RedleX (http://www.mellel.com) has announced Mellel 2.8, an upgrade to its word processor for Mac OS X. Mellel heads in a new direction in preparation to joining the Mac App Store.

Mellel 2.8, introducing Track Changes and advanced Sort, comes with a much lower price tag - 20 percent across the board (US$39 instead of $49 for the regular version, $29 instead of $35 for the educational version) and eliminates for-pay upgrades. All upgrades from now on will be completely free to all Mellel users.

"Apple's Mac App Store, where Mellel is headed, is a game changer -- a revolution in the making, that's going to shake the Mac Software development to the core," says Eyal Redler, RedleX's CTO. "The Mac software market grows in leaps and bounds -- it quadrupled over the last few years and now runs at a pace of more than 16 million new Macs every year. Most of the people who buy those machines are newcomers who were weaned on buying music and applications from within the Apple store -- buying cheap, buying often and with absolutely no concept of a for-pay upgrade. They buy once, and expect to get it updated forever."

Track Changes is a feature in Mellel 2.8 that allows users to record changes done, and, later on, accept or reject them. Track Changes in Mellel largely follows the industry standard, as Mellel users will need to cooperate with others using other word processors, says Redler. The new feature allows users to view documents in their original and final states, with corrections and in final state with corrections marked.

It also allows users to switch between viewing the various authors of changes, and allows a single user enter changes under different names. Changes can be viewed in the Track changes pane, with details about the changes and the ability to accept or rejected individually or en bloc.

Sort is a new Mellel feature. Apart from the expected ability to sort paragraphs or table cells alphabetically or numerically, and in ascending or descending order, Mellel 2.8 also allows sorting words or entire sections. Another feature is the ability for a secondary sort; allowing, for example, to sort text indented by tabs independently. Mellel also support ignoring common words (like "the" or "an") at the start of the text, or parenthesised text.

Other highlights of Mellel 2.8 are a new compressed file format, which allows Mellel document to be uploaded to backup and synchronisation services, and undoing changes after a save. Users can now set how many undo action they wish to store.

Mellel 2.8 is a free update to all registered users of Mellel who've purchased Mellel after December 2007. Those users now have a permanent license. Users who've purchased or updated Mellel before the end of December 2007 will need to purchase an upgrade to a permanent license.