I used Nisus Writer (the old one) for my doctoral thesis and book and before NW Pro for Intel came out I used Mellel and contributed to their beta. Both developers have always been very helpful and friendly. Now I am happily using NWP (even for most of my Word doc collaborations in the office), but I have not had to really pound the Aramaic/Hebrew/Syriac/Right-to-Left capabilities. Today I received a query from a colleague and wanted to throw this out to you all. Any advice for my friend?
I could use some advice on using Nisus vs Mellel on a Mac and which unicode font work best – I am editing a 900 page book on textual criticism by Dominique Barthelemy that has Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, and Arabic fonts on almost every page as well as textual criticism symbols and characters. I have used Nisus in the past and am trying Mellel now but have found it hard to learn. Now I am faced with a choice between Nisus Writer Pro and Mellel and which font to select as the main font of the book and which fonts /electronic texts for the biblical texts (I use Accordance). I’d be grateful for any advice you could give me.
I look forward to the responses because this summer I begin in earnest my Targum Ruth project, including a transcription so I will be needing the same requirements.
One thought on “Mac User Advice – Nisus Writer or Mellel?”
Ok, this is an old thread, still I write an answer. I tested both Mellel and Nisus and would recommend Nisus Writer Pro.
The main difference is the text-engine; Mellel has its own, Nisus uses the one from OS X. While this could have been an advantage for Mellel five years ago, today’s OS X text engine gives superior typography (just look at the kerning in justified text, placement of types).
Then featurewise Nisus is stronger, I suspect because they don’t need to invest resources into the development of an own engine – they simply let apple do this job.
The UI is a matter of taste; I prefer Nisus, because it’s more customisable and somehow more “mac-like”, easy to understand. Mellel is a bit harder to learn but very efficient.
File-format: Nisus saves natively in RTF, and that’s a big deal. It’s somehow “more open” than Mellel in this regard. If you want to share your work go with Nisus. Mellel seems to struggle with exporting into other formats, and with its own format you won’t come far…