If you use Mellel with Scrivener, I would very much appreciate your suggestions, tips, and warnings for best use of the two apps in concert.
I am a long-time user and fan of Scrivener (put me in the evangelist category!), but have only dabbled a bit with Mellel. I feel awfully attracted to Mellel’s implementation of styles across documents. (Darn you, Pages!)
Many thanks for your help!
Don
I have used Mellel a lot some ten years ago, just before Scrivener came out, and I loved it. I have kept Mellel up to date on my machines and I even have it on my iPad (not used much, though). Lately, I have been reconsidering Mellel as a central piece of my workflow. I see Scrivener as the main tool for early stage research-based large projects. At some point I do need to move these projects into a Word-centric world. I think Mellel would make that transition a bit smoother (although I don’t think Mellel works great with Word). I don’t see much problem with working with both Scrivener and Mellel. In my experience, it does work well with .rtf, and that’s where Scrivener operates and lives.
Anyway, I have just started thinking about this, so, I don’t have more specific suggestions
I used Mellel briefly many years ago—I gave up Word after version 5.1a, as that couldn’t run under OS-X. My problem with Mellel at the time was that it couldn’t import .doc files in Chinese, or rather turned them into gibberish—I was working in China and being sent such docs to work on—so I had to use something else to turn them into RTF before I could work on them in Mellel; then Nisus launched Nisus Writer for OS-X and I have used it and Nisus Writer Pro ever since. Like marcoiac, I keep Mellel updated on my MBA, I though don’t really use it, and I too have the iPad version, though I’ve never used that.
I find Mellel somewhat quirky, though powerful, whereas, from the beginning, NWP was totally intuitive and more Mac-like. NWP also has the advantage—and any resulting disadvantages—that it uses a highly modified version of the Apple Text Engine, like Scrivener, and it’s default file format is RTF. I guess, in the end, which you use comes down to personal preference and if one of them has a feature that you need that the other doesn’t.
All that is a preamble to saying that some time ago, in another thread on Scrivener + NWP workflow—and someone on the Nisus forum was also asking about Scrivener + Nisus workflow—I said in each forum, that if I found time and energy, I would produce a kind of mini-tutorial on my workflow. It is now nearing completion, and when I’ve finished it, I’ll post a copy in that thread and in the Nisus forum.
Although, the details will inevitably be different, the principles I use will, I expect be roughly the same or can be adjusted. I’ll post here to let you know when it’s there.
Mr X
Following my last post, I’ve finished my Scrivener --> NWP workflow project, and posted the project and RTF in the original thread.
https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/mac-software-for-managing-10-cross-referenced-books/31362/25
I’ve also had a quick look at Mellel. I get the impression than Mellel doesn’t have an equivalent to the NWP styles library, but you if you set up your Mellel styles, you can then use “Edit > Replace Styles” to achieve the same thing pretty easily.
Mr X
Thank you so much, Mr X!
Don