Version history

Merops 3

Shabash Merops 3

Release date: 12th November 2014

The next generation of automatic text-editing and XML markup.

Processing revolutionized

  • Process documents faster
  • Process multiple documents simultaneously
  • New simpler, integrated, intuitive interface
  • Watchfolder system can email you if there’s an error
  • Automatic validation of output XML against a DTD
  • Send Problem Document to Shabash: Quickly send us a document you can’t process. We’ll process it for you and return it the next working day

Easier and faster customization

  • Brand new ribbon interface for Standard Set Editor and Custom Dictionary Editor
  • Standard Set Generator: Automatically create a Standard Set from an edited document
  • Standard Set Editor includes a Document example and intuitive cross-links between modules
  • New Standard Sets: Oxford Style Manual and OSCOLA

More powerful automatic editing

Over 500 new customizable rules, including:

  • Convert simple MathType and Word 2007+ equations to text
  • Move tables/figures to just after the first citation
  • Choose which abbreviations don’t need to be defined
  • New language: Italian
  • New Biology submodule: Genetics
  • Document-wide paragraph resequencing

Plus over 1300 style preferences now have a make-consistent option, automatically detecting the author’s style

Even better text recognition

New and improved reviewing tools

  • New pinnable Styles+ menu, with Paint Mode
  • New Ribbon tab, MEROPS: Reviewing
  • Improved right-click menu on tracked changes and comments, and style, layout, and features can match Word 2013
  • New websites added to Look Up: Oxford Dictionaries Online, PubMed Journals, and Wiktionary
  • Quick Process: true one-click processing of active document, using most recent settings

Shabash Merops 2.8

Release date: 11 March 2011

It's our biggest upgrade ever, with 100s of new features and enhancements

Much more powerful automatic text correction

Over 175 new customizable rules, including:

  • Retrieve missing reference data from PubMed
  • Alert/correct references discrepancies with PubMed
  • Name/date to numeric reference conversion
  • Numeric to name/date reference conversion
  • Add hyperlinks on references to Amazon or WorldCat
  • Alert duplicate references
  • New 'Abbreviations' sub-module
  • Delete repeated header items
  • 14 new preferences for correspondence information
  • 38 new individual word preferences
  • 20 new non-English term preferences

Merops also now ships with two new Standard Sets: Chicago Manual of Style, and AMA Manual of Style.

Easier, faster, and more intuitive processing

  • New flexible processing queue: add more files to the queue while others are being processed
  • Merops automatically reconnects a lost connection, while processing continues on the server
  • Improved Standard Set Editor:
    • Improved handling of new rules: Leave all unset, then click a button to search through them in your own time
    • Undo/Redo buttons added
    • New 'Compare Standard Sets' and 'Send in Email' features
    • Improved 'Find Setting' feature

Improved reviewing interface

  • Brand new reference renumbering tools
  • Brand new 'Insert Document Part' tools
  • New improved 'Insert Symbol' menu, with many more symbols
  • Watchfolder system now handle multiple files at once
  • Create your own custom Look Ups
  • New 'Abbreviation' property for custom terms
  • Improved right-click menu in Microsoft Word
  • Improved Merops Ribbon in Word 2007 and Word 2010

Shabash Merops 2.7

Release date: 25 March 2009

Our biggest upgrade ever!

New features
  • Now 1300+ standards! Over 400 new rules including:
    • alerting unlinked table footnotes
    • alerting jumps in list ID numbers
    • unit conversions
    • splitting of table cells
    • sorting of table footnotes
    • alerting unlinked author footnotes
    • independent symbol style preferences for different author footnote types
  • Amazon, OneLook and Dorland’s Online Medical Dictionary added to Look Up feature.
  • ‘Active Standard Set’ is replaced with ‘Document Standard Set’, so documents remember which Standard Set was used.
  • Merops Symbols toolbar now shows 20 most recent symbols.
  • Brand new and improved Merops Options program is independent of Microsoft Word.
  • Now over 2 million terms in the recognition system.
  • You can now create up to 50 user-defined comments.
  • You can now add any number of spelling errors to each custom dictionary term.
  • Merops now tracks paragraph and character style changes.
  • Brand new Merops Process Log stores reports for the 200 most recent files.
  • Merops Standard Set Editor has new Find Setting feature.
  • Easier and more stable installation process.
  • All bugs identified in Merops 2.6 have been fixed.
  • Merops Watchfolders – files are automatically processed when files are placed in designated folders.

Shabash Merops 2.6.1

Release date: 23 April 2008
  • New feature: Finish document differentiates comments made by Merops from other comments, meaning it can remove all Merops comments, but preserve yours.
  • Faster: Finish document is considerably faster than before, and gives you much more detailed information on its progress in the status bar.
  • Better error handling: Finish document has vastly improved error handling - if a particular feature fails, it allows you to continue without it.
  • Better error handling: Finish Document has detailed real-time logging, making trouble-shooting much easier - simply email a log file to support. Merops also logs its start-up progress in real time.
  • Bug fix: "The requested member of the collection does not exist." error in Word 2007 requiring the MeropsRibbon.dotm template to be added in manually is now fixed.

