Mellel 2.0, the word processor from RedleX, has been released. Mellel is one of the leading word processors for Mac OS X, with a special focus on scholars, writers, technical writing and multilingual word processing. A lot of genealogists use it because of the above advertised features -if you’re writing formal genealogy documents/books, the formatting, footnote/endnote, citation, and layout features are a big plus. Version 2.0 is a major update, and requires Mac OS X 10.2.
The Mellel Spotlight Plugin is just that – a plugin for Mac OS X 10.4’s Spotlight, that makes Mellel documents searchable.
Languages/Localisations: Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian) Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish. Several more are set to be released soon.
Some of the new features and updates include: Enhanced RTF support (images/graphics), extensive support for columns and sections, speed improvements, Table improvements, and many others (see http://www.mellel.com/releasenotes.html for full list).
What’s New:
* Columns: Mellel 2.0 offers extensive support for sections and columns, including multiple columns, section/column styles, background colour, space above sections, column balancing, gutter width, line, line colour, weight and line type (dashes).
* Hyphenation: Extensive support including more than 20 hyphenation language dictionaries, multiple hyphenation dictionaries per document, user dictionary, customisation of minimum length of word, before and after hyphen, hyphenation zone, hyphenation limit and last-word-in-paragraph control. In addition, hyphenation dictionaries can be edited and added using a free tool called Mellel Hyphenation Lab. The tool enables using TeX hyphenation dictionaries with minimal changes in Mellel.
* RTF import and export enhancements: Extended support now includes support for import and export of images and graphics, headers and footers, page numbering, section attributes, and more.
* Keep options (widows and orphans): Mellel 2.0 supports widows and orphans control with an option to individually set the number of lines to be kept together at the beginning or the end of a paragraph, or keep the whole paragraph together (with most word processors, the option is non-customisable)
* Keep with next: Mellel 2.0 allows controlling how many lines of the next paragraph will be kept together with the current paragraph (with most word processors, the option is non-customisable).
* Table and image height: To solve the perennial problem of positioning graphics and tables in columns and still keep the columns completely parallel (as is required) Mellel 2.0 supports image and table height “rounding” which rounds the height of the table or graphics based on the line spacing in the surrounding text.
* Line type: Dashes and dots were added as line type options with column gutter lines, tables, and footnote separator.
* Background colour: Support for background colour (non printable), and also background colour (printable) with page styles.
* 20 percent faster: Mellel 2.0 will open documents about 20 percent faster than previous versions.
* Facing pages: page margins can be set to right/left or inside/outside (facing).
* Space above and below: Space above paragraphs at the top of a page or a column will be ignored or not based on user preference. Space below will be ignored when at the bottom of a page or column.
* Restart footnotes numbering: Added the option to also restart with every section or page range (chapter).
* Progress indicator: When opening very long documents or performing a very long process Mellel will display a progress bar.
* GUI Improvements: A more compact “compact” view, streamlined and more compact palettes, redesigned several user interface elements.
* Page Up/Down: User customisable, whether to skip to the top of the next/previous page or one window length up or down.
* Make section from selection: Select some text and choose Edit > Make section from selection. That’s it.
* Extended OpenType support: Support for Historical forms and Historical Ligatures.
* Look Up in Dictionary: Added to the contextual menu options.
* And more: For a complete list of features, enhancements and bug fixes, please refer to the release notes at: http://www.mellel.com/releasenotes.html.