Existing users, 
 Mariner Write - 3.9Powerful, fast word processor. |
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Feedback Summary:
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| Overall Rating: | Not rated (0.0) | Features: | Not rated (0.0) | Support: | Not rated (0.0) |
| Ease of Use: | Not rated (0.0) | Quality / Stability: | Not rated (0.0) | Price: | Not rated (0.0) |
Key to Types of Feedback:
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Commentary 
Featured Reviews
Swell - Version: 3.9, 11/9/2009 01:48AM PST
RoyPDX
Another application that dumps Tiger support. Is this really necessary?
Most Recent Replies: View All 1 Replies
- Gain = Full Leopard & Snow Leopard Support
Excellent - Version: 3.8, 10/8/2008 08:51PM PST
(1 of 1 users found this comment useful)
morepowerfulastronaut
This is an excellent little word processor. It has just the right amount of features and manages to avoid bloat. It’s even got bulleted lists, which is unusual for a lightweight word processor.
Still No Joy - Version: 3.8, 6/17/2008 01:49AM PST
sohateme
This software is NOT ready for prime time. I'd love to say otherwise, but, for now, I'm still stuck with MS Word. Haven't tried Apples equivalent, yet.
This version (3.8) is just as bad as the last one. I open a formatted MS Word ".doc" and all the formatting is scrambled.
It happened with all but the most basically (or not-at-all) formatted files.
Useless for me. Sorry
This version (3.8) is just as bad as the last one. I open a formatted MS Word ".doc" and all the formatting is scrambled.
It happened with all but the most basically (or not-at-all) formatted files.
Useless for me. Sorry
Mariner's spam - Version: 3.7.1, 2/20/2006 07:10AM PST
(1 of 6 users found this comment useful)
walterchillum
Late last year I was testing some word processors to replace Appleworks. This was one of the products. Alas I chose another application but I have not been able to get off Mariner's mailing list. I have contacted them on two separate occasions and their only response was to send me more useless information about their products. Do not have anything to do with this company as they are spammers.
Most Recent Replies: View All 2 Replies
Write gave me back my ability to write ... 
- Version: 3.7, 7/17/2005 03:06PM PST
(9 of 11 users found this comment useful)
diakeuast
Due to a progressive handicap which affects my ability to type, and the medication I must take, which affects my ability to remember things, I was a in a position where I could no longer use any but the simplest means of typing. I was down to Apple's TextEdit, a fine little note taker, but not what I as a professional, published, writer could really utilize. I'd look at Word and the others and it was like trying to understand something foreign.
Then I remembered Write. I have used it off and on for several years and always liked it, but it wasn't something a "real writer" would consider. Boy was I ever wrong.
I downloaded and tried the latest version and all of a sudden I was able to utilize my creativity again. It takes less RAM, less space, and yet does everything the "big guys" do and does it in such a way a child could use it easily and not only understand but remember HOW to do so.
I am now in a financial position where I can no longer afford any software, but Write gave me back so much of my life that God provided me a copy through the kindness of an extraordinary company, and, when my pain and meds will allow me to use the computer, I am able to write again. Writing is like a lot of other things. If you don't use it, you tend to lose it. I thought it was the medication, but no, I'm creating again. Stories and poems that get better the more I'm able to exercise that ol' writing muscle.
I'll never know if I would have discovered all the wonderful aspects of this fantastic WP without my illness, but I do know I would have been the worse for it. It's clean and simple, does everything anyone could want, and has yet to freeze on me. If I had money for every piece of software I want, Write would be the only WP I would have on my hard drive.
Try it, I'm betting that if you're not a snob who has to have Word with all its security issues, RAM wallop, and so many fancy doodads that you need to have a little helper there to help you remember, you'll love Write as much as I do. And don't worry, you can translate those others.
Sincerely,
Joan M. Martin
Then I remembered Write. I have used it off and on for several years and always liked it, but it wasn't something a "real writer" would consider. Boy was I ever wrong.
I downloaded and tried the latest version and all of a sudden I was able to utilize my creativity again. It takes less RAM, less space, and yet does everything the "big guys" do and does it in such a way a child could use it easily and not only understand but remember HOW to do so.
