Mellel's Newsletter #7 offers some more information about the upcoming Mellel 1.7, about Mellel's new site and some information about the latest Mellel reviews. What's Going On now spews some of its ineffective poison in Dell's direction and the tips sections includes some information about new spelling options in Mellel.
Table of Contents:
Mellel News:
What's going on:
Mellel Tips:
Mellel News
Mellel 1.7 is Nigh -- We are now fairly close to releasing a beta version of Mellel 1.7 and the feature list for this release is pretty much complete. Here are the main highlights:
Auto Numbering: This new option will enable you to number or marks the different parts of your document. This sounds modest enough, but it isn't. The numbering option will be the basis for many other options like outlining, structure navigation, comments, and so on. The implementation of this option in Mellel is fundamentally different from the way it is implemented with other word processors. Most word processors base their auto-numbering option on paragraph styles. That is, those word processors know when and how to number an some piece of text based on the paragraph style used. This seriously limits the options available for the user and makes the numbering method very fragile -- any change to the styles can completely break the numbering sequence.
Mellel completely abandons this style-based method, making the numbering a structural element. That is, when you insert a numbering, you notify Mellel that a certain section of the document have ended and that a new one begins. This marking will not be affected by changes in styles, only by additions (or deletions) of other numbering.
Editing Auto-Numbering: Editing and adding auto-numbering schemes is about to be revolutionised with Mellel 1.7. Up until now, unless you were an expert -- and in most cases not even then -- adding or even simply editing auto-numbering schemes was almost impossible. With Mellel 1.7 this process gains an interface that makes creating, editing and adding auto-numbering set-ups very easy and intuitive. All you'll need to know is how to drag and drop the right items in the right place. And if you make a mistake, the built in preview will correct you on the spot.
Multiple Styles: every element in a level numbering can have a character style of its own. This becomes very useful, for example, when you need the chapter number and chapter name to be of a different size.
Entering titles: In Mellel's auto-numbering titles, just like numbering, is a structural element. For each numbering level you can determine if it will have a title and if you should be prompted to enter that title when you use this numbering level. This will allow you, for example, to keep writing in a paragraph with a numbering without being forced to use the same style. It will also allow you to change the position of the title in the numbering with one drag and drop operation.
Unlimited number of numbering options: Mellel 1.7 will offer the option to set an unlimited number of additional numbering for image captions, equations, figures, charts, tables, and so on. The options for the various captions can be designed and formatted just like any other numbering element.
Adding set-ups for numbering: When your own imagination isn't enough, you can import new numbering set-ups into Mellel 1.7 by dragging and dropping those new set-ups into the Mellel Application Support folder.
Table of Contents: Mellel 1.7 makes table of contents creation and modification easy and effortless. The TOC options are piggy-back riding the numbering options, so all you need to do is change the design (styles, items, positioning) to fit your TOC needs and you're done. Mellel will take care of the rest when you generate the TOC.
Reference to levels: One of the most advanced options in word processing is entering a reference to a title in the text into a header or a footer. The option is so advanced, as a matter of fact, that it is virtually non-existent in currently available word processors. Mellel 1.7 changes all that by allowing you to reference any number of numberings (chapter, sub chapter, etc.) into the headers and footers.
There are also several options that not one hundred per cent guaranteed for Mellel 1.7, but we're hope to get them into this release anyway:
Full Justification for CJK: Mellel 1.7 will allow true justification of CJK text by adjusting the character spacing of CJK characters.
Vertical Ruler: is exactly that what it sounds like.
Setting header and footer height: Mellel 1.7 will enable you to set the height (in centimetres, inches, or points) of your header or footer.
The Mellel's New Site -- Another exciting news this month is our up and coming revision of our web site. The new site received a thorough face-lift courtesy of our GUI designer Guy Hivroni to bring you a more focused and informative site. The content was not simply copy and pasted from the old site -- it was rewritten from scratch. Two particularly interesting bits in the new site that will be of interest to many are the new "future options" section and the "competitive comparison" section. Hopefully, I'll stop lazing about as usual and get them done.
I Can't Help Falling in Love -- Mellel was selected this month as the "Editor's Choice" in Mac Format magazine. MacFormat stated:
- Mellel is everything that shareware ought to be: it's well written, and has a price tag that will scare the commercial developers... Mellel looks superb and works like a dream. You'll just feel compelled to sit and write. For the price, it's simply hard to beat.
We are still a bit rosy around the cheeks.
Another thoughtful comment came from ACMA who summed his view on Mellel in his blog stating:
- If I had Steve Jobs’s ear, or Bill Gates’s, I would buy Mellel for double what the Redlers team asked for it — they’d still come out ahead. This is one sweet word processor, and I urge every Mac user to grab it while it’s still a steal at $25.
Well, I don't know about Bill Gages and Mellel is certainly not for sale right now, but that's certainly a nice thing to hear.
