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Typinator examples7/21/2023 If you are not an academic, not a professional writer and if you like the additional DTP and layout abilities of Pages, then there is nothing wrong with using Pages. In Nisus it takes 1 second!Īpple Pages is not for academics. Download, for example, Anna Karenina from Project Gutenberg and measure the time how long it takes to transform the chapters into AutoTitles. Nisus Writer Pro excels when it comes to *editing* primary AND secondary documents. Thus you can create AutoTitles as you go along. Mellel is good for structuring *primary* documents, and by that I mean documents that you yourself create from scratch. I understand your frustration, but bear in mind that it all depends on WHAT you intend to do. I guess I should stop buying them and go to Pages I begin to feel frustrated with all those Word processor. Patrick, could you give examples of when Nisus is unstable? I have not noticed that. I'm just saying that the learning curve is steep and I wouldn't recommend it to someone who has just started with his or her PhD and has a limited and rigid time schedule. Idiosyncratic implementation of many core features require an in-debt study of the manual, without which you will feel lost in Mellel. Nothing could be more far from the truth. (3) A recurrent theme in the testimonials is the apparent ease of use. The examples I mentioned were all related to the find and replace box. (2) As far as stability is concerned, I have already given examples here in the forum of operations that will make Mellel crash. It's possible though that Hebrew and some extinct ancient Near East languages are better supported by Mellel, I don't have the qualification to make a judgement on that because I don't write in those languages. Mellel has issues with cocoAspelt, in Nisus it works perfectly. Fact is, it's much easier and more straightforward to do this in Nisus. The arguments brought forward in favor of Mellel (see for example the testimonials on YouTube) do not bear close scrutiny: (1) it's certainly not easier to combine many different languages in one document with Mellel than in Nisus. Nisus, on the contrary, can turn such text instantly into headings with appropriate levels and thus make them visible in the Navigator (= Outline in Mellel.) No macros. You must do it manually … one by one, one after the other. If such a document has all headings written in UPPERCASE (or in blue, or in italics… or whatever), there is no way to select all parts in one go and then turn them into AutoTitles. This, for example, makes it difficult to edit documents that you have not created yourself or you have downloaded from the Internet. Just three, random examples: no multipart selection, also called “noncontiguous selection”. For me, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. This is about everything I can think of in favor of Mellel, apart from the overall appealing interface, that is. It's nice to have them, but for scholarly papers and books in the humanities such embellishments are not needed. Mellel has a few extra typographical frills when it comes to creating character styles. ![]() One can also focus on certain parts of the outline and hide others that are momentarily not needed. The user can also enter comments into bookmarks, so called "Remarks" in Mellel's parlance, which can be made visible in the Outline, but are not printed. ![]() ![]() The strength of Mellel lies indeed in the Outline which allows the user to view (colored) bookmarks and AutoTitles simultaneously (Nisus can't do that). Is the main quality of Mellel just for structuring a book and be confident with voluminous documents? I am not sure I am willing to spend so much time on learning the way this app works. Scrivener and Ulysses are easier to get started with and also powerful in their own ways and might be more suited to these use scenarios. I tend to agree that the learning curve for Mellel is steep, and I'm not sure I would recommend it to someone whose work involved producing shorter pieces of text or who writes primarily for online publication. Mellel's capabilities in cross-referencing, auto-titling and indexing are also pretty extraordinary. I don't think there is anything else out there to compare with Mellel's integration with Bookends for dealing with references. To answer Patrick's point, yes, I think the main strength of Mellel is that it's powerful enough to handle writing long, structured documents such as doctoral dissertations or academic books. I haven't used the glossaries feature of Nisus, but perhaps this can be replicated in Typinator? I am just using Typinator as an auto-correct tool, but I believe that it's capable of much more. For what it's worth, I'm using Typinator with Mellel and am happy with the way they work together.
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