78 replies to this topic

[jpkang]

For what it's worth, Mariner Write does not support right-to-left entry (see under Language Support) and doesn't handle Unicode Hebrew properly.

J. P.

[Harry Hoffner]

Oh, Mellel every time. It's language handling is superb and being Israeli it does Hebrew very well. It's integration with bibliographic software like bookends is well done and the outlining is superb. I'm using it for a 80,000 thesis and it has proved excellent.

I found Word to be too bloated, kept telling me what to do, was slow and buggy! Mellel is also a fraction of the price.

I haven't used Nisus (others seem to say it's good), but I found Pages too limited.

If all you want is a Mac Word processor that does the biblical fonts (with or without the canitllation) and lets you do simple texts like creating User Tools or User Notes, then the Mellel suggestion has merit. If you ever want to do serious research in biblical studies and write longish articles or book manuscripts, you will like me find Mellel off-putting because the developer stubbornly refuses to make dynamic cross-references a priority in features to be added. I cannot imagine doing serious article or book creation without cross-reference ability, which of course MS Word has, and the old Apple Works did. To my knowledge Pages has sacrificed many of these goodies in order to cater to the people creating web pages, videos, blogs, podcasts, movies and other cool things Steve Jobs is into that have nothing to do with writing books and long articles.

[Manfred]

Hi.

Why not use LaTeX to write books and articles?
TeX is a typesetting system and available on almost all platforms out there.
It is free, has lots of support, can deal with Greek and Hebrew fonts, can link text internally and externally.
Ok, it is no WYSIWYG and you have to learn the LaTeX language.
But once learned, you can do really nice things with it.

This is the main LaTeX site:
http://www.latex-project.org


Best regards,
Manfred

[autopistis]

Why not use LaTeX to write books and articles?
<SNIP>
But once learned, you can do really nice things with it.
Manfred

Manfred, there would have to be some absolutely amazing things it could do to tear folks away from WYSIWYG software.

[Gregory Dietrich]

Hi.

Why not use LaTeX to write books and articles?
TeX is a typesetting system and available on almost all platforms out there.
It is free, has lots of support, can deal with Greek and Hebrew fonts, can link text internally and externally.
Ok, it is no WYSIWYG and you have to learn the LaTeX language.
But once learned, you can do really nice things with it.

This is the main LaTeX site:
http://www.latex-project.org


Best regards,
Manfred

O.K., so it is free...but I checked it out and it looks like the most ancient way of typing. I'll stick with Nisus, it is much nicer.

[Manfred]

Well. Your choise. It may look ancient. But is isn't. And even if it would be ancient, the modern things are not always the better.

I have gotten used to it, wrote my diploma with it and I'm writing letters and almost all other stuff with it.
Wouldn't get rid of it...


regards,
Manfred

[ross.strader]

Has anyone used CopyWrite with Accordance? How does it handle right to left? And then how does it behave when it exports to RTF?

Just checking it out online, I like the project mgmt. concept.

Thanks,
Ross

Edited by ross.strader, 05 July 2006 - 12:05 AM.

[chaplanger]

Has anyone used OpenOffice -- I see that on their website (http://www.openoffic...ys_reqs_20.html) that they have the following specs listed as requirements: Mac OS X (X11)

* Power Mac G3 400Mhz or higher
* Mac OS X 10.3.x (10.3.5 recommended), Mac OS X 10.4.x
* 256Mbytes RAM
* 350Mbytes available disk space
* X11 required. Available for OS X 10.3 on Apple.com here and for OS X 10.4 on the OS X install disc. The instructions for Tiger users are here.
* 800 x 600 or higher resolution with 16.7 Million colours


What is your experience, if any with this program on the OS X platform?

Currently I am running a WINTEL machine utilizing the emulator to run Accordance, but looking very seriously at making the jump to the MACINTEL world.

[Lorinda H. M. Hoover]

I don't have any experience with Open Office, but I use NeoOffice, which is a different Mac port of Open Office. Open Office has to run using the X11 windowing system. (Don't ask me to explain X11, because I really don't understand it). NeoOffice runs more natively on the Mac. The aim of the NeoOffice project is to adapt Open Office code to create "An office experience that feels like any other application on your Mac."

The quote is from Neo's wiki: NeoWiki You can find more information about the program there.

Most of my experience with NeoOffice is with Writer (the word processor). I'm still learning it's ins and outs, and sometimes struggle to figure out how to do things, but there is a fairly active support forum, and I'm willing to put up with some frustration to avoid paying big bucks for Microsoft Office. I hope that helps.

