[Cody Dawg]

Mellel word processor is supposedly the best Mac word processor in the world.

Anyone use it?

Why do you prefer it - or prefer something else?

A friend of mine in Los Angeles swears by it.

[SSharon]

The only person I know that uses it full time uses it because it handles foriegn languages better than Word does. I tried it for a few weeks, but went back to Word for compatibility.

[Spook E]

the ugly heavy metal appearance is a real turn off for me, if had the unified look i may have given it a bit more of a go than i did, but it just didnt feel right somehow.

Shame, as word v.x is a dog on tiger, keeps crashing and carrying on.

[Railroader]

Never heard of it. I'll check it out in a few days.

[lavar78]

Yeah, it's supposed to be the best at handling foreign languages. I checked it out a year or so ago.

[Doofy]

TextEdit does me (although I have Word).

[Cadaver]

Originally Posted by Spook E

the ugly heavy metal appearance is a real turn off for me, if had the unified look i may have given it a bit more of a go than i did, but it just didnt feel right somehow.

Shame, as word v.x is a dog on tiger, keeps crashing and carrying on.

An Aqua "skin" is now an option.
I bought it, but generally don't use it any more - I've found the style (sheets) to be a bit combersome for me (but then again, I'm from the old school of "Font, Format, Style" instead of style sheets).
For a Word-alternative, I like Nisus Writer Express. Not even close to a Word-killer, but for basic word processing, it does a good job and has a nice OS X cocoa interface. And End Note can parse its documents as it uses standard RTF as its file format.
Pages isn't bad either, IMHO. I rewrote my curriculum vitae in Pages (from Word) and it came out very nicely. Easy to do the heavy formatting/indentation, etc., and didn't second guess me like Word does. End Note, however, cannot parse native Pages documents.
Appleworks needs to be killed.

[zizban]

I use TextEdit, since it has all the features I need to just get down and type. Before I submit my stuff, I import it into Word and reformat it, adding things like page numbers, etc.

I am waiting for the next update to Publicon from Wolfram. It is very nice but the fonts aren't anti-aliased and look terrible on my big LCD screen. The next update is going to fix this.

[wataru]

My ex uses it a lot.

Personally, anything I can't do in TextEdit I do in LaTeX.

[Chuckit]

I sure wish we had a forum for discussion of applications like this.

[Sir Arthur Dent]

I'm sure she has a great reason why the thirty threads about this in the software forum don't paint a clear enough picture.

[rickey939]

Wow, I've never heard of it. I'm such a n00b.

[Salty]

I still prefer Pages.

[Mr Heliums]

Originally Posted by Cody Dawg

Why do you prefer it - or prefer something else?

I use Nisus Writer Express exclusively, simply because it works the way I work. Nisus must be one of the longest-standing word-processing alternatives to Word.

[Randman]

Nissus can't be too good if you leave words off.

I've used Pages recently and it's not bad. TextEdit is improved in Tiger. And Word is still a good app despite it being M$.

[Gee4orce]

The greatest thing in Mellel are he indent tabs - why does nobody else do this ? Basically, they allow you to create a tab that, when the lines wraps around, also indents the next line to match. So simple, and it avoids that age-old problem where you're typing and the line wraps and you have to hit return and tab in the next line to match, etc, etc. Brilliant.

[budster101]

I like Pages.

[Atomic Rooster]

Shouldn't this be in the Applications forum.

I notice these kind of things happening more and more.

[jebjeb]

Originally Posted by Gee4orce

The greatest thing in Mellel are he indent tabs - why does nobody else do this ? Basically, they allow you to create a tab that, when the lines wraps around, also indents the next line to match. So simple, and it avoids that age-old problem where you're typing and the line wraps and you have to hit return and tab in the next line to match, etc, etc. Brilliant.

Sorry if I misunderstand you, but you can do this in Word as well - not sure about Textedit as I am not in front of a Mac at the moment but it is similar in most word processors with a top ruler.

Look at the top ruler in Word. On the left hand side you have your indent controllers. They look like two sort of triangles/pointers pointing at each other vertically. There is then a small box undernear the two triangles.

If you drag the top triangle to the right along your ruler you will get a 1st line indent. This will only indent the first line of the paragraph.

If you drag the bottom triangle the little box underneath it will move with it. If you drag this across the ruler you will make a hanging indent. This indents all but the 1st line of a paragraph.

Now, if you drag the little box under the two triangles, this will do a full indent (both the triangles will move with the box) which will mean that when you press enter (carriage return), the insertion cursor will go to the next line but pre-indented to the marker.

Appologies if you already knew this.

[Love Calm Quiet]

What's so tough to beat about Word is its compactness. If you just install it with the entire Office suite, the whole caboodle takes up only 514MB.

[ism]

I use Mellel a bit at home. The developers seem very responsive and the Mellel users are very helpful. I find the interface quite clean (not necessarily pretty). Mellel 2 is out soon with a host of new features

[chris v]

I like Nisus pretty well for typing, though if I realy want to format something nicely, I do it in InDesign.

AppleWorks is just horrid.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by wataru

Personally, anything I can't do in TextEdit I do in LaTeX.

Ditto without the TextEdit part
I basically do everything in LaTeX, CD labels, papers, thesis, talks, but then again, is there another way to create documents with lots of formulas which are to be typeset nicely?

Other than that, I think I would be using either Pages or Nisus Writer Express.