I regret very much that there is no forum where my “letter” can be shared and discussed with others. I love Ulysses! Ulysses is excellent and I want to use it as my main writing tool! (Like Odysseus I have tied myself to the mast and thus I am able to resist all temptations by other competing and impressive applications.) But I am getting increasingly annoyed by and worried about the developers’ tendency to offer shiny objects instead of developing Ulysses into the powerful writing tool for serious writing. Some may know I recently switched to Mac and I've been working through word processing issues, in preparation for typing very large files, in the thousands and thousands of pages.Basic academic writing, Markdown and Ulysses Not that I have anything against it, I just can't afford the time and money for everything. I'm surprised to report that I find Word for Mac 2016 to be the most stable and efficient processor for these long documents, presently approaching 2500 pages. I know about the Hebrew problems with previous Word for Mac versions. So I have to say I picked the most opportune time to switch - the new version of Word in Mac works as well as the ones I used in Windows, which solved Hebrew and rtl problems in 2003.Īt first I was annoyed by Word 2016 because it didn't recognize the Ezra SIL kbd as a Hebrew or rtl one. I solved that with Ukelele - I imported the Hebrew QWERTY kbd and modified it to the SIL one. Now it works perfectly, and even acts like Mellel Hebrew with rt justification - the cursor goes rtl in Word in Hebrew keyboards, wraps correctly, and the Mac keyboard shortcut to return to the previous keyboard works in Word. You can also easily switch fonts with one click macros in Word. Cut and paste of Unicode or any font works perfectly. And the huge files, if you convert or save them as. docx, load quickly and edit like small files do. I have to say I experienced typing lag in version 15.29, so I loaded 15.31 today via the Insider Program, and that is fixed. Holmstedt said he preferred Libre Office, but I've experienced a few glitches with it, including toolbar items disappearing after switching between Hebrew and English fonts, and alignment issues - having to pick the opposite to get what you want, picking left for right alignment and vice versa. This is ok if you stay in LO, but not ok if you convert to a Word or rtf document. I also know others prefer Mellel or Nissus. I have Mellel, but I find it more cumbersome to use than Word, because Word is already familiar to me.Įverything cuts and pastes into Word perfectly, with the exception of Acc, but there are two workarounds - Paste Special. And, I'm sure these workarounds won't be needed for long.Īs RTF, or copying and pasting from Acc Notes. When it comes to citations, I've always done what Dr. Holmstedt switched to, I just copy and paste from a long running file - I just write these once and cut and paste. To me it's just as fast as learning another program. Besides, I find Scrivener just as useful for filing pdfs and citations, and I am moving towards Scrivener for future citation needs.Īnyways, its fwiw, but I'm surprised at how well Word works. So Word might be worth another look now that Hebrew works well in it. I've used every version of Word on the Mac since Word 6, which was released in 1994 (and every version of Word for Windows since v. Word has not always been my primary word processor on either platform but I've always had a current copy. On the Mac, I used Mellel for a while because of the Hebrew issue. I also used Pages for a while as my primary, too, thinking that since it was from Apple, it would work best on their OS. Not so much, they tend to neglect apps for a very long time until they finally update them or abandon them. The greatest consideration for me in a word processor is the necessity to open my files years from now. I have documents from the late '80s that I still need to open now and then (I've converted all of them at this point).
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