I am now in a financial position where I can no longer afford any software, but Write gave me back so much of my life that God provided me a copy through the kindness of an extraordinary company, and, when my pain and meds will allow me to use the computer, I am able to write again. Writing is like a lot of other things. If you don't use it, you tend to lose it. I thought it was the medication, but no, I'm creating again. Stories and poems that get better the more I'm able to exercise that ol' writing muscle.
I'll never know if I would have discovered all the wonderful aspects of this fantastic WP without my illness, but I do know I would have been the worse for it. It's clean and simple, does everything anyone could want, and has yet to freeze on me. If I had money for every piece of software I want, Write would be the only WP I would have on my hard drive.
Try it, I'm betting that if you're not a snob who has to have Word with all its security issues, RAM wallop, and so many fancy doodads that you need to have a little helper there to help you remember, you'll love Write as much as I do. And don't worry, you can translate those others.
Sincerely,
Joan M. Martin
fast and reliable - Version: 3.7, 4/30/2005 03:09PM PST
(6 of 10 users found this comment useful)
nout
I tried a few word processors, none of them matches Mariner Write.
MS Word:
Good-looking word processor. Big, a lot of features (too much actually), but it requires a big amount of RAM, therefore it's pretty slow in scrolling, saving...it's not very responsive in anything really, when typing you'll notice a delay, words appear on the screen later than you had typed them.
And I don't like the application to do the thinking for me, ofcourse you can uncheck a lot of options in the preference panel, but it takes a while before you know how.
It crashes and freezes randomly...and it's expensive too.
AbiWord:
Great, free word processor. A handsom fellow too, but it doesn't render my personal default font Helvetica smoothly.
When typing there's a delay, when deleting text with some fonts (Helvetica for instance) it leaves artifacts behind and deleting with backspace takes forever.
Although it requires less memory than Word, it's not faster.
The same with Nisus Writer expres which has some font rendering problems too...overall these word processors are too slow and not very responsive.
I like Apple's TextEdit a lot: fast, flexible, but you cannot zoom the window (in page layout view) up to 150% or type a format manually, it goes from 128% (still too small) right up to 200% (too big)
Yes I can alter the screen resolution, using 800 x 600 instead of 1024 x 768, but a word processor must have a feature to alter the size to ones liking.
And then there's Mariner Write (3.6.5).
It's fast, almost as fast as TextEdit, it has a lot of features, more than I will ever use, but some common features I like TextEdit doesn't have, like Bullet, Indent in and out, tables etc.
It has the same beautiful font smoothing as TextEdit, without rendering problems AbiWord and Nisus Writer Express have.
It has a good spelling check and solid thesaurus (although Nisus Thesaurus (download it free!) is superior). It doesn't crash like Word, there isn't a delay when typing text (words appear on the screen at the same time you type them)...It does anything you like with ease and smoothly.
The appearance of the application itself isn't on par with Word or AbiWord, which look a lot sleaker, but who needs a great looking app when it's slow and unreliable?
MS Word:
Good-looking word processor. Big, a lot of features (too much actually), but it requires a big amount of RAM, therefore it's pretty slow in scrolling, saving...it's not very responsive in anything really, when typing you'll notice a delay, words appear on the screen later than you had typed them.
And I don't like the application to do the thinking for me, ofcourse you can uncheck a lot of options in the preference panel, but it takes a while before you know how.
It crashes and freezes randomly...and it's expensive too.
AbiWord:
Great, free word processor. A handsom fellow too, but it doesn't render my personal default font Helvetica smoothly.
When typing there's a delay, when deleting text with some fonts (Helvetica for instance) it leaves artifacts behind and deleting with backspace takes forever.
Although it requires less memory than Word, it's not faster.
The same with Nisus Writer expres which has some font rendering problems too...overall these word processors are too slow and not very responsive.
I like Apple's TextEdit a lot: fast, flexible, but you cannot zoom the window (in page layout view) up to 150% or type a format manually, it goes from 128% (still too small) right up to 200% (too big)
Yes I can alter the screen resolution, using 800 x 600 instead of 1024 x 768, but a word processor must have a feature to alter the size to ones liking.
And then there's Mariner Write (3.6.5).