Shabash Merops 2.6

Release date: 6 February 2008
New features
  • New 'Output Word Document to XML' tool.
  • 'Send in Email' feature added to Finish Document tool.
  • Improved Merops Report.
  • New alert tells you when your output files are ready, without interrupting your work in Microsoft Word.
  • Improved Merops Review – faster and smoother.
  • 6 new websites added to Look Up tool: 3 thesauri, Google Images, Google Maps (UK), and Cambridge Dictionary of American English.
  • Process documents from within all versions of Microsoft Word from Word 2000 to Word 2007.
  • All bugs identified in version 2.5 have been fixed.

Shabash Merops 2.5

Release date: 14 February 2007
New features
  • Output file settings are now part of Standard Sets, making changing settings simpler and quicker. Standard Sets also contain a custom dictionary page, making managing House Style-specific terms easier.
  • Process documents from within all versions of Microsoft Word from Word 2000 to Word 2007 Beta 2TR
  • Brand new and improved Custom Dictionary Editor: independent of Microsoft Word, new 'Comment' attribute for terms and up to 2 misspellings per term, add passwords to restrict access.
  • Over 120,000 terms added - total is now over 1.2 million
  • Merops can now preserve footnotes
  • Customization of output Microsoft Word paragraph styles
  • Automatic online checking of recognized URL paths
  • Now over 600 standards - new standards including more word preferences and sequence of header items
  • Much faster and more reliable reviewing tools
  • New Standard Set - 'APA Publication Manual'
  • More accurate predicted time remaining while processing
  • 'Load published dictionary preferences' makes creating Standard Sets easier and quicker

Shabash Merops 2.4

Release date: 15 July 2006
New features
  • New 'Hyperlink' property in custom dictionary adds hyperlinks to any custom term:
  • Add links to websites (http://www.example.com)
  • Add links to email addresses (mailto:example@example.com)
  • Add links to other documents (C:/example.doc)
  • 2 new options for 'Parenthetical Dash Style'
  • Faster reject/accept all identical changes feature
  • 11 new subject-specific modules including History, Law & politics, Religion, Health & medicine, Business and economics, and Music
  • Brand new and improved Standard Set Editor can be used independently of Microsoft Word
  • Intra-document linking from citations to corresponding references
  • Improved and updated user interface
  • More pattern-match expressions for custom dictionary
  • Improved recognition accuracy – especially in document headers
  • Works with Microsoft Word 2007 beta 2
  • Now over 500 customizable standards! – 43 new options, including maximum Abstract length and maximum keyword count
  • New and improved Symbols toolbar with many more symbols
  • 3 more online dictionaries in 'Look Up' tool including Chambers

Shabash Merops 2.3

Release date: 12 April 2006
New features
  • Many new rules – including expanding/abbreviating journal titles in references
  • 7 new customizable standards including the case of headings and alerts on long sentences
  • New Document Statistics tool gives more intelligent word count
  • Improved user interface – easier than ever to use

Shabash Merops 2.2

Release date: 21 February 2006
New features
  • Improved recognition accuracy – especially in references
  • Many new rules – Merops is doing more than ever before
  • 4 new customizable standards including the case of headings and alerts on long sentences
  • New Document Statistics tool gives more intelligent word count
  • '®', '©' and '™' added to symbols toolbar
  • Improved custom dictionary, with new spelling error matches easy symbol insertion, many more pattern match terms, and dictionaries can be shared
  • Improved Finish Document tool can remove all bookmarks, remove character styles and update and unlink all field codes
  • Improved Merops Reviewer now handles tracked formatting changes and makes editing comments easier
  • Answers.com and PubMed added to 'Look Up' tool
  • New 'Invert Table' tool
  • Improved user interface – easier than ever to use
  • Improved reliability – a number of bugs have been fixed

Shabash Merops 2.0

Release date: 3 December 2005
New features
  • Merops 2.0 runs on a remote server to eliminate configuring time and apply rules up to 30 times faster than version 1.1.
  • 400+ customizable standards - nearly twice as many as version 1.1
  • 100 000+ general word dictionary
  • Vastly improved recognition accuracy
  • Unneeded modules can be disabled, further increasing speed
  • Automatic linking to PubMed, GenBank, Entrez, Crossref and WTO databases
  • Automatically reintegrates graphics into your document
  • Create and insert your own custom queries
  • New improved user interface
  • Improved handling of inserted symbols
  • New Symbols toolbar with keyboard shortcuts makes inserting symbols easier and faster

Shabash Merops 1.1

Release date: 28 October 2004
New features
  • A new Standards dialog box enables users to select the specific standards they would like to apply. Together, these settings form a ‘Standard Set’. Multiple Standard Sets can be created, and users can choose which one to use for a particular document.
  • New customizable options including the option to keep a copy of the original document open after running, the option to show or hide queries and the option to show a report after running.
  • Improved recognition accuracy
  • More match terms for reference types.
  • Automatic sorting of lists of names in citations, reference lists, keywords and more
  • Automated queries on more terms, such as gender-biased terms like ‘fireman’, and the use of first-person language
  • New tools, including Save as Final Word Document tool, Open Original and Revert to Original buttons, and a Load from XML tool
  • Option to save the output file in any directory
  • More styles on the Merops Styles toolbar"

Shabash Merops 1.01

Release date: October 2004

Shabash Merops 1.0

Release date: June 2004