[D'Espice]

So here's the deal. Since I sold my iBook and got the new Mini I have no OS X machine to take to university, the park, whatever. I have therefore started using my really old PowerBook 1400 with OS 8.6 and am now looking for the best way to work on my Mellel Documents on said PowerBook.

I realize Mellel itself is not available for OS 8/9 (what a shame ) so I'm looking for a good alternative to open/modify/save Mellel's DOCs and RTFs. I have tried opening said files with mixed results in Word 98. The problem is, Word doesn't show the footer and it does not care about the formatting when opening Mellel-exported DOC files. Formatting is fine when using Mellel-exported RTF files but the footer are still missing. I tried Word Perfect 3.5 but it doesn't even open neither .doc nor .rtf files. What other possibilities are there?
Basically it comes down to this: I need a word processor that is capable of opening and saving either DOC or RTF files and fully supports Mellel's exported DOCs or RTFs (including footnotes and formatting and everything else of course). Is there something like this out there?

[OreoCookie]

What about Nisus Writer? (Just from the top of my head, it's been years my primary machine ran something prior to OS X.)

[slugslugslug]

Wasn't there one more pre-X version of Word? Like Office/Word 2001? Have you any way to try that out? Word supposedly has been using the same format for every version since '97 on Windows, so I imagine another version will behave the same way, and the problem is with Mellel's export, but it may be worth a shot.

Do you have any apps on the mini that open your .doc/.rtf files with the footers/format intact? If not, it might be time to suspect Mellel. If so, you could 1) export from Mellel, 2) open in another OS X app, 3) change and re-save from their, and 4) see how the file works on your PowerBook.

If you don't have Office on the mini and want to find out if Word '04 would see your formatting, you can send me a file and I'll report back. Good luck.

[D'Espice]

I do not have Office 2001 for OS 9, all I have is 4.something (a REALLY old version) and 98. I do have Office 2004 on my Mini but I don't like using it

I'll give that a shot tripleslug, maybe this'll work. I just figured out one interesting thing though. When I export the file in Mellel (choosing RTF) and open it in Word 98 there's no footer but formatting is fine. I can edit the file and save it as RTF and when I open it in Mellel again - the footer is still there like it was in the original file. Hence apparantly it is a Mellel issue because otherwise the footer would show up in Word 98. But that's fine tho, I don't necessarily need it in Word, what is important is that it shows up again afterwards in Mellel - and that seems to be working.

@OreoCookie:
I remember NisusWriter... unfortunately I don't have it though and AFAIK it's not free

[slugslugslug]

Maybe the RTF spec doesn't officially support footers, but it supports comments, so Mellel implements its footer in an RTF comment? I would imagine it's something like that, since I seem to recall saving a footer-having doc as RTF in Word, then opening it in TextEdit only to see no footer.

Actually, I just re-opened that RTF, saw a footer in Word '04, dragged it to TextEdit, saw no footer, saved it, and lost the footer in Word. So it would seem that Word '98 at least is better about respecting RTF tags it doesn't understand, whereas TextEdit just chucks 'em.

Anyway, looks like you've found your solution, so have fun with your PB 1400. Maybe I should get one of those for school..

[OreoCookie]

I'm not sure if that's any help to you, but have you ever thought of using LaTeX?

I was using OzTeX and some editor on my PowerBook G3 (Kanga, the big brother of the 3400) -- worked just fine. Plus LaTeX is great for writing your thesis in

[D'Espice]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

I'm not sure if that's any help to you, but have you ever thought of using LaTeX?

I was using OzTeX and some editor on my PowerBook G3 (Kanga, the big brother of the 3400) -- worked just fine. Plus LaTeX is great for writing your thesis in

In three words: I have, I tried, I hate it (ok that's seven but you get my point)

A few years ago I taught myself LaTeX, wrote a few things and it was ok. Not my favorite but ok. And trust me, a lot of people have tried to convert me to LaTeX (being a former cs major I must be sending out some kind of special vibe only other geeks can receive... after the 1000. attempt I have started to regard LaTeX as religion with its members always trying to convert you to "the one and only true word processor") which actually made me hate it even more. It may be great for some people, and that's fine. But personally, I don't like it. It's not like I haven't tried or like I failed or something, it went pretty well. It's just two things that bothered me big time: First of all I hate working with tags and \ and whatnots in my document, for me word processing goes hand in hand with WYSIWYG - if it's not WYSIWYG I won't use it. And second, if two or more people are working on one document (which happens fairly often in my case) it's useless since there's always at least ONE person not familiar with it. Or, in three/seven words: I have, I tried, I hate it

Therefore, I told myself not to use it ever again and started looking for alternatives and have been pretty happy with Mellel ever since. And it seems like we have figured out this problem here, I'll be using Word 98 and RTF which seems to be working pretty well (or so it seems).


So thanks... but no

[OreoCookie]

@D'Espice
Oooook, I guess that settles that. I didn't know about your LaTeX aversion, mea culpa.
As you can imagine (I'm a mathematical physicist after all), I basically love it and use it from presentations to letters and scientific papers.

Just to throw another piece of LaTeX at you: you can use LaTeX from a WYSIWYG environment as well. Check out LyX and Ulysses. Ulysses completely hides LaTeX from you and is aimed at authors and writers. It basically gives you a typewriter interface if you wish with just a black and white screen. No menus, just text.

[D'Espice]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

@D'Espice
Oooook, I guess that settles that. I didn't know about your LaTeX aversion, mea culpa.
As you can imagine (I'm a mathematical physicist after all), I basically love it and use it from presentations to letters and scientific papers.

Just to throw another piece of LaTeX at you: you can use LaTeX from a WYSIWYG environment as well. Check out LyX and Ulysses. Ulysses completely hides LaTeX from you and is aimed at authors and writers. It basically gives you a typewriter interface if you wish with just a black and white screen. No menus, just text.

I know Ulysses... didn't know it was LaTeX though but that's not the point. Ulysses is great because it hides LaTeX from the user and gives them a simple interface with no distractions at all (which I have to admit can be very helpful sometimes). Imagine a writer having to deal with cryptic tags and whatnots
Oh and I tried LyX but somehow didn't like it... it's still ugly somehow and I didn't fully understand what I needed to do so at some point I gave up.

But thanks a lot for your effort I really appreciate it. I hope I didn't offend you in some way with my reaction, it's just that I've grown allergic to LaTeX

PS: Rumor has it that Mellel 2.1 will support full screen writing with no toobars, buttons, etc. - just like Ulysses