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Word processors (and text editors) are the basic computer software application for most users. However, very little revolutionary has happened in word processor concepts since the introduction of the original GUI word processor, Apple’s MacWrite, back in 1984. More power and features have been added (arguably to excess in Microsoft Word), but the basic functionality has remained pretty much the same for nearly two decades.

MacWrite morphed in two directions initially -- into MacWrite Pro and the word processing module of ClarisWorks - - then was reemerged into ClarisWorks/AppleWorks 6, and continues today in AppleWorks 6.

Microsoft Word started out is a nice, lean-but-powerful word processor for the Mac, and in its iterations up to version 5.1 is the only piece of Microsoft software I’ve ever really liked. Unfortunately, the Power PC transition brought with it the slow, ugly, Word 6 -- aka “Word for Windows for the Mac” -- which was superseded by the much nicer Word 98 and subsequent versions with their everything including the kitchen sink approach.

The competent, powerful, but understated WordPerfect showed promise for a while, especially during the Word 6 era, but Corel let the Mac version wither on the vine, so to speak, after they purchased WordPerfect from Novell, and eventually it was discontinued altogether.

Nisus Writer, which IMHO has managed to hit the sweet spot of truly useful power and functionality in a relatively small, nimble package, as opposed to Word’s wretched excess motif, is a truly innovative piece of software. Nisus is oriented toward users who are more interested in text manipulation than running a near desktop publishing program like Word, and it has also carved our a niche as a high-end Word processor that can run happily on less than cutting edge hardware. However, the classic Nisus Writer will not be ported to OS X, and the recent Nisus acquisition of the startup Okito composer OS X Cocoa word processor project means that Nisus Writer for OS X will be an entirely new and different application.

Mariner Write is a nice little word processor with lots of power and features that fills the niche once occupied by the late, lamented WriteNow all of the early-mid 90s. For a program as admirably small as it is, Mariner Write manages to pack an amazing amount of functionality.

The ThinkFree Write module of the bargain-priced ThinkFree Office suite reminds me all lot of the old WordPerfect, and also offers hassle - free file compatibility with Microsoft Word. If you need to work with MS Office files but don’t want to cough up f$400 for the Microsoft program, ThinkFree Office offers tremendous value had just $49.95 cents.

There are other once and future Mac word processors, like FullWrite, StarOffice, and the OS X open source OpenOffice and AbiWord projects. However, in terms of features and innovation in Mac word processing, not much as really changed since the mid 90s, when the essential feature sets of most of these products were pretty much established.

However, a news startup developer, Redlex, has set its sights on introducing some fresh concepts to the Mac word processor scene with its now Mellel word processor, which is still a beta, but progressing nicely.

Mellel is a word processor for Mac OS X that

Mellel contains all the essential ingredients you would expect to find in a Mac word processor -- enabling you to create, write, edit, print save, and export text documents.

With Mellel you can currently:
• Create rich documents with page, paragraph and character styles, headers and footers, document setup, and more
• Enjoy Mellel’s excellent support of the most advanced technologies OS X offers including services, spelling, and more
• Create lists and nesting lists
• Import and export files to and from RTF and plain text encoding, including Windows and OS 9 plain text files
• Type in Hebrew, and all Roman languages

Among the features promised for Mellel in the near future:
• Footnotes and Endnotes, including some truly unique innovations
• Long documents handling
• Table of contents
• Index
• Special auto replacements
• Image frames: rotate, resize, etc.
• Sophisticated tabs - and more tabs
• Import and Export of styles
• Turning on\off sets of styles
• Drag and Drop import of Text files

However, most or all of those features are available in other Mac word processors. Where Mellel’s developers hope to distinguish it is in formatting power and innovation.

RedleX was founded in Tel Aviv, Israel, in November 2001, by brothers Eyal Redler (programmer and musician, 30) and Ori Redler (journalist and writer, 38).

Ori says that like me, he has been a Nisus Writer fan for many years, and that for many tasks in OS 9 Nisus is the best and sometimes the only word processor that does the job properly, especially for multilingual tasks.

Mellel 1.0 was released on January 17, 2002. At that point it was just a weekend project. “Today,” Ori says, “Mellel is taking more and more of our time. We give it gladly, with the hope of being able -- soon -- to devote all our time to it.”

Ori says that the brothers’ main goal was to create a really modern word processor that will still maintain what they feel is the “real Mac spirit,” by re-examining old concepts and >>>>introducing new ones while trying to keep work as easy as possible.

