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brettcamp · Dec 28, 2004, 08:06 PM

I've been casting around for a Word replacement, and had settled on Mellel before deciding that maybe I didn't even need a word processor after all, since I have AppleWorks and Word and can use them on the rare occasions that TextEdit (augmented by various Services) isn't enough. But I do like Mellel's sidebar outliner, and now someone in another forum has recommended Ulysses, which looks interesting, if a bit spendy. Has anyone here tried it, and, if so, what do you think?

threestain · Dec 29, 2004, 05:31 AM

I looked into Ulysses awhile back when writing up a thesis and a project. It seemed far more complicated even that lyx and its derivatives, so I binned it in favour of battling word to its doom. Of course I would probably now go with NeoOffice/J or Abiword or something similar.

From what I could work out with Ulysses it might be worth the effort understanding it if you write a lot of large complex documents. Don't know whether it'll worth it for you from what you've said...

wataru · Dec 29, 2004, 05:58 AM

NeoOffice/J has really come a long way. If you haven't looked at it in a while, you really should check it out again.

Boondoggle · Jan 20, 2005, 06:38 AM

Originally posted by threestain:
I looked into Ulysses awhile back when writing up a thesis and a project. It seemed far more complicated even that lyx and its derivatives, so I binned it in favour of battling word to its doom. Of course I would probably now go with NeoOffice/J or Abiword or something similar.

From what I could work out with Ulysses it might be worth the effort understanding it if you write a lot of large complex documents. Don't know whether it'll worth it for you from what you've said...

Ulysses has some great features, but I don't care for the interface. It is fine except that when I'm actually writing, I like to have a simple frame-less wrap-to-window view like TextEdit, and Ulysses doesn't support that AFAIK.

MacJournal is a pretty good app. that does a lot of what CopyWrite, Ulysses et. al. do, and it is/was free.

bd

Gee4orce · Jan 20, 2005, 07:18 AM

I've had god results with Mellel - it takes a little getting used to, but there's some really nice features buried in there. Can't complain about the price either. My only complaint about it is that the style and font management kind of goes against the grain of Mac OS X a bit.

threestain · Jan 20, 2005, 10:11 AM

how about pages? now that its out there it might be worth a look. plus its cheap

brettcamp · Jan 21, 2005, 02:41 AM

But not as cheap as Mellel -- $30 academic price.
Yeah, I've been really curious about Pages since it was announced. I was hoping the long-overdue AppleWorks upgrade would give me that one missing feature -- the live outliner. But, although I haven't actually tried it out, from what I've read, it seems to be more like a light page layout / WP program, which is great. It fill a niche that nothing else really did, so it's a great and unexpected addition to Apple's software. But AFAIK, it doesn't have that sidebar outliner that helps you navigate through long docs. And since I seldom print anything, it's not that useful to me.

Actually, I've been able to get a lot of that outline functionality in DEVONnote, using each note (visible in the left hand column) as an outline topic, then merging and exporting the whole shebang as a rtf when I'm done, and doing any additional needed formatting in AW. (Is that how you use MacJournal, Boondoggle?)

So I think I'll hold off any WP purchase and stay with AppleWorks and TextEdit for now; maybe if and when I ever need a new one, Pages will have the live outline feature, or Ulysses will be a lot cheaper. If not, I'll just get Mellel. But I'd still be interested to hear the experiences of anyone else who's tried Ulysses.

Boondoggle · Jan 22, 2005, 09:29 PM

Originally posted by brettcamp:
Actually, I've been able to get a lot of that outline functionality in DEVONnote, using each note (visible in the left hand column) as an outline topic, then merging and exporting the whole shebang as a rtf when I'm done, and doing any additional needed formatting in AW. (Is that how you use MacJournal, Boondoggle?)

Yes. It works quite well. You can have multiple journals with multiple entries so you have flexibility in organizing your work.. multiple projects in separate journals for example. When you want to print you just export the journal to .rtf or text. It is a great app, and until recently it was free. There may be some free versions still kicking around.

bd