Into the Wild Spaces

A friend introduced me to a word processor I've come to like quite a bit. Mellel is a cocoa app whose designers have taken the opportunity to rethink how writers write. It's not a knock-off of Microsoft Word, but rather emphasizes style consistency, instant visual feedback as you change margins, and much much more. Not bad for a piece of software that costs less than a meal. And the whole thing is designed with scholars and researchers in mind. My review of it is here.

Mellel interfaces seamlessly with a useful piece of bibliography software called Bookends, and if you purchase them both you'll get a discount. Bookends is a mini-database that deals with references in academic papers and can output bibliographies and references in dozens of formats. And you can just as easily create new formats of your own. Add top-notch support from the team that programmed it, something that too often goes overlooked by the bigger software firms these days. The best part is its support for BibTeX, which means I can use it just as easily when I'm writing LaTeX documents as when I'm using Mellel.

I like keeping my hands on the keyboard, and try to use the mouse or trackpad as little as possible. Quicksilver lets me do that, implementing what Alt-F2 does on a Linux desktop. Except it does much much more than that. Quicksilver keeps track of which documents you're using and allows you to manipulate files and programs with ease. You can use the beta versions for free, but they expire after a certain time period. Looks like the final product will not be downloadable without paying first.

Jedit is a top-notch text editor available on Mac OS X as well as other platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, and more) thanks to its Java underpinnings. It's the first program I load on my computers and the software I used to write the 2nd edition of Moon Handbooks: Nicaragua (2005). Read my manual on using Jedit for coding ATP book manuscripts here.

The best word processor I've ever found for creative writing doesn't come out of Redmond, Washington. It's called Copywrite and it was built with the creative writer's workflow in mind. Versioning, multiple files, global search and replace, but most importantly an interface that helps you focus on your words, not your software all make this a phenomenally productive environment. Copywrite was so good I bought a second Mac on which to use it (Read my review here).

I began working seriously on the Wood-Briceño family tree a year after Ericka and I got married, writing the book chapters with LaTeX but developing the charts and tree diagrams using ftree on Linux. When I switched to the Mac I found Reunion did everything I needed it to and many things I hadn't thought of. It includes a graphical editor for fine-tuning charts, exports clean GEDCOM files, and offers a nice interface for organizing data. Its competition is slicker graphically but lacked some advanced features I've come to love.

I discovered Chronosync when I was looking for a way to keep the files on my laptop synchronized with my desktop - something I am meticulous about. Chronosync provides customizable routines for dealing with the differences between computers - forcing one machine to mirror the other, adding but not subtracting files, subtracting but not adding, and many more subtle variations. It even provides a mechanism to deal with synchronization on a periodic basis. Combine this powerful functionality with the Mac's ability to connect the two computers over a firewire cable, avoiding networks altogether, and you have a powerful tool for dealing with multiple machines.

OmniOutliner came with my Powerbook G4, I didn't choose it. But as I grew familiar with it OmniOutliner became my preferred application for note taking. Hierarchical outlines suit note taking in the academic world, and using keyboard shortcuts I was able to work quickly and methodically without taking my fingers from the keyboard, something I appreciate (The newer version of OmniOutliner permits rich text functions I don't need, so I did not upgrade). Rich text and plain text export functionality sealed the deal for me - no data lock in (note: the Omni group have just released project management - Gantt chart - software, filling another long-missing Mac software niche with aplomb).

I am a database junkie and have refined my knowledge of databases over the course of six years building and running databases. Filemaker is the second most expensive piece of software I've ever used but it's worth it. It made simple work out of activities that took me a long time to deal with using Rekall, a Linux database front end, and provided easy search and replace mechanisms that made my life a lot easier. The Linux way forced me to learn SQL, which I appreciate, but Filemaker makes simple work of building, running, backing up, and maintaining my databases.

TeX and LaTeX remain an important part of the scientific community and my own writing, including my genealogy work. TeXshop lacks the intense editor toolbox that emacs/auctex provide, all of which I miss. But it adds a nice Carbon working environment and easy PDF preview ability, which make LaTeXing on the Macintosh a really easy experience with things like Apple's native file dialog, spotlight integration, and all that other Mac goodness.

Opera is the only web browser I can stand to use on Windows, and I love it on Linux too. So it made perfect sense to use it on the Mac as well. Opera's speed, convenience, keyboard shortcuts, fast searching, browser tabs, and other features like integrated RSS feed reading and the M2 mail client make it a great experience on my iMac desktop. Furthermore, being able to export and import bookmarks from one machine to another (Windows-Linux-Mac) is a huge advantage to me. My only complaint is that the function key shortcuts aren't so convenient on my powerbook where you need to use the Fn key to access the functions, making two key sequences into three key sequences.

Guitar is my other big hobby, and lately I've been transcribing my favorites into sheet music or tab. Easier said than done on any platform, but on the Mac until recently you had Sibelius, which was a professional grade and extremely expensive package, or Finale, which was cumbersome and quirky. On Linux there's Lilypond, which was, not surprisingly, extremely difficult to decipher. Suddenly, Sibelius came out with G7 Kontakt, a music transcription program built just for guitarists, with tab, ASCII tab import, MIDI, and a very intuitive and slick interface. I am impressed, and it's been great for my music.

As an engineer, I spend a lot of time managing projects with Gantt charts, so when OmniGroup came out with a project management tool for the Mac I had to give it a try. In short, it's lacking a bit of the functionality of Microsoft Project, but is more useable, easier to work with, and more intuitive than the competition in ways that matter. And it gets me one step closer to being able to abandon Windows at work.

For writers, there are times when only an emacs variant will do. And on the Mac, I'm hard pressed to find a variant more useful than Aquamacs, which does an admirable job of blending Mac OS X usability with Emacs functionality. It's not for everybody, but it integrates with AucTex, so I am hooked.

For some good insight into why the Palm platform (and all those Palm Pilots) has all but disappeared, have a peek at their synchronization software, which in my opinion was lousy and difficult to use. Getting my Tungsten E2 to sync with my Mac required Missing Sync, which was worth its weight in gold Good riddance, Palm-whatever-you-call-yourself-these-days.

I spend a lot of time FTPing files back and forth around the net, and when I need something a little friendlier than the command line, I use Cyberduck, which is powerful but free (feel at ease providing a payment anyway; good software isn't cheap to make). The fact that so many people don't know what FTP is is indicative of the ills of today's Net.

Page Sender allows you to send faxes from your desktop, very useful and truly the better way to go. I've always hated fax machines and frequently have trouble using them. And now they're history: it's as easy as sending a page to your printer.

Mine was the Usenet generation, and provided you've got a good news server (I use AIOE.org) there are still lots of reasons to stay connected there. Unison is more geared towards file downloaders, but its handling of message threads is also unique and innovative and I love it.