“Starting from scratch we had the unique opportunity to examine all the old concepts of word processing with a fresh eye and try to decide what’s good and what’s not. We have created our own text engine (the only one outside Apple created for OS X) and this allowed us to create dozens of new and unique features. Some of them are not particularly hard to implement. It’s just that nobody thought about rethinking them; two quick “minor” examples -- minor because what I want to emphasize is the way we think about how an application should behave not to list Mellel’s features:

“ Live editing: with all the word processors I know of you change paragraph margins in stages: first you drag the margin and when you release the mouse button the margins are adjusted. This is very convenient for the programmer, but doesn’t let the user see exactly how the paragraph will look after the change. We thought this is silly and unintuitive and changed this. With Mellel, when you drag the margin (or a tab, or an indention) the paragraph changes WHILE you’re moving it. This is infinitely easier and very intuitive.

“ Tab location: with all word processors, again, when you want to place the tab precisely you usually have to double-click it and make the changes in a dialogue box changes. Again, this is designed for the comfort of the programmer, not the user. Our thought was: why not enable users to select a tab? We implemented this and now you can simply click a tab and type in the position and change the lead without leaving the document.”

Originally, the creators of MacWrite incorporated tabs to mimic typewriter tabs - small metal sliding clips that were used as “jump” points. When the typist pressed the tab key the typewriter skipped to the nearest tab location, ready for the next keystroke. The main advantage of the tab feature was to save the typist the hassle of pressing the space bar key multiple times to get to the next entry point.

Word processor developers added to this basic tab functionality extra convenience features, but the tabs themselves remained frozen in time. Jump point they were and jump point they stayed.

This did not suit most computer users and when word processors gradually gained features like tables, tabs gradually became a thing of the past, used mainly for table of contents, small tables, item lists, and the like.

Mellel introduces two completely new kinds of tabs which completely change the tab feature’s usability and ease of use and in addition, saves an enormous amount of time and effort.

I asked Ori to share his thoughts about where Mellel fits In The World Of Mac word processors.

“As excited as we are about Mellel we have no illusions about the size of the potential market for Mellel,” says Ori. “Most of the people have used and will continue to use MS Word. For many others a simple word processor like AppleWorks or even a text editor is good enough.

“To see what’s left you can examine other word processor companies active in the market. Their tiny size and tiny number will tell you all you need to about their market share.

“This seems like a grim outlook but there is a way to change this situation: targeted innovation. That is, to focus on a specific audience and offer them something they don’t have.

“This is what we intend to do. We intend to focus in the near future on the scholarly world and writers of papers, academic books, guidebooks and so on. In the following year we intend to introduce in Mellel several new and unique features that we feel might turn out to be “killer features” for those audiences. Alongside this, we plan to fill in the gaps in our feature list compared with other word processors so that at the end of 2003 we will be able to compare favourably with any word- processor for the Macintosh. It will be tough, but looking back on the long way we’ve already covered we think it’s possible.”

Let’s take a look at Mellel itself.

The Mellel document window area is divided into a print area (printable) framed by the print margin, and the page margins (non-printable).

The status area on the left end of the tool bar contains information about the page style and number, the current paragraph style and the current character style.

The page style status line indicates the page style, the page number (with the currently selected numbering unit) and the absolute page number viewed. The character and paragraph style indicators show the current style at the insertion point. When you select multiple styles in the document, the status area only name the first style in the selection.

You can quickly access the edit dialogue box for a style (either page, paragraph or character) by clicking the style’s name in the status area.

On the right end of the toolbar are four buttons

• The show\hide ruler toggles between showing and hiding the ruler.
• The Page button opens the page palette.
• The Paragraph button opens the paragraph palette.
• The Character button opens the character palette.

You can open the page, paragraph or character palettes by choosing Window > X Palette or using the keyboard shortcut associated with them. More on using these palettes below.

At the bottom of the document window is the zoom popup menu. The zoom option allows you to zoom in and out from a page. That is, to see it larger or smaller than it actually is. Zoom levels are from 10 percent to 1,600 percent. The zoom option does not change the actual size of items (such as text and pictures, only their appearance on the screen.

Alignment determines how a block of text (a paragraph, several paragraphs or the whole document) will be aligned inside a page. The direction of the text determine the order of the characters within the text.

A page style is a set of formatting attributes that determines how pages in your document will look. Those attributes in Mellel include a header and footer, and numbering units.

Styles are a fundamental element in Mellel. Every page a in Mellel document has a style. This style can be the default style (i.e., the one selected when you create a new document), a style you’ve created or any style you select from the page style menu, but every page in Mellel has a style.

