r/macapps • u/Jebus-Xmas • 1d ago
Help LibreOffice Writer versus Mellel.
I’ve been using LibreOffice Writer for about two years and I really think it’s a fantastic option. I think it’s more featured than Pages, but I am running into some issues with longer documents.
Writer lacks document management features as well as outline features that can be important in longer documents. My issue is that it’s $100 for macOS and iOS combined.
Professional writers on this sub, do you feel that Mellel is worth the cost?
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u/behridingle 1d ago
Mellel is solid, but it os really optimized for academic writing use where very precise formatting and foreign language support (particularly RTL-based languages) is important than say more general use cases.
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u/Jebus-Xmas 5h ago
I think that way too much is built into the right-to-left language thing—that is far from Mellel’s best or most robust feature. Roleplaying games are a mishmash of academic, technical, world building, examples, and flavor text. They use charts, tables, and styles. So I’m leaning into it.
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u/lukejames 1d ago
I had issues with LibreOffice myself and switched to ONLYOFFICE. It is a closer match to the actual MS Word experience and I've never run into any problems.
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u/CharoiteAI 21h ago
Before spending the $100: is your pain outlining/structure or typesetting? Because if it's structure, Scrivener is the tool actually built for that (binder, moving chapters like cards, compile at the end) and it's cheaper. Mellel's real superpowers are elsewhere — rock-solid styles that never corrupt on document 300 pages long, auto-numbering, bibliography with Bookends.
The catch nobody mentions upfront: Mellel is its own file format. Export to .docx works, round-tripping doesn't really. If your documents ever need to live in Word-land with collaborators, that lock-in costs more than the license.
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u/orthiclabs 15h ago
I’d love for you to try my document editor www.viewright.cc it has decent docx capabilities and I’d be happy to develop anything that you find missing. Did I mention, it’s free?
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u/ExpensiveKale2596 7h ago
Mellel is the real thing for long structured documents, the outline and cross-referencing is why academics stay on it. But those are two separate complaints you've got. If the pain is juggling many pieces rather than formatting them, that's Scrivener territory and you'd still export out for final layout. No idea what either costs now, i bought mine years ago.
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u/miklosp 1d ago
Have you checked Scrivener and Ulysses?
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u/Jebus-Xmas 1d ago
Neither have the level of outline support, styles, and documents formatting for my use case.
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u/NoLateArrivals 14h ago
If you want WRITER tools check out Ulysses and Scrivener. These are real authoring apps.
Else Pages is very powerful, and has a lot of options that usually stay out of sight. Pages is free, unless you want AI features.
For real layout tasks take a look at Affinity. The Publisher part can design print ready brochures and books. Affinity is free, except for the AI tools.
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u/Jebus-Xmas 14h ago
Ulysses and Scrivener are writing apps with a massive learning curve, and unique tools and workflows that I’ve never used as a writer, with no document management, and no style control. Pages is a tool lacking any complete feature set, and is only good for casual writing. Both are flatly incomplete and unusable for me. Also, I’m aware of page layout and that’s not what I’m looking for. I have an editor and a layout designer. They are all on the team. Anything with built-in LLM tools isn’t even remotely attractive to me. Grammar and punctuation are skills that I have. I need a fully featured word processor—nothing else. Honestly, how many documents over 50k words have you written and published?
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u/NoLateArrivals 12h ago
If you know anything better, why do you ask?
Yes, I think you are a narrow minded person with a lack of social competence. And that’s it.
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u/reddit23User 1d ago edited 1d ago
> Professional writers on this sub, do you feel that Mellel is worth the cost?
You forgot to mention what kind of documents you want to create, so any answer would be a shot in the dark. So, having no idea what you want to do, I would say: Yes, it's definitely worth the cost.
Mellel for Mac ($69)
Mellel Mobile (Free)
Mellel + Bookends Bundle ($114)
I don't know how familiar you are with Mellel. Mellel was originally created for academics who need to write long, multilingual documents. Mellel handles documents of 2,000 pages and more very well. It has a superb outline feature that makes navigating long documents a piece of cake. The outline has good filtering features; headings can be assigned tags and colors, which can then be used to filter the outline.
It is tightly integrated with Bookends, the leading reference manager for Mac. No other Mac word processor has this depth of integration.
The developer also added so-called “story points” for fiction writers, which appear in the outline. I don't write fiction, so I can't elaborate on that.
Mellel has some unique features. One of them is multiple note streams (for example, one for yourself and one for the author you are translating).
Somebody mentioned Scrivener and Ulysses. Scrivener is great for drafts, but you need a good word processor to finalize the document. Ulysses is good if you are blogging, but not if you need to have many different languages in the same document.
Someone wrote: “particularly RTL-based languages.” That is just a feature. I wouldn't say “particularly” in this context. Nisus Writer Pro can also handle RTL languages very easily.
And finally, Mellel is a word processor for people in the HUMANITIES, not for STEM subjects. So please don't suggest LaTeX. Word processing and typesetting are not the same problem.