nisus.com

Thank you for the detailed exploration of Mellel. For my use, the advantages it offers are better typography and better management of titles/variables/internal references.

As far as I can see, a better management of variables is not true. And what ‘variables’ are you talking about? Page Variables? Or Document Variables?

In Nisus, you easily insert ‘variables’ from the Insert menu > Document Property, and you can insert as many as you like, whereas Mellel allows you to insert only 20. So I don’t understand your statement.

I don't care much what the vendors define as variables. There are three kinds in my world:

what the program manages with built-in code. Mellel's auto titles do a good job here. I believe they are inspired by FrameMaker. No one does the one I have need for constantly: let me refer to a footnote number. as in "while footnote 47 notes Peirce's ..." But in the good old days I could wrote a book that referred to itself and its structure better than we can now.

what the user can define. Neither does a good job here. The number you can define is irrelevant. I'd like to specify an executive summary through my document as ledes in certain paragraphs and/or invisibly highlighted text and have them serialised where each has a value of the text of the next.

what we can insert and be calculated or evaluated by the code supplemented by macros. This is where tinderbox has a massive advantage as any variable (they call them attributes) has presence in a robust macro language, and separately in a similarly robust export/publication language. The user can define any number across all the common types. Unless I am missing something, Nisus has only one part of this in a relatively more limited macro language that can access real programs, but no way for the document to 'call' a macro.

It only takes a few minutes for you to start thinking about how this can be used. The chapter I am writing now makes passing reference to a discussion group where a very advanced topic is being discussed and has been for years. It would be great for me to define an area that says "nLab has discussed (blah) for 6 years now with (blah) different perspectives characterised by (blah), and most recently the concept of (blah) was introduced by (blah)(reference)"

Or if you want to stick with plain old valuables: Figure 3 shows a bar chart of known and presumed paid Russian operatives in the Trump campaign as of (November 2016, November 2020, and <<today>>) (notes on source and methodology, also computed).

So, I think auto title management by itself is enough to attract some folks to Mellel from Nisus. I also might use the OT extensions. But it is not compelling enough to toss the other advantages of Nisus.