The company behind the program, Redlex has produced regular and well conceived updates since its introduction in 2002. I have used Mellel since 2004, and remain a very happy customer. As an authorised developer, no tricks are required to open the Mellel installer. The trial version unfortunately watermarks output. A fully featured 30 day trial download is available. Academic pricing is available from the company website store. Mellel is reasonably priced and is available from or Apple’s app stores. Output formats include plaintext, RTF, Word, OPML, PDF and of course, printing. Mellel includes iCloud support and a very competent iOS/iPad version is available, so documents can be edited anywhere. The program also allows multiuser editing with change tracking and annotations. In typical Mac style, Mellel’s toolbar can be user configured, allowing a variety of commonly used tools to always be in quick mousing range. Users can also create their own templates with as little or as much detail as desired. While it is possible to simply start a new blank document and begin typing or dictating (I routinely use it with Dragon or OSX's built in speech-to-text, a slightly watered down version of Dragon), Mellel comes with more than 35 document templates, ranging from envelopes to scripts, including a variety of journal article formats. Other features include palette or keyboard based styles controls addressing character, paragraph, list, section, page and table management.

I have used it for academic papers, and several academic and nonacademic book length projects. It’s academic orientation gives it features like bibliographic links to the staples Bookends or Sente, and superb footnote and endnote management, but it is also a fine general-purpose wordprocessor, equally capable in the home office or small business setting. A mature staple in the academic world, Mellel, a superbly versatile program that is also multi-language capable (including Arabic, Greek, and Hebrew).

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