Set .doc as Default File Type

Hi Peter,

Your comments about using Pages as a Word replacement make sense to me, but I'm just trying to answer a simple question.

On the other hand, your comment about 'handicapping' the program is ridiculous. .pages is still the default format for all new and unsaved documents, as well as any old .pages documents. This fix simply allows the use of the Command-S shortcut to save .doc files one may happen to be editing with the program, without the hassle of an additional mouse gesture. And .doc files can still be converted to the .pages format simply by a one-time use of the Save As dialogue.

Wbruce 2- OK. You don't like the way the program is designed. Who actually cares what you think. The purpose of these forums is to seek assistance from others. Could you explain how your opinion/rant provides any assistance to anyone? So - Use pages or not. Send a feature request to Apple. If you want a program perfect in your estimation design it yourself. Or else, use the product you want to use designed by someone else which will always involve something less than the perfect you want. Remember if it is absolutely perfect for you it will not be so for someone else. So be it. it is like complaining that you can't breath underwater. Too bad, you have lungs not gills. Live with it because your complaints aren't particularly interesting.

Hmm.. if you knew how to use a forum, maybe you would notice that I provided an answer to the question this thread was created to explore.. I wouldn't call that complaining, I would call that solving a problem and being helpful.

In fact, I love the way Pages is designed.. which is why I bought it, and why I use it, every day.. and why I reply to other people's threads when they have questions about how to use it that I can answer.

With this small fix, I think Pages is actually close to perfect. Still locks up when coming out of its excellent full-screen mode every now and then, but I've reported the bug to Apple, and I'm confident they will take care of it in an update.

So.. what were you saying?

wbruce2,

You did not read what I said correctly.

The handicapping I was referring to is that any saving to Word format will lose some of the better features of a Pages document. To avoid this you would have to carefully not use certain features in Pages as they would disappear when you saved.

What you are really asking is that Pages have an additional mode other than *Word Processing* and Layout modes, which would be the *Word Clone* mode.

Since Pages falls quite a bit short of being a full Word clone, I can't imagine what that would be like, but IMHO there already is one mode too many in Pages.

Peter

KOENIG Yvan wrote:
A program is designed to operate on its own native format.

I'm not sure that is true in general. Take a program like Photoshop. Its native format is psd. However, open an image in any of the formats dcm, bpm, iff, jpg, psb, pcx, pct, pxr, png, pbm, sct, tga or tif, and Photoshop happily edits it and saves it back in the same format - sometimes after a warning telling the user what information he loses with that particular format. When it comes to tif, Photoshop's support for the format is so good that it for most purposes actually makes no difference at all if you save to tif or the native psd.

Hi Magnus

The purpose of Photoshop is to create pictures so, it is able to create this kind of files. As there is no standard it is forced to treat numerous picture formats. Its native format is the only one which is able to preserve the different stages of a document (layers …).

For Word processors or spreadsheets, there is no equivalent of the different pictures formats.

The iWork native format is one format preserving the different stages. The Word format is an other format preserving the different stages.
Happily (from my point of view), these stages are defined differently so,passing from one format to the other one imply losses.
Il would be illogical to use as a format reachable directly a format implying these losses.
Apple introduced with Pages '09 a correct equibrium.

The format reached directly is the native format and, in the same dialog you may export as Word document.
So, you are warned that using the Word format you will loose features.
You may feel that these losses are not important, which I may understand if your correspondants are using Word. But I continue to think that Peterbreis is correct when he wrote: if you want to create Word document use Word or a tool whose concept is to clone Word.
When I want to make circular holes, I use a drill but, when I want to make square holes I use an other tool.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE mercredi 15 avril 2009 21:16:35)

Yvan,

What you say has some merit but you can get an even closer approximation to Magnus' statement by citing the example of Illustrator which also can save in many standard formats whilst retaining full editability and even layers.

Those Illustrator files can contain text, graphics and a considerable amount of layout.

Now that Illustrator can have multiple pages, that is about the only thing that is lost in translating to alternate formats.

I would say what this problem highlights is the necessity for both Microsoft and Apple, indeed all publishers, to fall in line with the open document standards.

Peter

KOENIG Yvan wrote:
The purpose of Photoshop is to create pictures so, it is able to create this kind of files. As there is no standard it is forced to treat numerous picture formats. Its native format is the only one which is able to preserve the different stages of a document (layers …).

Actually, no. Tiff preserves layers perfectly. But I get your point.

The iWork native format is one format preserving the different stages. The Word format is an other format preserving the different stages.

Yes, I purposefully avoided discussing Pages' Word support in my post, as it is a much less clear subject than image formats.

I am 100% behind Peter when he writes "It is ridiculous to get Pages to just use it as a Word replacement." But that does not mean it is obvious how much or little weight Apple should put on Word compatibility in future versions.

I think wbruce2's hack to make Pages save directly to Word format may serve some purpose for some people. But I must admit it scares me somewhat. It works today. It will probably work tomorrow. But what will happen with your Pages installation in the next update? Personally I prefer not to play with such things in applications I use. Besides, there are free alternatives that save directly to .doc format, which that have better compatibility than Pages.

