Mellel 2.2 adds better citation support
Since switching to an Intel Mac right after Macworld 2006 I've been trying to move away from Microsoft Word on my system, both because I don't like running a PPC app, and because I wanted to escape from Word itself, which I've often found to be ridiculously frustrating (two words: widows and orphans). Given the fact that Word Docs are more or less a de facto standard in academia (in the humanities, at least), it's not possible to get away from it altogether. However, I have started writing my professional papers with Mellel, a powerful, if quirky, word processor from RedleX. Mellel was originally designed to work with Hebrew (and other right to left languages) which have traditionally been under-supported in word processing programs. However, it has grown into a full featured word processor that produces beautiful documents, especially documents that mix different languages with different alphabets. That is, it can produce beautiful documents, if you can bring yourself to understand and effectively use its unique text style and auto-titling systems.
The newest release, version 2.2, adds support for more advanced "bibliography integration" and citation management. Mellel can be a useful tool for producing extremely polished final documents, but I've found that you really do have to spend some time with the software (particularly if you're coming from Word) in order to make the best use of it.
Mellel sells for $49 (though an education license is available for $34.99) and a 30 day demo is available.
[Via MacMegasite]
