Mellel's Newsletter #6 takes a last look at version 1.6.7 and sounds some bold statements. Also of interest are the extensive Mellel tips section and a short article about IT people and their war against Macs.
Table of Contents:
Mellel News:
What's going on:
Mellel Tips:
Mellel News
Mellel 1.6.7 is dead, long live 1.7 -- Version 1.6.7 was quite a successful adventure. It was our first foray into the realm of application collaboration -- working with Sonny Software and Bookends -- and the experience, not to mention the results, was so good we're quite anxious to do it again.
For those of you who did not get Newsletter #5: two months ago we've teamed up with Sonny Software, the maker of the excellent reference manager Bookends, to provide citations and bibliography functionality in Mellel.
In less than a month we were through and the results were quite amazing -- offering extensive support for citation and bibliography entry, editing, scanning and generating, citations list and much more.
With Mellel 1.6.7 now in the past tense, we're hard at work on Mellel 1.7. I would not tire you reiterating our plans for this version but, judging by what we have so far you can should carefully prepare to being blown away. Yes, it really is that great.
Mellel in the News -- Mellel was mentioned quite a few times in the press recently.
- MacLegal, a review site, gave Mellel 4.5 out of 5 rating ("Almost Perfect").
- PCtoMac, a "Switchers" site gave Mellel a favourable review, concluding: "Mellel... does an admirable job of creating documents with a well thought out interface and a good suite of tools available to the user"
- Frédéric Lagrange from MacGeneration (French) have mentioned Mellel favourably in a review about Arabic in Panther (La Panthère d’Arabie)
- And finally, so not to seem we're all just about self-glorification, an extensive and thoughtful review by Fran Iglesias in the Spanish Macintec reviews Mellel favourably but comments about some of deficiencies too.
More Localisation, Anyone? -- Thanks to your wonderful to our request for localisations with Newsletter #5 we now have a brand new Japanese and Esperanto localisations. But we want more. Please, if you have the experience, time or inclination, contact us and we'll be very glad to help you add your language to Mellel's growing list of localisation. We currently offer localisations for: Dutch, English, Esperanto, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Romanian, Spanish and Swedish.
The initial localisation requires several hours of work translating text files (actual time depends on how fast you can type). Each version of Mellel requires some additional translation of text strings which usually takes several minutes to complete. The localisation is done in a text editor and do not require any programming knowledge. For more details -- write to us at redlex@redlers.com.
What's Going On
IT Hate Mac -- Why aren't Macs popular in organisations? Anyone working in a large organisation -- be it a university, a college or a corporation -- will be quick to retort: IT hate Macs. They sometimes have very intricate reasoning for that hate, like the "standardisation" totem, the claim that Macs are too expensive, efficiency (in the IT sense, meaning: ugly is more efficient), performance and so on. However, when pushed against the wall and forced to reason their hate with complete honesty their answer will most likely be: we hate Macs because we want to keep our jobs.
This widely known but rarely recognised truth was the topic of one of Robert X. Cringely's latest columns in his popular column "The Pulpit". "Macintoshes are comparable in performance to Windows or Linux machines," Wrote Cringely. They "aren't dramatically more expensive to buy and on a Total Cost of Ownership basis they are probably cheaper... [and] they are easier to use, especially on a network. So what's the problem?
"I used to think it came down to nerd ego.," he confesses. "Macs were easy to use, so they didn't get the respect of nerds who measured their testosterone levels by how fluently they could navigate a command line interface." But that wasn't it, he concludes. The truth is much simpler: "Macs threaten the livelihood of IT staffs. If you recommend purchasing a computer that requires only half the support of the machine it is replacing, aren't you putting your job in danger? Exactly.
