition, but still in the general realm of word processing is the category of "writing" applications -- applications intended for authors, helping them to organise their characters plot and sometimes even output them to print.
This relatively forgotten area of word processing on the Mac was ruled in recent years by Z-Write. Its slow update pace have opened the gate to a flood of new, Mac OS X based applications, all released or updated within the last few months.
Ulysses is a very promising new author-aid coming from Germany. It does not attempt to moonlight as a typesetter but focuses on writing, offering option to categorise the pieces of text by label (character, concept, plot, etc.) and status (draft, final, revised, done). You can also add notes, order items by type, preview text and notes and so on. The icon, design and main window seem well thought out and so is the help. The product does need to shave a little with some real user experience razors as some concepts seem rather crude, and there is certainly a need for some bug-fixing (word count updates, tabs when there are many chapters, and so on). Still, this is a very promising version 1.0. (Comment: you cannot save or export with an unregistered version).
BookWorm is a veteran author aid for the Mac OS but relatively new to the X arena. Written by a lively Brit called Colin Own. Bookworm is written in RealBasic, haven to all the not so maven in programming. Here, this biased view is proven correct. The application offers an option to create a list of characters, chapter notes, chapters, and so on but none of those lovely options can be really used. Bookworm is so shaky on its legs, so trembling with every keystroke, so slow after even two or three lines of text that any thought of basing your next great Jesuit novel quickly evaporates.
Manuscript by a not very talkative anonymous Irish writer got one thing right: the text whilst writing is big and very readable. Unfortunately, this is about it. This seems harsh, but true to my experience with this software. I couldn't get anything to work properly -- could not get the side bar to open because I could not insert a sub category, remarks meant to reside by the side of the text got erased when I scrolled down, styling I've made to text got lost every time I asked to format text, etc. At this point, Manuscript seems very amateurish.
MacJournal is an highly acclaimed freeware journaling application by Dan Schimpf from the Old Michigan U of A. As freeware, MacJournal have very modest aims at heart. Namely, to write a daily journal. Still, due to the fact that you can open several journals, each with named entries, one can easily turn MacJournal into a full fledged writing aid. The application offers a journals and entries drawers, ruler, control over text alignment, font, and so on (within TextEdit limits). Works as promised and worth a try.
Z-Write by Mark Zeedar is a fairly mature writing aid wrapping its fairly simple concept (subject on the left, content on the right) with an extensive set of features, including sections, styling options, glossary, entry options, and so on. This wealth of options seem to also indicate some sort of distress. Developed in RealBasic, there is a feeling that Zeedar didn't know how to change or evolve the basic concept and turned to adding more and more buttons and options without really enhancing the core functionality. The fact that Z-Write hasn't been updated for over three years, apart from bug fixes, probably attests to the fact that the author "hit the wall" of his abilities to change the product and, well, gave it up. This is a pity, because Z-Write does have some potential. Its premature departure leaves, in the words of Ulysses creators, a huge (unexploited) gap.