It's fast, almost as fast as TextEdit, it has a lot of features, more than I will ever use, but some common features I like TextEdit doesn't have, like Bullet, Indent in and out, tables etc.
It has the same beautiful font smoothing as TextEdit, without rendering problems AbiWord and Nisus Writer Express have.
It has a good spelling check and solid thesaurus (although Nisus Thesaurus (download it free!) is superior). It doesn't crash like Word, there isn't a delay when typing text (words appear on the screen at the same time you type them)...It does anything you like with ease and smoothly.
The appearance of the application itself isn't on par with Word or AbiWord, which look a lot sleaker, but who needs a great looking app when it's slow and unreliable?
Most Recent Replies: View All 2 Replies
. . . So Soon? - Version: 3.7, 4/15/2005 09:09PM PST
(0 of 5 users found this comment useful)
zo219
.
Nice but old fashioned 
- Version: 3.7, 3/6/2005 11:03AM PST
(11 of 13 users found this comment useful)
neonlight
I've tried MarinerWrite because i've searched for the best text editing program on the mac (where "best" means the best for my needs, so this is no gerneral rating for everyone).
While the program worked fine and has some nice features (nice drag and drop, columns, mail merge, tables) and is easy to understand and to use, I notice that its base is out of date.
It feels like an OS 9 application and the port to OS X is not nice done. So it looks like the aqua-style buttons, pdf-support and font-smoothing are the only techniques that made it into MarinerWrite in the now nearly 5 years of OS X (not to mention the OS X beta-phase).
There's no unicode support, the toolbar is not customiseable like all other OS X programs, PDF as pictures don't work and the toolbar-icons are dithered 256 colors pictures. If you select some lines of text, it would look terrible because there are white "noise" between the letters and the blue-coloured selection area (compared to TextEdit, Pages, Mellel or NWE). Every dialouge-box pops up with the OS 9 zoom effect and the general userinterface is also not very well developed (editing and configuring tables, preferences)
From a typographer's point of view, there are all of the terrible faux-text-styles of the pre OS X area supported like compressed, extended, shadows and wrong italics (in OS X italics are only shown, if there is a italic version of the selected font installed, MarinerWrite and AppleWorks could make every font italic witch don't look nice). Also the manual is very bad laid-out, so if this application is on the road since the days of OS 8.6, there was a VERY long time, to improve such things, but it seems that nothing has happened (I hadn't tested any older version so there may be some (or some great) improvements but compared to pages, mellel and nisus writer express it seems, that MarinerWrite is some years behind in the terms mentioned above)
Also the table feature is not very impressive. While it works, it could happen, that if you add columns, the table grows so wide, that you couldn't see it entirely and so you couldn't resize it (only if you resize the whole table in the setup dialouge. Also the colour and pattern options to fill the table background with (dotted patterns that should look like semi transparent color areas instead of - for example - real transparency support) are one of the pre OS X indicators.
So to give a conclusion. It works as described and if the features it offers matches your needs, you could use and buy it. I couldn't find big problems or bugs so it get's 4 stars for working like they promise.
But because the developers didn't catch up with a full OS X support (opentype, transparencies, pdf drag and drop...) in nearly 5 years, I think this application will disappear from the stage within 2 years. If you look at the speed at which mellel is being developed (the feature-list of the next 1.9 and 2.0 is very promising) or take the new 1.0 version of Apple's Pages or the (maybe) upcoming Aqua-version of OpenOffice or look at AbiWrite, one or more of those applications will surpass MarinerWrite within a year in every respect and a year later no one needs MW anymore, if the developers won't make a really HUGE step forward (even quark gets unicode support this year with version 7 and they are really late).
I don't want to draw a black picture of MW but if there don't happen something, its days are numbered.
For now it works quite good but I have choosen mellel for my needs.
BTW: One poster mentioned that MW could open WordPerfect files. As i have tried, this is wrong (Mariner don't even say that it works). The only app on the Mac (OS X) that opens this files AFAIK is AbiWord (free and also nice but not ready for prime time).
Thanks for reading and it hopes the lines i dropped will help the customers _and_ the company to make the right decisions.
Mart°n
While the program worked fine and has some nice features (nice drag and drop, columns, mail merge, tables) and is easy to understand and to use, I notice that its base is out of date.