As far as I know, Apple never offered the ability to save directly in a format which was the native one.
I repeat that one reason is the fact that using an other format always imply losses.

I already explained why I think that open formats are only empty shells.

Assuming that Apple and Microsoft adopt the open formats structure, the compatibility between Microsoft's documents and Apple's one will be limited, exactly as it is at his time with proprietary formats.

When peter switch from Photoshop to Illustrator, this changes nothing.

The native format allows us to edit the document as we wish with all features of the program.
Other formats are 'flattened' documents and as far as I remember, you can't save in one of these 'foreign' formats with the "Save" (cmd + S) command.
You have to use the "Save as" command exactly as we must do with iWork components.

As I am curious, I will look at the named hack.
I will see which file is modified.
During an update, only some files of an application are modified so, I'm not sure that it imply some danger. The main difficulty would be the replacement of the hacked file by a standard one forcing the user to re-apply the hack which is not a real problem.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE jeudi 16 avril 2009 18:17:33)

KOENIG Yvan wrote:
Assuming that Apple and Microsoft adopt the open formats structure, the compatibility between Microsoft's documents and Apple's one will be limited, exactly as it is at his time with proprietary formats.

Limited - yes. But that does not mean useless. It may still be very useful, just like when we have no problems editing simple Word documents with OpenOffice.

When peter switch from Photoshop to Illustrator, this changes nothing.

The native format allows us to edit the document as we wish with all features of the program.
Other formats are 'flattened' documents and as far as I remember, you can't save in one of these 'foreign' formats with the "Save" (cmd + S) command.

Oh, yes you save them with cmd+S. EPS, PDF, SVG, FXG, all save and open fine. Layers (of some kind) are preserved and editable.

As I am curious, I will look at the named hack.
I will see which file is modified.
During an update, only some files of an application are modified so, I'm not sure that it imply some danger. The main difficulty would be the replacement of the hacked file by a standard one forcing the user to re-apply the hack which is not a real problem.

I do not think the hack is very dangerous, actually. There is a small risk, but my main reason for not wanting to use it is a matter of principle. Or laziness. Well, I do not want to anyhow.

As far as I know, Apple never offered the ability to save directly in a format which was the native one. I repeat that one reason is the fact that using an other format always imply losses.

ClarisWorks/AppleWorks had a preference to "remember translator" that was on by default. CW/AW would then save the imported file as the original format. I don't know how many times I would forget to uncheck that box after deleting the AppleWorks preferences. 😟

KOENIG Yvan wrote:
As far as I know, Apple never offered the ability to save directly in a format which was the native one.

You don't have to look far: TextEdit.

It command-saves to doc, docx, odt, html and of course txt and rtf, which are not formats that were created for TextEdit. RTF was developed by Microsoft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RichTextFormat

I looked at the hack.

It is a simple neat one.
The late update replaced the old plist by a new one but it's easy to re-apply the hack.

You may also apply it to Pages '08.

In Pages '08 you must edit the CFBundleDocumentTypes #6

In Pages '09 you must edit the CFBundleDocumentTypes #9

It's easy to apply the hack. Run the script

property applyToPages09 : true
(* true = apply to Pages '09
false = apply to Pages '08 *)
on run
 if applyToPages09 then
 (* for Pages '09 *)
 set pagesNum to 9
 set typeString to "Microsoft Word 97 - 2004 document"
 else
 (* for Pages '08 *)
 set pagesNum to 8
 set typeString to "SLDocumentTypeMSWord"
 end if
 
 set thePlist to (path to applications folder as text) & "iWork '0" & pagesNum & ":Pages.app:Contents:Info.plist"
 
 tell application "System Events"
 set InfoRecord to (get value of property list file thePlist)
 end tell
 
 set CFBundleDocumentTypes to get |CFBundleDocumentTypes| of InfoRecord
 
 repeat with i from 1 to count of CFBundleDocumentTypes
 if |CFBundleTypeName| of item i of CFBundleDocumentTypes is typeString then
 set |CFBundleTypeRole| of item i of CFBundleDocumentTypes to "Editor"
 exit repeat
 end if
 end repeat
 
 set |CFBundleDocumentTypes| of InfoRecord to CFBundleDocumentTypes
 
 tell application "System Events"
 set value of property list file thePlist to InfoRecord
 end tell
end run

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE jeudi 16 avril 2009 21:25:55)

I stumbled on this topic after googling for a solution....

It seems the most simple question has not been asked.

Why can I not change the default option? Even MS Office allows you to set the "default" file format.

Even if Pages is not a "similar" product it is still a competing product and in the minority of user-base, so why not have the most inter-operability possible? Warn the user that "some features will be lost...blah blah blah..." and let the user make the decision.

Pages is a nice app as an alternative to Word and Open office, and the fact is it should be able to function smoothly and efficiently in the world of grey boxes loaded with Office 2000X. By not making it easy to use the program in this environment the dev team is cutting off their nose in spite of their face.

In the end... I will most likely be switching back to Office 2008.

Even MS Office allows you to set the "default" file format.

Can you set MS Office default file format to Pages™?