I see that someone has posted the information elsewhere, but I thought I would make the information a little more prominent by putting it under a separate topic. Mellel is on sale at Maczot for 44% off (22 USD) on Tues 1 Feb for one day only. See maczot.com/. They have recently changed their licence conditions, so instead of getting free updates for two years only, all future updates are now free.
Cheers, Martin.
As an offer I couldn’t refuse, I have just bought this. I wanted to see if Redlers had sorted my problem with Chinese, and given the free updates from now on, I thought that when I finally get round to that magnum opus full of multiple footnote streams, it would be handy to have it …
Well, who knows with the latter; but in spite of claiming that they now have a Chinese localised version, it still doesn’t import Chinese DOCs … even setting the preferences to UTF8 doesn’t do it. It seems that 2-byte characters in DOCs and file open or import with Mellel just don’t go together. Convert the file to RTF and it imports OK, but if I’m going to do that, I might just as well open and work on it in Nisus … which is why I gave up with Mellel in the first place.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!
Mark
French as well as Chinese! I wish I had your talents, Mark. 
But perhaps you could use Mellel just for the French, for now 
Martin.
Hah … problem now is that when I speak French, there is a tendency for all those linking words and filler words and expressions, “Mais”, “Eh bien”, “Alors”, “Oui”, “Donc” etc. to come out in Chinese. At least I can truthfully say to my interlocutors, “Si vous me comprenez mal, c’est parce que c’est du Chinois!”
Mark
I have a similar problem (in a way). I spent ten years in Italy, so if I ever try to speak French, I tend to find myself speaking Italian with a French accent. Confuses the hell out of everyone – including me. 
Martin.
Et ils vous repondent “Mais alors, arrête tes chinoiseries donc!”, non?
Ah but I have a further advantage over you, since “Pour moi c’est du Chinois” = “It’s Greek to me”.
But the tribulations with Mellel are worse than I thought … it doesn’t recognise 2-byte characters in RTFs exported from Scrivener … aaarrgghh!!
Mark
The French must have great linguistic skills if they have to go so far afield for something they don’t understand. The Italians content themselves with saying “Per me è arabo”. And we poor old English are foxed by another European language! Actually, come to think of it, a lot of us are foxed by our own language, never mind any other.
Sorry I unwittingly trapped you into shelling out for Mellel! I had no idea it had those limitations. I was under the impression it was supposed to be good for other languages, but perhaps it is only some other languages. “Pazienza”, as they say.
Good wishes, Martin.
Actually, Martin, you didn’t trap me, and it’s only us oddballs who work in such languages that are normally going to be aware of such things; my understanding is that, on the other hand, it’s very good with RTL languages like Arabic and Hebrew. But it’s had so much development since I first abandoned it that I had been thinking of putting it back in my stable of word-processors anyway, and at the MacZOT offer I thought it would be worth going for anyway, though not necessarily at the normal price — mind you, I’m still waiting for my serial number. I might write to Redlers to suggest that they do something about this … having to use “Export” to save out to any format other than the native one is a pain, but then we’re used to that with Pages etc. Maybe the Chinese localised version will import 2-byte DOC files, but the English version doesn’t and that seems truly daft to me.
I have discovered that it will import RTFs exported from Scrivener if I tell it manually to use a Windows encoding – but then my Chinese files in Scrivener have been imported from Word for Chinese Windows anyway – albeit with some glitches. Run the file through Nisus, simply open, press save and then close and it opens in Mellel without problems. But there’s no option to do that with DOCs and you can’t set a default encoding for them in the preferences.
Mark
Hi Mark,
Try logging into MacZot and see if your serial is under “My Orders” or “My Order History” or whatever it is. They keep a list of your serials there. I use Nisus for preference these days, too. I find myself wondering if Mellel has lost market share and has reduced the price to try and compensate for it. But they obviously do need to sort out a few things. Glad I didn’t “spoof” you!
All the best,
Martin.