It feels like an OS 9 application and the port to OS X is not nice done. So it looks like the aqua-style buttons, pdf-support and font-smoothing are the only techniques that made it into MarinerWrite in the now nearly 5 years of OS X (not to mention the OS X beta-phase).
There's no unicode support, the toolbar is not customiseable like all other OS X programs, PDF as pictures don't work and the toolbar-icons are dithered 256 colors pictures. If you select some lines of text, it would look terrible because there are white "noise" between the letters and the blue-coloured selection area (compared to TextEdit, Pages, Mellel or NWE). Every dialouge-box pops up with the OS 9 zoom effect and the general userinterface is also not very well developed (editing and configuring tables, preferences)
From a typographer's point of view, there are all of the terrible faux-text-styles of the pre OS X area supported like compressed, extended, shadows and wrong italics (in OS X italics are only shown, if there is a italic version of the selected font installed, MarinerWrite and AppleWorks could make every font italic witch don't look nice). Also the manual is very bad laid-out, so if this application is on the road since the days of OS 8.6, there was a VERY long time, to improve such things, but it seems that nothing has happened (I hadn't tested any older version so there may be some (or some great) improvements but compared to pages, mellel and nisus writer express it seems, that MarinerWrite is some years behind in the terms mentioned above)
Also the table feature is not very impressive. While it works, it could happen, that if you add columns, the table grows so wide, that you couldn't see it entirely and so you couldn't resize it (only if you resize the whole table in the setup dialouge. Also the colour and pattern options to fill the table background with (dotted patterns that should look like semi transparent color areas instead of - for example - real transparency support) are one of the pre OS X indicators.
So to give a conclusion. It works as described and if the features it offers matches your needs, you could use and buy it. I couldn't find big problems or bugs so it get's 4 stars for working like they promise.
But because the developers didn't catch up with a full OS X support (opentype, transparencies, pdf drag and drop...) in nearly 5 years, I think this application will disappear from the stage within 2 years. If you look at the speed at which mellel is being developed (the feature-list of the next 1.9 and 2.0 is very promising) or take the new 1.0 version of Apple's Pages or the (maybe) upcoming Aqua-version of OpenOffice or look at AbiWrite, one or more of those applications will surpass MarinerWrite within a year in every respect and a year later no one needs MW anymore, if the developers won't make a really HUGE step forward (even quark gets unicode support this year with version 7 and they are really late).
I don't want to draw a black picture of MW but if there don't happen something, its days are numbered.
For now it works quite good but I have choosen mellel for my needs.
BTW: One poster mentioned that MW could open WordPerfect files. As i have tried, this is wrong (Mariner don't even say that it works). The only app on the Mac (OS X) that opens this files AFAIK is AbiWord (free and also nice but not ready for prime time).
Thanks for reading and it hopes the lines i dropped will help the customers _and_ the company to make the right decisions.
Mart°n
Most Recent Replies: View All 2 Replies
Israel? - Version: 3.7, 1/20/2005 11:29PM PST
(9 of 13 users found this comment useful)
harsher
Well the person who wrote that comment also wrote a reply to my comments, explaining why he won't support Mellel, and that's because of his problem with Israel, being a "terrorist" state.
Ironically enough, the person who recommended Mellel to me is actually an Arab American writer, and he said that for years, he couldn't find an application that can handle Arabic text proerly on the Mac. Not even Word 2004 can handle Arabic documents coming from Word for Windows. He tried everything, from Nisus to Mariner Write. Nothing could do it until Mellel came.
So in a way, no matter what anyone thinks of Israel politics, Mellel is actually promoting peace and love and understanding, by being the only application that allows Arabs to read and write Arabic properly on the Mac.
Ironically enough, the person who recommended Mellel to me is actually an Arab American writer, and he said that for years, he couldn't find an application that can handle Arabic text proerly on the Mac. Not even Word 2004 can handle Arabic documents coming from Word for Windows. He tried everything, from Nisus to Mariner Write. Nothing could do it until Mellel came.
So in a way, no matter what anyone thinks of Israel politics, Mellel is actually promoting peace and love and understanding, by being the only application that allows Arabs to read and write Arabic properly on the Mac.
