RedleX has released Mellel 1.5, a major update to its advanced Mac OS X word processor. The most important new feature in this update, free for registered Mellel users, is professional-level table capability. True to the original Macintosh spirit, all table options are concentrated in one easy-to-use palette. There are no hidden options, no side menus, and no nagging and baffling dialogue boxes -- just a crisp, clear table feature that mere mortals can understand and use.

New Mellel 1.5 features in detail:

• Table creation and table palette: One simple palette suffices. All Mellel's table options are concentrated on one easy-to-use palette.
• Table border selector: This allows you to set the line style, line width (weight) and color for any cell borders over any range of cells.
• Table auto-adjustment: Tables and table cells will shrink to fit any given page size. So, if you change the page size or page margins, the table will shrink to fit the new page size.
• Clear delete policy: Deletion of cells and content (text or images) is clearly differentiated. Pressing the Delete key will clear the content in a selected range of cells. Selecting Delete Cells from the Options menu will delete the selected range of cells.
• Tables in headers and footers: You can insert a table in a header or a footer -- and you can change the table with every page.
• Tables in footnotes and endnotes: You can insert a table in footnotes and endnotes. In addition, you can create a footnote or endnote reference from within a table.
• Text to table: You can import or paste tab-delimited text into a table from any text document, a table in another word processor, or a spreadsheet
• Vertical alignment: This allows you to set vertical alignment within cells to top, center, bottom or justify (vertical block).
• Diagonal lines: allows you to set a diagonal line for a single cell or any range of cells.
• Cell padding: It's possible to set the padding for a single cell or any range of cells (default is 2 pts). You can also manually adjust padding by changing text margins in cells down to 0.01 points.
• Multi-page tables: Tables can extend over an unlimited number of pages, with automatic table breaks over page margins.
• Equalize width: Column width in any selected range of cells can be equalized.
• Background color: Background color for a single cell or any range of selected cells can be set.
• Cell merging and splitting: You can merge and split any range of selectable cells either horizontally or vertically.
• Adding and deleting rows, columns and cells: You can add or delete any selected range of rows or columns. When you add columns, all other columns will shrink proportionately to accommodate the newly added column.
• Styles in palettes: You can use any paragraph or character style in a cell or apply them to a range of cells.
• Table direction: Tables can have left to right or right to left direction, independent of the direction of text within the table.
• Table dragging and resizing: Columns, rows and entire tables can be dragged and resized, with dragging indication over the ruler to aid accurate positioning.
• Accurate cell selection: Cell selection is clear and accurate, so you always know which cells are selected (i.e., no "artifacts" and "additional selections" beyond what you actually selected).
• Image insertion and manipulation: You can drag and drop or paste an image directly into a cell, between cells, and between various parts of the document. Cells are automatically adjusted vertically to accomodate the image, and images can be scaled and resized within cells

And in the non-table department:

• Smart undo: Typing sequences are grouped together. Headers, footers and footnotes/endnotes are no longer in separate undo context.
• Smart cursor: Cursors change to arrows when hovering above a note reference or a note symbol. When over a text selection, the cursor will change to an arrow (as in OS 9).

About Mellel

Mellel is an advanced, multilingual word processor built for Mac OS X and containing many sophisticated word processing features, with many more to come over the next few months.

Mellel's features include:

And this is just the beginning. Over the next few months, RedleX plans to issue many innovative new features, including an outline tool, index, table of contents, columns, long-document management tools, and more.

Pricing

Mellel can be purchased for just US$19. That price is slated to increase to US$24.99 with Mellel 1.5.1. Special pricing for quantity purchases is available.