[rogermugs]

There are several threads handling this but they all seem to be pretty old.

I'm writing my masters thesis. It's research - not math or science related so I dont need LaTeX or anything. I've looked into Scrivener but the inline footnotes are incredibly annoying for the length of this paper and the frequency with which i will be using footnotes.

so far my favorite option is the way Google Docs handles footnotes. IT's spectacular and not at all distracting, but i'd love an offline option. Mellel is what everyone swears by but it doesn't seem any different in its footnote handling than pages, and therefore a waste of money (not to mention ugly as dirt... brushed metal? you kidding me?).

Haven't looked at nisus writer...
also there are tons of options that don't handle footnotes at all.

anyhoo. any of you written a serious research paper lately (100+pages) and used something with which you were impressed? the right tool goes a long ways.

[ghporter]

It seems that if it isn't LaTeX or some other high-level science-based package, you're left with word processor packages to pick and choose from. This is not all that bad a thing because some software vendors take this sort of functionality pretty seriously.

My masters is a clinical degree so I didn't have to write a formal paper, but I've done plenty of big projects. Footnoting and references are crucial in a lot of things, and so there are a lot of products that work on handling these things well.

Interestingly, MS Word has always been (let's say since 1995 or so) pretty good at this. It also handles endnotes well. Neo-and OpenOffice both follow the same sort of process to insert and format footnotes that Word does. It's all pretty easy to manage and a very quick-to-learn workflow.

A lot of people will simply dismiss Word and the open-source versions as "business oriented," but I think that's a really short sighted attitude. Neo-and Open- are FREE and they work just fine, and they support tons of file formats, so you're not at all tied down to a single software source. It's worth a look. Believe it or not, people do write books, texts, scripts and all sorts of other things with Word and it's "work alikes." (They generally just convert the final version to some other format for submission...)

Now if anyone can find a word processor that easily handles and formats APA-style references - and reference lists! - then I will be their long-time friend!

[OreoCookie]

Nisus Writer is a good option, it has a very nice, Mac-like interface and feels much snappier than all the versions of Word I've used (to open attachments ).

Regarding LaTeX, I can only recommend you having a second look at it. It's particularly simple to use if you don't need formulas. There are editors such as Ulyssus which are based on LaTeX and hide all the TeXy stuff. There is literally nothing more reliable and configurable than LaTeX.

[rogermugs]

ghporter - i appreciate the thoughts. if it comes to Word or a word alternative i'll just stick with pages. Word on my mac is unbelievably awful. 2008 ands spaces dont mesh. also it crashes a lot. pages does everything more reliably. Neo and Open are just slower versions of microsoft bloatware.

oreo- not sure i want to spring the money for nisus but i still haven't looked at it yet... i did download ulysses and try the trial. is it just me or is there no support for footnotes? maybe i'm just not bright enough to figure it out.

thus far google docs seems to take the cake by a mile. which i'm okay with, but would still prefer offline access... i live in a place that has... well lets just say a reputation for cutting off google for months at a time. or losing internet altogether. hopefully i'll graduate before it becomes a problem.

[cgc]

I use Nisus Writer Pro which integrates with Bookends, Sente, and EndNote. Mellel is another good option although Mellel development is slow and it's UI is non-standard.

[Oisín]

I usually just use InDesign. Not at all ideal, very far from it, but it gives me the control over layout that I need—footnotes basically have to come second. I’m no great fan of footnotes, though, so I generally try to minimise their use as much as I can: reference notes go inline and expounding notes are limited to one or two per page, at most.

I’ve never learned or used any kind of TeX, but from the way every single paper written in TeX that I’ve ever seen looks, it doesn’t appear to have any particularly fancy layout control capabilities … or is it just that everyone who writes in TeX don’t care much for layout, as long as the content is good?

I really wish InDesign would get some proper references/notes handling capabilities, instead of the sorry excuse for notes handling it has now.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by Oisín 

I’ve never learned or used any kind of TeX, but from the way every single paper written in TeX that I’ve ever seen looks, it doesn’t appear to have any particularly fancy layout control capabilities … or is it just that everyone who writes in TeX don’t care much for layout, as long as the content is good?

Quite the contrary actually: the TeX engine is probably the most advanced typography engine on the planet. It's used for the production of plenty of books, not just scientific ones.

TeX is a little bit like CSS and html: you enclose some things in `tags' and the template determines the way they are formatted. If it weren't for the occasional manual break that needs to be inserted,* content and layout would be completely separate. Hence, you ideally think in terms of content and layout separately. For books, thesis, and other things, this is just perfect. If you want to really control all the details and create templates by hand, good luck. If, on the other hand, you're the creative type who wants to free form space, it's the wrong tool.

All these capabilities just don't necessarily equate to good layout if the people using it don't care about it. Most of my colleagues just want to squeeze as much content as possible on a page, ugh! There are some very sophisticated (all the komascript templates, for instance), though, that have been created by professionals over the course of several years. Some others are just awful in my opinion, but sometimes you need to use them (e. g. when you publish a paper). I'm using scrbook for my dissertation (which I will have printed next week, yay!).

* Except if you use a lot of long formulas, then you basically have to adjust them manually to the given layout.

Originally Posted by rogermugs 

oreo- not sure i want to spring the money for nisus but i still haven't looked at it yet... i did download ulysses and try the trial. is it just me or is there no support for footnotes? maybe i'm just not bright enough to figure it out.

Ulysses is based on TeX and of course you can use footnotes. I personally haven't used Ulysses myself, I very much prefer TextMate. Before, I have used TeXShop which is free.

[Shades of Gray]

Mellel has the most power for footnotes, because you can have multiple independent footnote streams. Outlining and Autotitles add to to its power. And Styles, while different than Word are excellent. I use Mellel for academic writing.

I would also consider Nisus Writer Pro (although it has a tendency to slow down many footnotes and larger document size — Mellel doesn't have that slow down problem, no matter the size).

And I would even consider OpenOffice.

Another app that is cross platform is Papyrus. I used it to write a book (234 pages with ~100 photos). Not one crash, instantaneous changes in structure meant instantaneous changes in reference numbers, etc.). Rock solid.

[P]

You don't mention if you have any software already. If you already have a word processor, use something like EndNote to add the functions you need. It's been a few years, but back when I was at university, everyone used MS Word with EndNote.