Mellel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mellel (מלל, the Hebrew for "text") is a word processor for Mac OS X, purported to be especially suited for technical and academic writers. It is made by RedleX, a small software company from Israel. New features are added to the program every few months, many of which come from user suggestions.
Mellel's way of handling styles is easier to use and more intuitive than those in mainstream word processors. Its Replace Styles feature allows users to reformat vast amounts of text scattered through a document with a few clicks (a feature also present in OpenOffice.org Writer).
Languages with non-latin alphabets like Arabic, Hebrew or Korean are handled well due to its support for Unicode and OpenType fonts. Its user interface relies heavily on palettes.
Mellel has a unique way to handle footnotes, endnotes and comments; they are treated as different streams of a single text which can also help to keep different translations of the same text in sync.
Mellel provides tight integration with Bookends and Sente, bibliographical tools for managing citations. Academic writers should note that Mellel so far lacks support for cross-references, although they are projected to appear in later releases. It has good support for RTF import and export and rudimentary support for .doc files. The current version of Mellel (v. 2.1) introduces an XML-based file format.