There are two types of page styles: global style and document styles. Global style are styles you’ve created or styles that originally came with Mellel. Document styles are sets of formatting attributes that were not saved as styles. For example, if someone sends you a Mellel document which uses page styles that you do not have, Mellel will list those styles as document styles.

The Page Style menu allows you to easily apply or change a page style. Using this menu you can also always tell which page style you are currently viewing. The menu lists global style at the top, followed by document styles.

To apply a Page Style to a page, place the insertion point in a page and choose a style from the Page Style menu. You can always see what style you’re currently using by checking the status area in the tool bar, or by opening the Page Style menu. The name of the selected style will also appear in the page status area. When you highlight (select) several pages with several page styles only the first style selected will appear.

There are two ways to create a page style: by example (follow-me) and using the Edit Page Styles dialogue box. Those two ways are not mutually-exclusive. That is, you can change your mind and finish a style you’ve created by example with the Edit Page Styles dialogue box and vice versa.

At the current point in Mellel’s development, the ability to create headers and footers is the main option offered within a page style.

You can very easily edit the page style using the page style palette alone, but with more complex tasks that require using even\odd pages and to create a set of page styles it is more convenient to use the Edit Page Styles dialogue box.

A Character Style is a set of formatting attributes that determines how text in your document will look. In Mellel, those attributes include font, font face, size, colour, direction, and more. Every character in a Mellel document has a style. This style can be the default style (i.e., the one selected when you create a new document), a style created when you import or paste text into Mellel, or any style you select from the Character Menu, but there is no way in Mellel to write text that has no style.

There are also two types of character styles: global style and document styles. global style are styles you’ve created or styles that originally came with Mellel. Document styles are sets of formatting attributes that were not saved as styles. For example, if someone sends you a Mellel document with styles that you do not have, Mellel list those styles as document styles. Document styles are often created when you paste text from another application, or open an RTF file.

The Character Menu allows you to easily apply or change a character style to text. Using this menu you can also always tell which character style is currently selected. The menu lists global style at the top, followed by document styles.

To apply a Character Style to text:
• Select some text and choose a style from the Character Menu. Or,
• Select a style from the styles menu and then type.

You can always see what style you’re currently using by checking the status area in the tool bar, or by opening the styles menu.

A paragraph style is a set of formatting attributes that determines how paragraphs in your document will look. Those attributes in Mellel include justification, location of start, end and indent margin, leading (line spacing), space above and below a paragraph and more. Every paragraph a in Mellel document has a style. This style may be the default style (i.e., the one selected when you create a new document), a style you’ve created or any style you select from the Paragraph Menu, but every paragraph in Mellel has a style.

As with page styles and character styles, there are two types of paragraph styles in Mellel: global style and document styles. The Paragraph Menu allows you to easily apply or change a paragraph style. Using this menu you can also always tell which paragraph style is currently selected at the insertion point. The menu lists global style at the top, followed by document styles.

To apply a Paragraph Style to a paragraph:

• Place the insertion point in a paragraph and choose a style from the Paragraph Menu. Or,
• To apply a paragraph style to several paragraphs at once, select the text of the paragraphs you want to apply the style to and choose a style from the Paragraph Menu.

You can always see what style you’re currently using by checking the status area in the tool bar, or by opening the Paragraph Style menu.

In order to make good use of the tabs in Mellel, one should bear in mind the following general rules about tab behaviour:

Tabs are alive:
• When you change a tabs position Mellel changes the affected text with you. Live changes are by their nature slower compared with non-live changes (i.e., when changes are applied only after you release the mouse button), but they make tabs much more useful when you have to make very delicate adjustment (for example, when adjusting tab with a lead for tables of contents).

Tabs are selectable:
• Usually with tabs you select and change them with one continuous mouse button press. With Mellel, selection and change are two separate things. This feature is extremely handy when you want to position a tab accurately using the Tab Position text area in the paragraph palette.

To create a tab, drag a tab from the tab well to the ruler and release the mouse button.

Mellel offers two export options: Plain text and RTF (Rich Text Format). There are seven plain text (txt) encodings available: Unicode, Roman (Mac), Roman (Windows), Roman (ISO-8859-1), Hebrew (Mac), Hebrew (Windows), Hebrew (ISO-8859-8).

A Mellel document is already Unicode encoded, so when you select Unicode encoding as the export encoding Mellel simply removes its special formatting options. When you export a document using other encodings, Mellel replaces the characters in the original document with characters suitable for the target encoding.

