Mellel Word Processor 1.9 has been released. It’s a free update for existing users. Version 1.9 comes with 50 new features (You can read the press release for a listing here).
Mellel is an advanced, multilingual word processor for Mac OS X. Mellel offers many sophisticated and innovative word processing features, many of which cannot be found with other word processors.
Among the new features: New page styles, new style sets, ablility to create sets (or “collections”) of all types of styles (page, paragraph, note, and list) which can be used with a specific template or any new document, better image handling, template changes/additions, Aqua Interface, spelling changes, propagate list, outline promote/demote, new preference window, improved font handling, improved help.
Changes:
- * Page style: New page model: A new page model “tied” to breaks in the text, not to arbitrary page
positions.
* Page style: First page header/footer: Show or hide the header or footer on the first page. Makes it
easy to have numbering show only from page 2 forward.
* Style sets: Allows you to create sets (or “collections”) of all types of styles (page, paragraph,
character, note, and list). You can use a style set with a specific template or with any new document
and even switch between sets (e.g., from a draft style set to a print style set in a single step). Style
sets are saved with the document and you can lock and unlock them, duplicate, delete, etc.
* Edit style editor: You can now edit each style included in the style set directly and have all the style
options in one (big) window. There are also some improvements to style, but more on that later.
* Image handling: You now now insert images using the Insert > Image option, in addition to copy
and paste and drag and drop. You can resize images easily, manually, by per cent or numerically,
Position the image within the image frame fitted to the frame or “floating”, in the frame you can set
the image frame frame and background colour and line weight for the frame.
* Baseline shift: Very simple and to-the-point – you can shift text or images up or down relative to the
baseline. In contrast with the way it’s done with the Cocoa text engine (and thus TextEdit and co.)
the line spacing for the paragraph does not change but remains the same throughout.
* Templates: You can now create templates, open from templates, browse templates, add, delete,
save over, add template folders, and so on. You can also add a special thumbnail and description to
every template. In addition, you can also set a default template to open when a new document is
created.
* Perfect language switching: Whenever you switch languages, Mellel switches to a font that can
display text in those languages. A special option for experts allows you to highlight cases when a
font substitution occurred, so you can spot and correct this, if you want.
* Automatic backup: Saves a file automatically to a special folder. This works independently of
automatic save, and works even with untitled or unsaved files.
* Next paragraph style: You can now set the paragraph style to follow the current paragraph style
(when you press Return).
* “At start-up” preferences: You can set Mellel‘s behaviour when starting up and when switching to
Mellel fro a different application: Do nothing (just show the menus), open a new document (the OS X default) or open the template browser.
* Aqua Interface: Same as the brushed metal one, but without the brushed metal.
* Learn spelling: Yes! Now available from the nearest contextual menu.
* Propagate list: A new button on the list editing window makes it easy to populate values (margins,
symbol position, indent, char. style and variation) throughout the list.
* Outline promote/demote: You can now press Command+left/right arrow to promote/demote
items.
* Nicer preferences: New and improved preferences window.
* Font detection: Improved missing fonts detection and handling.
* Shift+Tab for stepping back between cells in a table.
* Improved help: The basic online help was improved (in appearance).
* More help: The help menu now includes several items to make access to frequently requested
items (fonts, keyboard layouts, tips) easier, and a link to Mellel’s buying options.
* Option+Delete to delete the next word.
* Cmd+, to open the Preferences.
* Asterisk added: Added asterisk to list symbols
* Better image handling: The resize handles for image frames are now blue and bigger, images
inserted into document don’t inflate the file so much, and images are now clear and not fuzzy
when inserted into a document.
* Syriac works better: Corrected behaviour of unicode range 0x0300->0x036F (combining diacritical
marks) with RTL scripts. This mainly applies to Syriac, but may be useful with Arabic too.
* Spell faster: Sometimes, when you typed very fast, the spelling engine would skip a word or two
while writing. This doesn’t happen anymore.
* No extra page break: When inserting a ToC right before a page break or page style break, no
additional page break is added at the end of the ToC.
* Misbehaving characters: Corrected the behaviour of degree sign, ohm, micro, angstrom etc.
following numbers in RTL text.
* Pasting from Mozilla, Firefox, etc.: will now work accurately (it wasn‘t our bug, really, but we’ve fixed
it anyhow.
* Plays nicely with footnotes: styling after “scanning” the document with a bibliography application
now preserves the styling in footnotes or endnotes.
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