From the NeoOffice download page:

To install and run NeoOffice, you must have the following:

* Mac OS X 10.3 or higher
* 384 MB of memory
* 400 MB of free disk space

Edited by Lorinda H. M. Hoover, 29 August 2006 - 01:34 PM.

[Joe Weaks]

I bought Mellel, but have never used it. I use Word (I don't do much Hebrew). I like it. But now I hate it under Rosetta. But Mellel is not scriptable, so is worthless to me. However, it has been the only fully-fully supported option for alot of Hebrew work.

NeoOffice 2.0 has just now made the beta version 3 available. The features comparison chart says:
"Support for text entry in non-Roman scripts including South Asian, East Asian, right-to-left and complex text layout scripts."
And it includes Hebrew on its list of these supported languages, so it is definitely worth a look.
NeoOffice Feature Comparison

[danzac]

I bought Mellel, but have never used it. I use Word (I don't do much Hebrew). I like it. But now I hate it under Rosetta. But Mellel is not scriptable, so is worthless to me. However, it has been the only fully-fully supported option for alot of Hebrew work.

Joe, what are you doing with Word that scriptability is such a major issue?

I'm a Mellel boy myself, and definitely looking forward to their next release. Hello cross-references!!

[Joe Weaks]

Sorry for slow response.
Right now, I'm working on a project that dynamically creates tables based on scripture references. I have scripts which pull the texts from Accordance and format and paste them into the tables in Word. Also, I create lists of search strings, and then run those via script in Accordance and then again push the resulting content into documents.
With VB script and Applescript of Word 2004, the notion of being strapped by Mellel's lack in this department would feel like having to breath through a wet pillow case. (I've no idea where that simile came from.)
Scripting is just the way I think. I can't help it. Sorry.
I wish more folks could make use the powerful functionality possible in using scripts in their daily routine, even with Accordance. I wish I could make more scripts available publically but it takes sooo much time to get something ready to work on other people's computer and account for all the variables involved.

[danzac]

Thanks for the response. There are some Mellel users who desire scriptability as well. You should voice your opinion on the Mellel forum poll in the "Nitty and Gritty" Mellel forum.

[Lorinda H. M. Hoover]

FWIW, NeoOffice 2.1 will include support for VBA..just in Calc at first, but I think the hope is that eventually it will cover a wider range of VBA support. You can find more info here

[Joe Weaks]

FWIW, NeoOffice 2.1 will include support for VBA.

I would think this is mostly a dead end. Since Word 2008 for Mac will abandon VBA, it will have no place on a Mac platform. Even in offices like mine will soon be, where most are on pc's running Latest office but the lone office with a Mac will be running Open Office or NeoOffice, it's hard to imagine that deployed VB Script will run equally on both. Perhaps forms might, at least.
The MacBU did a fantastic job of Applescript implementation with Word 2004, and that yummy goodness will only continue in Word 2008.

[Marco V. Fabbri]

I would think this is mostly a dead end. Since Word 2008 for Mac will abandon VBA, it will have no place on a Mac platform.

Joe,

what do VB and VBA stand for? Sorry for my ignorance.

As about Mellel, I share Danny's expectation for cross-references. It's now the developer's priority, and they have been working on it for a few months. They usually try to avoid just adding a new feature, that might conflict with others. They try to integrate it fully within the the app.
I hope we will have soon something excellent.

Marco

[Eoin]

what do VB and VBA stand for? Sorry for my ignorance.

Visual Basic / Visual Basic for Applications

[Joe Weaks]

Joe,
what do VB and VBA stand for? Sorry for my ignorance.

Marco,
In the context of using Visual Basic (for Applications) with Microsoft Word, you can just think of it as the integrated scripting language used in Micro$oft office applications.

I'm not certain I know precisely what y'all are talking about when you pine for "cross-references" in Mellel.

[Marco V. Fabbri]

I'm not certain I know precisely what y'all are talking about when you pine for "cross-references" in Mellel.

Joe,

thank you for your explanations.

About cross-referencing in Mellel: along with indexing, dynamic cross-referencing is the most important addition to Mellel 2.2, whichshould be released within a month.

There is a detailed topic in the Mellel forum, subforum "The Nitty and the Gritty". You can read about it at http://forum.redlers...6...asc&start=0

It looks like very good news to all Mellel users who need to write a book.

Marco

[danzac]

Yes, crossreferencing is a godsend. whenever you have those little footnotes that says "see note # below" you won't have to go through and change when you edit and delete footnotes.