Mellel 2.0 and many more details about the new version, about one feature that did not make it into this release, the wondrous Mellel-Bookends deal, price changes and no "what's going on"... It's too hot and humid. Sorry

Table of Contents:

Mellel News:

• Mellel 2.0: what's in the new version
• The one left out
• Mellel's price changing
• Mellel and Bookends, together again
• How2Date online with Mellel
  
  

Mellel News

Mellel 2.0: what's in the new version -- Enough with the teasing -- it's time to get to the nitty-gritty of Mellel 2.0.

First thing's first, dates: We plan to start beta testing Mellel 2.0 by the end of September. Beta testing for Mellel usually lasts around three to four weeks, so the final release is planned for October, but may slide into the first days of November. As you'll see, there's lots of features to test.

To the features themselves:

Sections: Mellel 2.0 will introduce a new concept of "sections" -- a division within the document that can span over one paragraph or more and can be created anywhere in the document. For an example of how sections will look, take a look at the screen picture here, showing a page with four sections (the colours are ugly on purpose, to illustrate the different sections).

• Click here to see

Columns: Mellel 2.0 will also support columns. The support will include support for creating any number of columns in a section, setting the gutter width, line, weight and colour, balancing columns, background colour and some interesting additions like the space above and below the gutter line (if you want the gutter line be shorter), and space above the columns, which helps to separate sections spatially more nicely.
The example screen shot below, showing a page with three columns (using three languages going in several directions), then 8 columns (for Chinese), and then one column is again ugly, but illustrate some of the capabilities of Mellel's columns.

• Click here to see

RTF extended support: An eagerly anticipated feature in Mellel is the great improvement in RTF export and import support. Mellel 2.0 will support headers and footers, images and all the other options added to Mellel 2.0 such as columns and sections.

Hyphenation: One of the most exciting new features in Mellel 2.0 is the support for hyphenation, which to the best of our knowledge will probably exceed that in any other word processor.
The hyphenation feature in Mellel will support defining minimum word length for hyphenation, minimum characters before and after a hyphen, hyphenation limit (how many lines in a row will be hyphenated) and hyphenation zone (more/less hyphenating).
The hyphenation itself is performed using special hyphenation dictionaries, which may include hyphenation "rules" for one or more languages. A special user dictionary will also be available (in the Preferences).
Hyphenation in Mellel will be a paragraph style attribute. This means that you will be able to use several hyphenation dictionaries in one document, and apply different hyphenation rules to different parts of the document. For example, you could use the US English dictionary with regular body text, apply a different and more lax dictionary to text in columns, and use a Cyrillic, French, German or Basque dictionary with text in those languages.

Hyphenation Lab: Such versatile dictionaries need to be created, of course, and this is where the fun begins. Mellel's Hyphenation Lab -- a free tool from RedleX -- will allow you to create and modify any hyphenation dictionary, test the results and create your own customised dictionaries. Better still, since Mellel's Hyphenation Lab supports the hyphenation patterns format of TeX, you could move any dictionary you've created there to Mellel in a matter of minutes.

Keep with: The Keep with option in Mellel 2.0 allows you to set if and how many lines will be kept with the current paragraph. This option is typically used to prevent cases where a heading appears orphaned at the bottom of a page, without any lines of body text following it. The main difference between the implementation in Mellel and other word processors is that Mellel will allow you to set the number of lines you want to keep with.

Keep lines together: This option (often called "Widows and Orphans control") will allow you to prevent situations where the first or last line in a paragraph is is left at the top or bottom of a page. The option is exists in word processors in a rudimentary form -- namely, you can turn this option on and off, but can't control anything else. With Mellel, you can set this option to keep all the lines in a paragraph together, or set the number of lines to be kept together at the start or at the end of a paragraph.

Image height in columns: The basic rule for text in columns is that the text must be completely parallel. That is, line 6 in column 1 must be located exactly parallel to line 6 in column 2, 3, and so on. This is quite easy to maintain when you only have text in your document. The trouble start when the text includes images, because their height does not conform with the line spacing rules. Up until now, no word processor solved this problem satisfactorily. Some pretended there is no problem, others claimed that if you want to have images, you'd have to get used to living with strange gaps at the bottom of the pages, and others still claimed that solving such problems lies in the realm of page layout applications.
Not Mellel. Version 2.0 solves this problem easily and simply by adjusting the line spacing for an image to the line spacing in the surrounding text, so that the image height is defined as a multiplication of the line spacing. Problem solved.

Some colours: Mellel 2.0 enhances the colour options by supporting background colour in page and section styles and check and uncheck background colour in tables. This will allow many who would like to have a background colour to the page or reverse the text and background colour (e.g., writing in Yellow over a bluish background). Through setting the background colour differently than the page background colour you'd also be able to achieve some more delicate effects for setting off some special sections in the text, page margins, tables, and so on.

• Click here to see

Better GUI: Mellel 2.0 got a slight face lift, User Interface-wise. This is something better seen than described.

And much more: There are also numerous other enhancements, some minor, some more important but hidden "under the hood".

The one left out -- Yes, there's one feature that did not make it into Mellel 2.0 -- the move to the new XML-based file format was postponed to Mellel 2.1.
Our main consideration here was practical. To test how the new file format works, we need to make sure that every feature and option in Mellel is written and read well in XML. The problem was that all the new features in 2.0 -- some of which have serious implications on the structure of documents -- are themselves untested. Our conclusion was that we cannot do both at once. We needed to test all the additions and new features in Mellel first, before we can safely add them to the new XML file format.