scrolling in Pages

Question

scrolling in Pages

I use word processing to write novels. Manuscripts preferred by New York editors are very simple: They are double-spaced with a header including the author's name, a key word of the title and the running page number. In Pages, I have not been able to find a way to scroll evenly through a document (which, for me, is a chapter). Instead, each page appears on-screen as a discrete entity with a slight gap between pages. When you include the top and bottom margins, this causes a visual "bump" as you scroll from one page to the next, as Pages suddenly must jump not from one double-spaced line to the next, but over the bottom margin of one page, the gap between pages, and the top margin of the next page. This dislocates my eye from the document, and I find I have to search to pick up the next line. In wordstar, wordperfect, word, and other word processors I've used over the years there is an option to view a document you're working on in a continuous way, usually with a dotted line to separate pages. This allows smooth scrolling from one page to the next. I have not been able to find any way to turn on a function like this in Pages. Am I missing something, or is it simply not there? One work around I've discovered is to tell Pages your page is 110 inches long. This gives you ten 8.5x11 pages before you hit a scrolling bump; however, it also slows scrolling down by an unacceptable amount. Help! And thanks in advance.

Message was edited by: paperbackwriter

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on Sep 3, 2007 3:13 PM

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Answer 1

DennisG

Level 5

6,520 points

Sep 3, 2007 4:30 PM in response to paperbackwriter

writer,

And you won't find it in Pages. Pages uses a page metaphor, with no option to change it. You can minimize the margins, practically eliminate the header and footer, but you will still have seperate pages.

I'm a novelist, and this doesn't bother me in the least. I prefer to see my work on separate pages, rather than on a roll of toilet paper. But to each his own.

-Dennis

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Answer 2

Sep 4, 2007 5:06 AM in response to DennisG

Dennis, thanks for your quick answer, even though it's what I feared. I've been feeling kinda lonely because the one other Mac-using novelist I'm friends with isn't fazed by the scrolling lurch, as I think of it. In Googling the problem, I've been unable to find the right zen combination of search terms that will bring me into contact with others like myself who are bothered by this. I'm pretty sure it does bother some users because all the other word processing packages I know of include the "toilet paper" option, and the only reason I can think of for doing that is to enable "smooth" scrolling. So there must be some other demand for it besides my own.

When I notice this most as a problem is when I'm typing in changes from a hard copy edit. I'll spot the next change to be made on my hard copy, then scroll down on the screen, scanning the text, and ka-bump! the screen to me seems to lurch as it goes over the page break gap. When the next change is more than a few sentences away, I use the "search" function, but that seems a lot of trouble to go to to move just five or six sentence down in the text.

I'm assuming that, since this doesn't bother you, you haven't made an exhaustive search of "Pages" for a toilet-paper-like option, which could be buried almost anywhere on the tool bar or in one of the templates, perhaps. So if any other user of Pages on the forum who IS bothered by this has found the magic option or come up with a good workaround that doesn't call for massive reformatting when you're ready to print, I'd be glad to hear from you.

Thanks again, Dennis, and good luck with the novels!

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Answer 3

DennisG

Level 5

6,520 points

Sep 4, 2007 7:32 AM in response to paperbackwriter

writer,

You're right that I haven't done an exhaustive search. In fact, I haven't done any search, mainly because I like the pages metaphor more than I like the toilet paper metaphor. I don't have an issue with "lurching," as you describe it. My document (more than 400 pages) scrolls smoothly.

It's important to me to see my document as it will appear on the page. That way I can insert page breaks when I'm not happy with the way my text flows from one page to another.

Finally, in the nearly three years that I've been using the Pages discussion forum, your issue has come up fewer than half a dozen times. So I have to assume that the vast majority of users greatly prefer the pages metaphor to anything else.

Still, if it's a burning issue with you, you can leave feedback for the Pages team at Apple.

By the way, there are lots of Mac-using novelists here in Seattle. Good luck with your writing.

-Dennis

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Answer 4

Sep 4, 2007 8:15 AM in response to DennisG

Thanks, Dennis--

I think Seattle is a great city. I was out there two years ago attending my wife's statistics convention with her and got a chance to explore. I got the impression there is a great community of artists and writers out your way.

After searching the forum, I did find a few kindred souls on the scrolling issue (like Mighty Jim). I think the scrolling problem must be an idiosyncracy of Jim's and my perceptual system that a few others share. Such differences between people do exist. For example, I find it hard to watch TV unless my head is square on to the screen. I can't watch it lying on my side on the floor like a lot of people seem able to do.

The workaround of using "Inspector" to set a page length of 110 inches (or, for that matter, 1100, as one poster recommended) would be a great solution, requiring only a simple switch back to the standard page preset when ready to print. But, for some reason, when I set a 110-inch page (equal to ten standard pages), I find that scrolling slows down enough to be a nuisance. The other user who suggested this workaround in a separate thread apparently did not have the slow-down problem. I wonder if my MacBook's relatively modest speed is why I notice a slow-down. I presume the long page workaround requires the scrolling subroutine of Pages to hold ten times as much data in memory, and that may be the chokepoint. If, like OS 9.2, OSX allows for allocation of various amounts of memory to applications, I guess I could try increasing the amount of memory assigned to Pages and see if that helps.

I did give Apple feedback early on about my wish for a continuous scrolling option. Never heard back and I have no idea whether it made any impact on their thinking. As I posted elsewhere in this forum, I'm more than happy to live with what is, for me, a small but irritating deficit of Pages in return for its many virtues. The best thing it does, from our standpoint as professional writers, is export as a Word file that needs very little if any tweaking to get it back to what it was in "Pages." Being a fellow novelist, you know that most New York publishers are PC-dependant and want your book or novel submitted in that long-running standard of mediocrity, "Word." Consequently, I keep an old PC around with Word installed and can limp along in that program. With its great export option, Pages makes it possible not to have to screw around translating your document to "Word" when you're all done, then waste more time cleaning up the translation. That, alone, is worth the price of admission to me.

Breathe some of that salt air for me, my friend, and thanks for your counsel.

Steve Spruill

Message was edited by: paperbackwriter

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Answer 5

DennisG

Level 5

6,520 points

Sep 4, 2007 8:22 AM in response to paperbackwriter

Thanks for the good wishes, Steve. Seattle's an awesome city that supports everything I want to do, including cycling. We have over 5,000 people in our local bike club, which is the largest in the country.

One of the differences between OS 9 and OS X is that the new one automatically allocates RAM to applications. So you don't need to (or, more precisely, can't) change the RAM allocation to Pages.

Apple never responds to feedback, and I can understand why. They very likely get about a thousand brilliant suggestions a day -- and 10 times more not so brilliant ones.

-Dennis

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Answer 6

Sep 4, 2007 8:44 AM in response to DennisG

Hey, Dennis--

Thanks for the heads up on OSX not allowing customized memory allocation. I held on to OS 9.2 for as long as I could, mainly because I liked Word Perfect for Mac so much and I'd heard bad things about switching back and forth between the early OSX and "classic" mode. Progress marches on, whether I want it to or not, and I fell too far behind in other respects trying to cling to OS 9.2. I do like OSX a lot better on the whole. I appreciate your telling me the score on memory allocation. Saved me some time rooting around in Mac "help" when I should be writing.

Speaking of which. . . .

Best,
Steve

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