Nisus compared to Mellel... is this accurate?!

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baturjan
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Joined: 2003-10-08 18:46:33

Nisus compared to Mellel... is this accurate?!

Post by baturjan »

I saw this comparison at the Redlers.com site. I personally have yet to get Nisus (OS X) because of the lack of Arabic support. But I thought this comparison was interesting. I would like to ask you all if it's accurate

http://www.redlers.com/generalcomparison.html
shades
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Post by shades »

That was done about 6 months ago 9maybe longer), so if I remember correctly they used NWE 1.1. Obviously much has changed in the past two months.
MBP 2.4 GHz, OS X 10.5.6
NWP 1.2, Mellel 2.6, iWork 08
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Post by MacSailor »

shades wrote:That was done about 6 months ago 9maybe longer), so if I remember correctly they used NWE 1.1. Obviously much has changed in the past two months.
If I’m not mistaken, this comparison was made after NWE 2.1 and Mellel 1.8 was released. It would be good if the Redlers could declare exactly which versions of the 4 competitor were used, just to make sure no misunderstanding arise on the issue.
Peter Edwardsson
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charles
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Post by charles »

Please remember that this comparison is put together and judged by the folks who make Mellel. Guess who looks the best? This is a completely useless comparison for anyone actually trying to decide what word processor to use. My suggestion is that you instead get the demos, try them out for yourself and decide which one best fits your needs.

-Charles
Charles Jolley
Nisus Software, Inc.
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Post by MacSailor »

charles wrote:Please remember that this comparison is put together and judged by the folks who make Mellel.
Of course you have to be aware of the fact that it’s a quite biased comparison, but it’s there anyway. :wink:
Peter Edwardsson
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rallx
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Post by rallx »

It looks like the comparison was partly updated for NWE 2.1 but not entirely. For example, one of the footnotes says "Tables > NWE, Notes > NWE: Nisus Writer Express does not support a table or a notes option and consequently gets "No" throughout those categories." Which seems to apply to 1.x but not 2.x. Many of these characteristics are hard to know exactly what the feature even is.

Charles is right, these comparisons are worthless. In particular, the equal ranking given to all features implies that they all have the same "value" to the user. So, for example, NWE just gets just a few "points" for it's grep abilities and these are ranked the same as the "Page number/total number of pages" search (whatever that is). But for some users (me for example), a well implemented regular expressions find and replace is a make or break feature worth far more that most of the other criteria. Other users have other make or break criteria (e.g., scripting/macros) and will choose their word processor accordingly.

I find it hard to believe that Mellel truly has more features than MS Word. Regardless of what you think of Word, lack of features does not readily come to mind! Besides, the issue is not who has the most features, but who has features that really matter to the user while minimizing needless complexity. Word scores poorly in this regard whereas NWE is improving (though I can't use it as my primary word processor yet, because it still lacks some key features for me). I'm not familiar enough with Mellel to know how useful it would be to me in comparison to NWE. Mellel probably serves some people better than would NWE but for others -- those who need grep or scripting or hate brushed metal GUI's -- NWE comes out on top.

Rick
midwinter
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Post by midwinter »

rallx wrote:those who need grep or scripting or hate brushed metal GUI's -- NWE comes out on top.
ding ding ding! I tried to use Mellel, but I felt like I was writing in iTunes!
Alexander Newman
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Post by Alexander Newman »

> > those who need grep or scripting or hate brushed metal GUI's -- NWE comes out on top.

> ding ding ding! I tried to use Mellel, but I felt like I was writing in iTunes!

I didn't particularly like Mellel when I tried the demo - but I happen to *absolutely loathe* the brushed metal look in the OS X Finder. Ugh! (Did one or more of the authors of the "Enlightenment" X11 WM infiltrate Apple?)

Does anyone know how to get rid of the b-metal look (as in exterminate it completely) from the Finder, other than going back to 10.2(?) or earlier?

(Please reply off-list to this off-topic query. :)

Cheers,
Alex Newman.
midwinter
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Post by midwinter »

Yes, yes there is.
propstuff
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Post by propstuff »

Ditto brushed metal: Blech

try this one;

http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/metallifizer

cheers,
N.
Nicholas
550MHz TiBk, 512Mb, OS 10.2.8 NWX 2.0
Alexander Newman
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Post by Alexander Newman »

Thanks midwinter and propstuff :). I had the Unsanity metallifizer haxie already installed (days after getting the G5, in fact ;) but this didn't de-metallise the Finder.

I gave ShapeShifter another go - and the "demetallifizer" gui-pack have hosed it. Fantastic!

Happy New Year :)
Alex.
shades
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Post by shades »

I use both Mellel and NWE, and am torn - some days I like NWE, some days Mellel. For Mellel, I like the

1. True Unicode/OpenType support.

2. Fixed lines for footnotes (where the line spacing keeps increasing in NWE with footnotes).

3. Implementation of styles (different, but very helpful, and I found quickly very intuitive).

4. Outlining (not full-blown, but enough for me).

5. Auto-numbering.

6. Different streams for several types of footnotes, numbered and placed independently of the other streams.



For NWE, I like

1. "Feel" of the program; not referrring to the look of the program (but including access to features). This is very important to me, as I spend a lot of time in front of this thing.

2. Styles (very different than Mellel, but still good)

3. Look of the program - very spartan, yet functional.

4. Conversion from other sources (much better tools than Mellel)


===============

Thus, for my main papers right now, NWE does not work. So I use Mellel. But for quick and dirty work or conversion from other sources (web, etc.) NWE is better.

And appraently Mellel will be moving to XML as its base format in the near future.
MBP 2.4 GHz, OS X 10.5.6
NWP 1.2, Mellel 2.6, iWork 08
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