Yes I agree this is a serious problem. Mellel handles citations really well. It works with both Sente and Bookends. I have been using Scrivener just to get the text down and semi-organized. Once I have the text I export as .rtf (Scrivener supports this easy) and open in Mellel. At this point I work in Mellel to complete the draft, Scrivener acts more like a drafting place. If you are going to do this you can actually write the citation in Scrivener and when it goes over to Mellel, Mellel will convert. For example in Mellel whatever is between {} it turned into a citation, so, when I am working in Scrivener I use these as well, and when it goes over to Mellel, Mellel knows this is a citation. But this is a bit labor intensive, only worth it for really long documents. As a side note, I was told by the developer of Scrivener that he was planning on adding in Sente support.

What would kill Scrivener for me is the lack of any citation support or the ability to directly integrate with a bibliography manger such as Bookends or Endnote.

One to avoid: Papyrus Word. Good enough when installed, but expensive. Installing and updating are a nightmare, and they are tardy communicators. I finally tossed it out.

Whatever hegemony it may have, I’m REALLY fond of Word 2007 (not so much earlier versions) and while I have it via Parallels I really don’t like working outside the primary environment of my computer since I make such use of Devonthink and such.

Finding a good alternative has been tough. OpenOffice is not really up for primetime in Mac yet. Word 2004 bites. But I did try Scrivner, Mellel and Nisus Writer Express.

I really liked the idea of Scrivner, but a lot of its features I was already doing in DevonThink or Yojimbo or Curio (for organizing a paper.) Adding another that wasn’t a primary editing tool didn’t seem wise nor cost-efficient.

I played with Mellel – but it just didn’t do a lot for me. It used such a strange setup that I spent more time than I really like trying to figure out how to do something. I probably, however, would have spent more time on it except that I then tried Nisus Writer Express – which I liked a lot. The style controls are right there, which is something I use a lot, and the controls were very much what I’m used to. It also saves everything into an RTF, which is great for popping it into DT afterwards.

Assume you are going to use that source material to inform your ‘paper’.

Now use ADD to start a new file in the same DRAFT folder. This will the ‘PAPER I am writing’.

Now get both of them up in a vertical split.

Then fire up the INSPECTOR – you can choose notes in the inspector – very useful for research.

Then click the green button at the top of the visible panel (top left of screen). It should space the vertical panes properly – fiddle with the space dot to make adjustments.

Now you should have your research files in the ‘BINDER’ panel on the left. Your source in the vertical panel next to the Binder, then the PAPER you are writing, then a notes panel. The notes panel is related to whatever file you click. It could be a ’source notes panel or a ‘paper’ notes panel.

When you see this layout you will instantly grasp how it can be used by students – or any academic – wanting to write a paper using a myriad of sources.

Oh, of course, the files in the BINDER can be coloured for even more clarity when you group them. For example all blue files are text resources, all pink are media files, all green a paper related etc.

Dr. Patrick Maher