With all the encodings, except Unicode encoding, some characters you’re able to use in a Mellel document may not be available. That is, the target encoding may be missing some characters used in a Unicode encoded document. Those characters must be replaced. To help you with that Mellel allows you to select a special character to use in place of such inconvertible characters.

Mellel can import plain text and RTF files. The easiest way to open an MS Word for Windows document is to export it from Word as an RTF document.

To set the page margins:

• Choose File > Document Setup
• In the Document setup dialogue you can set the left, right, top and bottom print margins.

The upper part of the General tab includes general details about the document you’re currently working with: its full name (including file name extension), size in kilobytes, location (path to the document file), date of creation and date of last modification.

The lower part includes other statistical details about the document you’re currently working with: the length in characters of the document, the number of words in the document, number of lines and the number of paragraph. If you have selected some text before opening the Document Info dialogue box, the details about the selected text will be shown (in parenthesis) following the general statistics. The data in this area is updated every time you open the Document Info dialogue box, but it is not updated while the dialogue box is open.

The personal info tab allows you to add some important details about the document you’re currently working with such as the document’s title, subject, author’s name (the name of the person who wrote the document), keywords, category, and comments.

• Character count includes punctuation marks. Ligatures (combinations of two separate letters that form a third composite letter such as “ü”) are counted as one character.
• Word count include separated letters but not punctuation. For example, while the letter “a” when separated by space before and after will be considered a word, if you type an exclamation mark
• Line count includes all the lines in a document, including empty lines.
• Paragraph count includes only non-empty paragraphs. That is, an empty line is not counted as a paragraph.
• Selection count does not include line count.

The Find and Replace dialog box contains two buttons to navigate between the various instances of the find string; “Next” is used to look for the next instance of the string. “Previous” is used to look for the previous instance of the string to find.

If you press the “Next” button and there are no more instances of the string to find in the text to the end of the document Mellel will sound a beep or the screen will “flash” shortly. The next time you press the “Next” button the find operation will start from the top of the page. The same rule holds for the “Previous” button, but the other way around.

There are three buttons in the Find and Replace Dialogue box to handle replacing one string for another. “Replace All” replaces all the strings that match the find string with the replace string. “Replace” replaces the currently found matching find string with the replace string. “Replace & Find” replaces the next matching find string with the replace string and finds the next string.

The Option “Case sensitive,” when checked directs Mellel to consider case matches. For example, if you want to find the string “Mellel” the string “mellel” will be ignored.

The Find sub-menu (File > Find) contains two interesting options: “Use Selection for Find” directs Mellel to use the highlighted (selected) text in the document window as the string to find. “Scroll to Selection” directs Mellel to scroll the page to a highlighted (selected) section of the text in the document.

The current version of Mellel is 1.3.2

New features in version 1.3.2:
• Indent Tab: a new kind of tab especially designed for simple and >>>>complex (nesting) lists. To create a hanging (indented) list with the >>>>Indent tab all you have to do is drag it to the desired location in the >>>>ruler. To create nesting lists, you can drag several Indent tabs (one for >>>>each nesting level).
• Combo Tab: another innovative tab. It works much like the Indent tab, >>>>but enables you to create an ‘uneven’ nested lists (to avoid indenting >>>>too deep into a line).
• Paragraph Line Spacing: you can set the line spacing in lines and in >>>>points and even fractions of a point\line.
• Space Before\After paragraph: you can set any desired value >>>>before\after a paragraph (using the currently selected measuring unit).
• Regular tab: the good old unuseful tab has entered the building.
• Tab Leads: allows you to set any of six leads (a repeating character) to every tab on the ruler.
• Image resizing: click an image and resize it using the side handles. >>>>á Style info: the page, paragraph and character styles include >>>>information about each style.
• Associated style: you can now associate a paragraph style with any >>>>given character style to apply both to a selection.
• Secondary font size in points preview
• Keyboard shortcuts for >>>>changing paragraph direction
• Enhanced support of Hebrew ligatures
• Palettes for easy handling of text

If this description has piqued your interest, give Mellel a try. The compressed disk image is only 1.6 MB, so it’s not a long download, even on a dial-up connection.

For a limited time, Mellel is offered at a special introductory price of $12 US, including 3 years of free updates. This special offer will end with version 1.4 of Mellel (due by the end of November) when the price>will be raised to $24 -- still a lot cheaper than Word!

For more information, visit:
http://www.redlers.com

Charles W. Moore

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