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| Note: This is an old newsletter. Some of the links may not lead to where they're supposed to lead. |
Mellel 1.8.2, our wonderful Holidays offer, Mellel's new forum, Selling to china and the usual bungled up tips section
Table of Contents:
Mellel News:
What's going on:
Mellel Tips:
Mellel News
Mellel 1.8.2 is out -- What do you do when you have tens of bug fixes, many small improvements, an Hungarian localisation and the Holidays are drawing near? You've guessed it: you release a small update. That's Mellel 1.8.2 for you.
What's in the update:
- OpenType: Improved behaviour with some misbehaving fonts, improved superscript/superior and stylistic alternate implementation, and improved behaviour with Arabic features and right-to-left.
- RTF improvements: improved import behaviour, mainly with the nifty little bugs of RTF files created by MS Word.
- Font compatibility: Improved behaviour with fonts like Arial Unicode MS, Hiragino fonts, etc., and fixed a bug that caused a hang in some rare circumstances with some fonts.
- General: Fixed a bug with re-opening files not at 100% zoom, improved line-breaking behaviour with Japanese Kana chars, improves speed of drawing format elements in the Edit numbering flows sheet, and fixed a right-to-left text dragging bug.
- Hungarian localisation: Is here.
Holidays discounts are here again -- In the great Mellel tradition (1 year and still going strong!), when the holidays come, our prices drop. From now until December 25 we lower Mellel's price from 17% to 42% across the board:
- Mellel Regular: 29$ US (25% discount from 39$)
- Mellel Educational (student/scholar price): 23$ US (42% discount from 39$)
- Mellel 5 Pack: 49$ (17% down from 59$).
The New Forum -- We're happy and proud to announce the ceremonial opening of the totally new and refurbished Mellel forum... Ah, er, well, I did not mean to sound that pompous. What I meant to say was that for those of you who did not like the Yahoo(tm) forum, there's another option. The forum system is based on the "phpbb" system. That is, it is totally unique in being exactly like any other Mac forum around. OK, enough self-bashing. Go and enjoy it.
We're on file -- Updated -- Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia, have added yet another two language versions to Mellel (each a bit different, of course) in German and Hebrew.
And a few words about 1.9 -- The work on new versions never stops, of course. Concurrently with 1.8.2 we've been hard at work on Mellel 1.9. I wish I could be more specific with details and schedule, but our chief developer (AKA CTO) have been most specific in his threats. So, as CMM (Chief Coffee Maker) I can tell you just the following: upping the version number to 1.9 is doing this one gross injustice. 2.0 or 3.0 would be more appropriate. There will be some very interesting developments in several areas, including styles, Typography, GUI, and some very-very interesting developments in the "ease of use" area.
What's Going On
Selling to China -- Sometimes selling for less is the way to sell for more. IBM has recently announced that it has signed a deal to sell its PC group (the one that makes personal computers) to the Chinese firm Lenovo. The reasons given were simple: making personal computers is a losing business for IBM and, just as important, to gain a stronger foothold in China.
IBM's CEO, Sam Palmisano, wants to "become ingrained in [the Chinese government] agenda." That is, he hopes that IBM's stake in Lenovo will allow it to directly profit from any future government deals Lenovo makes and indirectly to put IBM on a better footing competing for server and services contract issued by or influenced by the Chinese government.
It remains to be seen if with its Lenovo deal IBM has betted on the right horse, but it is reasonable to think that it betted on the right race. China developed in recent years as a cheap sub-contractor for manufacturing electronic equipment, a position held in the past by Japan and Hong Kong. It makes sense to speculate that in years to come, as it makes riches producing for others, it will also develop as a major market of buying consumers. IBM wants to be there when this happens and the only way it can be there then is by "Chinificating" itself, getting on the agenda.
IBM's departure from the PC market also marks the sorry situation this market is in today. It is clear that the fact that each version of Windows seems less a viable reason to buy a new computer the growth in the market declines and the the purchase cycle lengthen. In such a situation, the market seems less and less lucrative to companies with emphasis on quality. Cheap boxes seem to be the mot du jour. Apple is currently the only player in this market focusing on high-quality with a relatively high margin products. All the other quality computer makers are already out (IBM) or seem to be on their way out (HP).
Mellel Tips
Work tools galore -- Lots of updates to some favourite writing work tools this time. I'll refer you to this time to VersionTracker, so you could read the reviews before downloading.
- Accordance 6.4.1: the state of the art bible software.
- MacSword 1.1.3: Accordance is for the "pro" scholars. For the unpro masses, MacSword is an excellent tool for Bible version and exegesis resources.
- EndNote 8: An update to the veteran reference manager. At last, works with the competing word processor which-must-not-be-named, but nothing else is new. The reviews are harsh. While at it, you might want to keep an eye on Bookends, with version 8.0 drawing closer (Unicode at last, but much more). Also, take a look at Sente, which seems shows some promise.
- VoodooPad: A dream come true for all those who like to work a-la Wikipedia.
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