What's Going On
The Copious Copier -- Sometimes denial is the best way to confirm a suspicion. A recent interview by Michael Dell to CNET can serve as a good example to this phenomenon. The young CEO of Dell Computer, answering questions under the blandish (or maybe fawning) title "The Pragmatic Radical" dedicated many of his answers to an effort to lift a chip off his shoulders -- namely, to refute the common claim that Dell is not innovating but simply copying the inventions of others when they prove successful in the market. To the discerning reader, what he achieved was exactly the opposite.
When asked what research and development efforts he's particularly proud of at Dell, the venerable CEO had this to say: "We've made products easier to use and service. We've innovated in time-to-market... innovation... doesn't just occur in the lab... Innovation can occur in supply chain and logistics, manufacturing and distribution, and sales and service."
In other words: Dell's R&D's main achievement is that Dell sells what others have invented for less.
The quizzical CNET interviewer then questioned: "How do you see your role in terms of design? Would you rather let someone like Apple take the lead?" And the answer: "We spend about as much as Apple in R&D. Just because we sell a whole lot more doesn't mean we're bad. I thought that was part of the objective."
A couple of questions earlier, though, he claimed: "There's this misnomer [sic.] that companies that spend more on R&D are somehow better and more successful, but there isn't a lot of data to support that."
In other words: R&D budget size is important or not important depending on whether it's Dell's budget or not.
This sudden burst of urgent defence of Dell's reputation as an innovator seems strange. After all, Dell is not mixed up in an anti-trust suit like the one that forced Microsoft to suddenly claim to be innovative (their campaign to defend "innovation" and the well publicised "20 Years for the PC" celebration coincided with the last stages of their trial). But on second inspection the reason becomes clear: Dell have recently made its first step into the "Digital lifestyle" realm with a new MP3 player ("Dell Digital Jukebox Music Player"), coupled with a new music software and service by MusicMatch. This new device resembles Apple's iPod and iTunes not just by looks but also by the way it is merchandised. This copycat act was probably too shameless even for Dell's taste, which probably explains why its founder is so aggressive denying it.
Will it succeed? Another interesting question in this regard is how successful will the Dell digital lifestyle venture will be. Dell is a very experienced and very efficient seller of computers to price-sensitive organisations. The keyword for most of it products was "affordable" which in computer-selling lingo means "cheap." Recently, as it started to gain some reputation and entered the more lucrative (and profitable) server market, it added "powerful", "Security" and "reliability" to its copy arsenal. It never really carried much of a clout as a consumer oriented company, nor have it tried to appear so. Whatever it sold to individual customers was considered a side effect of its success in the organisational arena.
Venturing into the uncharted territory of consumer products Dell (the man and the company) are at the same time very confident (based on their past success) and very ignorant (of what "private" consumers really want). The first paragraph in their "Jukebox" page exposes both very clearly:
- At just 7.6[1] ounces, the pocket-sized Dell Digital Jukebox, or Dell DJ, delivers high quality, hard-drive based audio at a very affordable price. Designed for one-handed operation, this easy-to-use system is powered by Musicmatch® software to provide an inexpensive way to legally download your favorite music.[2]
Using the secure Windows Media Audio (WMA) format for purchased tracks, Dell DJ and Musicmatch lets you choose from hundreds of thousands of songs from more than 10,000 recording artists licensed from all five major and independent recording labels. There's no subscription fee or complicated contract! Simply download a music file for a mere 99 cents per song or download most albums for only $9.99. Musicmatch plans to offer more than 500,000 tracks by the end of the year.
The main emphasis here is supposedly the ease of use of the Player and music service, but old habits creep in in the form of the emphasis on security, legality and, of course, the unavoidable "affordable." It seems clear that Dell does not have a clear view who its customers might be.
Compare that with Apple's first paragraph describing iPod:
- The new super-slim iPod once again redefines what a digital music player should be. It’s lighter than 2 CDs, can hold up to 10,000 songs, thousands of digital photos and works as a personal voice recorder. Now you can sync with iTunes for Mac and Windows at blazing speeds, and take your entire music collection with you wherever you go. Available for Mac and Windows starting at $299.
It seems that Apple sees a customer that is concerned with the stylish look and feel of the player, its size, flexibility and speed. Price is not so much of an issue.
Which of those approaches is the right way to the hearts and pockets of consumers? We shall find out soon enough.
Mellel Tips
Spelling News -- The famous (and free) Spelling service CocoASpell got a Panther update (version 1.4). The Spelling service, which is offered as a Preference pane, allows you to check spelling in 34 languages and language variants. Those of you who are using Panther should consider using this version, as the older one seem to get tangled in the faline's claws quite often. If you're still using Jaguar, please ignore this update. Pay close attention to the installation instructions with one exception: instead of logging out and in you should restart your computer.
Another interesting addition to your spelling arsenal might be HSpell, which offers spelling in Hebrew. Again, read the instructions carefully before you install it.
