MetaCatholic

My first musings about choosing between another PC or a Mac got some helpful comments. I hope you, dear reader, will continue to help me out. Deciding on laptop only, or desktop + laptop is clearly a more finely balanced question than I had thought. I suspect (as I said in a comment there) that I will need to put this hardware question on the shelf for the time being. Perhaps as I explore other aspects of the question, the answer to the hardware one will become a bit easier.

The other question I am going to bracket out for now is the OS one. Obviously it’s a big issue for some people, and each of Windows and OS X have their points. However, in the total “war of religion” attitude that so often pervades the debate, I suspect that the sound and fury is inversely proportional to the amount of difference between them. The more alike they get, the more zealous their devotees become.

No, as with any computer system, the question that matters most is “What are you going to do with it?”. That, in the end, determines the software, and the software determines the OS (and hardware). In this and subsequent posts, then, I’ll take a look at the various tasks I do / need to do / want to do, and the software available for it. I will be especially grateful if people who have used any application I mention could comment.

First and foremost is the fact that whatever else I do, I end up dealing a lot with words. Nearly all of what I do can be handled by most of the many apps out there. But there’s always that little bit extra that really matters when you want it. In my case that’s bibliographical abilities or integration, good footnote handling and easy multilingual Unicode handling. (If I want to make a document look nice, I send it over to a DTP app.)

The only Windows-only WP that does all of that is, AFAIK, the ubiquitous Word, although versions up to and including 2003 needed an add-in to handle bibliographies. Word 2007 has citation tools built in. The only major commercial competitor, WordPerfect, has failed to make the transition to Unicode. Another alternative, NotaBene, aimed particular at humanities and biblical scholars, has failed to adapt Unicode, but uses a proprietary system. While it seems that some swear by its power, (though it seems a bit geeky to me)  I could never easily (and perhaps here I reveal something of an Apple soul) work with something that ugly. And it is ugly by today’s interface standards.

Unfortunately, according to Chris Heard Word on the Mac has failed to implement the multilingual features Windows users have been taking for granted. Even though there are times when Word irritates me, it has been a constant companion since the days of DOS, but I have found Word 2007 particularly difficult to get along with. No doubt longer acquaintance will accustom me to its ways of working. But if I change to a Mac, I doubt that Word 2008 will be high up my shopping list.

Then there are the open source word processors. While I admit that it’s been getting better and better, I struggle to like OpenOffice. Added to that, as far as the OS X version goes, it’s still not been fully adapted, although it certainly runs okay. Another possibility is AbiWord, which is lean and functional, but a tad unattractive.

When it comes to Mac only word processors, I could do with some advice. There are, it seems, two main general-purpose ones: Nisus Writer which comes in an Express and Pro version, and Mellel. The former seems to be elegantly easy to use, and the latter idiosyncratic, but powerful. Based on what I’ve read I must confess to liking the look of both, but think that Mellel has more of what I’m looking for, and some features I don’t think exist in quite the same powerful way on any Windows word processor. The other feature that makes it attractive is what looks like excellent integration with two different bibliographical packages, Bookends and Sente. Of the two, Sente looks a little bit more like my ideal bibliographic software. Again though, I’m only going on the publicity: I don’t know anyone who uses them, so I can’t try them out.

If I stay with a PC, Word 2007 is the obvious option. I do find myself wondering, however, if here Mellel and Sente may offer a more useful combination. I don’t think there’s a lot in this one: swings and roundabouts really. If any users of any of the aforementioned software stumble by, I’d be really pleased to hear from you.