"Ideally, the IT department ought to recommend the best computer for the job, but more often than not, they recommend the best computer for the IT department's job." Linux OS based computers, on the other hand, are increasingly popular with IT-heads. Apart from the real or imaginary advantages Linux has over Windows the more fundamental reason for its IT-success when compared with the Mac boils down to what Cringely terms "the IT Department Full Employment Act." It takes "just as many nerds to support 100 Linux boxes as 100 Windows boxes, yet Linux boxes are cheaper and can support more users. The organization is better off while the IT department is unscathed and unchallenged."
"I am not claiming that every organization should throw out its PCs and replace them with Macs," he concludes, "but the fact that more Macs don't make it into server racks is based on CIO self-interest.... Macs reduce IT head count while Linux probably increases IT head count, simple as that."
Richard Bockman of The St. Petersburg Times reports about a typical IT-Hate-Mac case in the Pinellas school district. "Superintendent Howard Hinesley and other top administrators had decided to take the district, which has two Macs for every one Windows-based personal computer, to PCs exclusively."
The many behind this change was Al Swinyard, assistant superintendent for management information systems. That is, the IT person. To him the choice was simple. "did not work up any numbers. Why do that? This decision was 'intuitive,' a no-brainer." When pressed for a more reasoned rationale for the changed he said the choice was: "Do we use the system that 97 percent of the world is using, or are we going to be the only large organization in the world that's 100 percent Mac?"
Lou Zulli Jr., another IT person, who manages the Center for Advanced Technologies for Lakewood High School that went "pure PC" several years before reasoned his decision by claiming that Macs were deficient working in a network.
Are Macs really deficient in a network? In a private letter Zulli explains how he's reached this decision: back in the 90s the school looked for a cross-platform tool for their network. They chose Novell. As it turned out, Novell did not work well with the Macs. To solve this, they bought a third party client. It didn't work well either. Then, to fix those server and network problems they went to Windows. This worked just as badly. By that time, their outlay in software and hardware was greater than that of the Macs. So they voted to kick the Macs out.
Put simply, after 3 rounds of IT bonanza in terms of support and hiring stuff, they went to PC in order to avoid admitting that they simply did their job badly.
Mellel Tips
The Biblical Sword -- The SWORD is an open source project created to provide "a software platform for research and study of God and His Word." The project offers a software (Mac Sword) and a multitude of religious texts in various languages that are provided as "modules" that can be opened from a list within the application for reading, copying, comparing, and so on.
The modules are the real gem in SWORD. There are six categories of modules: Bible, including a large amount of bible versions in many languages; Commentaries which include several commentaries, mainly in English; Lexicons and Dictionaries; General books, with such entries as "The Pilgrim's Progress" and Josephus' complete works; daily devotions; glossaries and "Cult" (i.e., miscellaneous). The application is not free from bugs (e.g., it crashes with some texts), but that is quite expected from a software in its early stages. The list of sources is a bit cryptic, but that should trouble mainly those obsessive enough to download all 162 texts there. Warmly recommended (thanks to Charly Avital who pointed us to this site).
Get Your Styles in Order -- Charles Maurer have created a page explaining in great detail (and accompanied by a PDF file) what are the best fonts to be used in character styles. The page below also includes a character styles file you can install into Mellel's Application Support folder to be used as your default styles. The page also contains some very interesting information about the history of the recommended fonts.
If you would like to examine the styles without giving up on your existing styles do the following:
- Install the styles and activate them as the default styles (as explained in the note accompanying the styles.
- Create a document using all those styles and save it.
- Quit Mellel and remove the new character styles file and re-install (or re-name, as suggested) the old one.
- Open the document you've created and turn the temporary document styles into global styles by placing the insertion point inside text using that style and choosing Character > Create New Character Style...
Speaking your language -- Mellel now includes 11 different localisations, including all-new Esperanto and Japanese localisations. All the localisations are included in Mellel's DMG file and can be activated and used very easily:
- Quit Mellel if it is running.
- Open System Preferences and go to the International Panel.
- In the Language tab, select your preferred language (at the top list) and drag it to the top of the language list. If this language is missing from the list, click the "Edit..." button and in the dropping sheet check the desired language.
