Macintosh Word Processing

Word processor. Think about it for a second, it sounds like something done with words, maybe changing their forms or something.

We all know, though, that “word processing” really means “typing on the computer”; computers can be great tools for writing, and “word processors” are the way they usually do it. If you do any amount of writing, you use some kind of word processing application, especially if your finished product has any amount of formatting. We’re going to take a quick look at three word processors.

We’ll also be honest and say we have no problem showing our extreme Macintosh bias here. This is not all out comparison, just some impressions and personal recommendations.

First on the list but not in many other ways is Microsoft Word. It is, without a doubt, the market leader. We doubt it would be, though, but for the fact that it is the Microsoft entry in the field and there’s little competition.

The product is old, and has been showing its age for some time. All of us have to use it from time to time, and a common comment is “it doesn’t feel stable” which is not a good thing despite frequent saves.

The user interface is like Troy: layer upon layer upon layer. It seems like nothing was ever discarded. Some functions appear to be in several places, and others are buried like Priam’s treasure.

Microsoft talks about their “suite” of “office products” (presumably Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) but their interfaces aren’t the same, and integration between them is not that good. The most useful feature of Word is the ability to comment on documents. That’s very useful in a collaborative environment.

There are some people who keep a copy of Word around for just that and nothing else. Second and next is Mariner Software’s Mariner Write.

This is a Macintosh-specific product. This product seems very close in spirit to the original MacWrite, with a very intuitive user interface; you could certainly get to work in Mariner Write without spending any time with the manual. Even though it is not as feature‑laden as Word, it does have some very nice capabilities, such as almost complete control over case, linefeeds, and leading and trailing spaces.

Extra credit is given for Mariner Write’s sister product, Mariner Calc, which is a very viable alternative to Microsoft Excel. These products perform many basic “office” functions at a much lower cost than the Microsoft alternatives and without many of the attendant problems.

Third and last, but certainly not least, is Mellel. This is also a Macintosh-specific product. It has a brushed metal look with a floating menu palette that is flexible and intuitive.

This another product you can use without spending a lot of time with the manual. Mellel has many, but not too many features. It offers specialist support for foreign languages (including right-to-left languages such as Hebrew and Arabic), and academic features such as bibliographies and endnotes. Mellel is robust enough to handle VERY long documents.

It uses a proprietary file format, but supports various import and export operations so that communication with other products (including Microsoft Word) is not a problem. This article, as well as some of the other content on this blog, was written with Mellel; one of the contributors does a lot of writing, and does almost all of it in Mellel.

Strictly as a matter of personal preference, Mellel wins for the Macintosh with Mariner Write coming in second. In the world of Windows, there are very few choices if you just can’t bring yourself to use Word, is that, perhaps, a compelling argument to switch to the Macintosh?