Pages as replacement for Word ?

Peter,

I am unclear on your opinion of Papyrus, though it was cleverly worded. Which WP would you recommend for humanities dissertation-level work?

Thanks!

I have used Word for Windows for the last 8 years (since my last time in grad school). I have had many, many nightmare experiences with Word losing formatting, losing text and just plain not handling long docs (anything over 60 pages is unworkable). So, I may buy Word for sharing or try NeoOffice, and either use Pages or Mellel or Papyrus.

Thanks for your input, I appreciate it!

Hullo Tim:

Since Pages may be used to print a variety of documents, requiring access to different features of a printer, its print dialogue does over-ride more general settings in "print and fax."

However, you can save any combination used for a particular document or template by using "presets" in the print dialogue, and the printer to be used should be saved as a part of that - as well as the preset saved with your doc.

Don't use it too much myself - mainly for odd or even pages since my printer doesn't do duplex without this. But try it if you haven't, and see if it helps.

Can't promise it will: it's got its quirks. To print a single odd or even page, for example, I need a preset that says "all" or my printer locks up trying to eliminate non-existent pages. Bizzare! - but that's the printer, not Pages.

Cheers.

iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Hullo All:

Unfortunately this is still a Windows world, but you
can quite easily export Pages documents to Word for
PC which lecturers and journal editors prefer.

I think Will has spotted a Pages user's biggest problem. But nature abhors a monoculture. It'll be a condition for any editor, publisher or printer I deal with that they get with Pages and use it. Cheap as chips when you think of it.

I'm using overlays for drop caps and title compositions, and there's no point trying to export them to programs that can't handle Pages' graphic features. Furthermore I've typeset and leaded it and Word can't do that half as well.

I've just sent a draft first chapter and quick synopsis to an established author who's written a poem with my name in its title that I want to use as a frontispiece. If he likes it the literary establishment will be in no position to argue.

If he doesn't I'll listen to what he has to say based on the copy I've sent him.

Cheers.

I'm late to the game, but thought I'd contribute nevertheless since I have researched this question for the past few days as part of my job. My motivation to look further into Pages was almost exactly as the original poster's, plus I had successfully revised a class handout which I'd originally created in FrameMaker (though aging, still my benchmark application when it comes to word processing; MS Word is a sad hack in comparison). My totally revised handout turned out beautifully, and the process was a joy.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread. It was illuminating and pointed out some details which I didn't research.

I second what everyone else wrote, pro and con, but I have to say I never observed any sluggishness on all 4 Macs I tried, two of them G5 PPC and two Intel Core Duo. Pages overall has better font smoothing and kerning than Word which makes the displayed document look clearer and more balanced. On my Macs Pages scrolls smoother and faster than Word. For one Word document, Word refused to print a company logo near the top of the document, although it displayed OK. Pages printed this Word document as it should be.

At home we are switching completely to Pages, including my college bound daughter. At work I am also turning to Pages whenever possible, and I recommend the same to everyone unless they need Endnote integration (it's hard to convince users to switch reference database application and pay for the privilege, when we have a site license for Endnote).

iMac 20", MacBook Pro 15", PowerMac Dual G5 Mac OS X (10.4.7) Scientific Application Support

I am now using iText Express - a modified version of TextEdit with columns, footers, footnotes, page numbers, bookmarks, headers, HTML links, direct control of margins, fonts, backgrounds etc. It is FREE but I encourage users to register Michiaki Yamashita's LightWayText as thanks.

You can get it at:

http://members.aol.com/iText/iTextExpress/TryiTxtExp.html
http://members.aol.com/iText/iTextExpress/pad_file.htm

or

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/30111

I did a test and created a 500 page document. It not make much difference whether the document is 500 or 50 pages. The speed increased best when I turned off Show Layout.

I did a simple test. I counted 1-1000, 2-1000, 3-1000, 4-1000, 5-1000 while holding down a key on the keyboard. Here are the results:

999999999999999999999999999999999 (Show Layout Off)
9999999999999 (Show Layout On)

Try it!

Newbie (okay, Mac user who has been forced to use PCs
since 1998) here wondering if anyone has used Pages 2
for writing a dissertation-length doc? I am entering
a PHD program in the Fall and will be teaching
eventually and turning papers into profs who probably
all work on MS Office in Windows.

First off, congratulations on getting accepted into your Ph.D. program.

Personally, I love Pages, and I use it for producing most of my course material these days, but I'm glad I did my dissertation using Word. Here's why:

1. My dissertation chair also used Word and sent me revision suggestions and notes directly in the chapter documents I sent her. This was much more convenient than having to decipher scrawled notes on the side and backs of pages.

2. My university library, which had final say on formatting requirements of dissertations (that's common), had MS Word templates available to assist with the quirky requirements of dissertation formatting. I've noticed many other universities do the same thing to help out their doctoral candidates.

3. Citation/bibliography management software works best when it plays nicely with the word processor you're using. My favorite bibliography software is Endnotes, and it has nice integration with Word.

4. Word might be a cheap option for you. The university I earned my PhD from (George Mason) had a site license for Office that I qualified for as an adjunct instructor (cost for the Office CD was <$20), and the school licensed free copies of Endnotes for all students and faculty.

All that said, it would be a fair argument to say that the time I saved with revision tracking and templates was somewhat offset by the usual headaches you get working with Word. I still don't think Pages would be a sensible option for you, since I think the software would strain a bit at a >100 page document, particularly if it includes a great deal of graphic figures (which I suspect humanities dissertations often do). But, I do think you could get by very nicely using Mellel and Bookends as an alternative.

And really, I wouldn't sweat the decision to much. If your biggest challenge in the dissertation process is your word processing software's perks and pains, then you'll be getting by mighty well. 😉

Did anyone mention Framemaker? Even though Adobe's developement has stopped on it, it is really excellent at these things.

I have experienced the reported typing lag, but only when including enormous objects in my documents. Dropping a couple dozen 8megabyte images into a document slows Pages down to a crawl on my G4 PowerBook with 128M of video memory. The same document with sensibly resized images can be edited without significant lag even on my old clamshell iBook.

It would be interesting to find out if the others who are experiencing performance issues with Pages are also working with documents incorporating large numbers of very high resolution images.

Since I discovered the issue with including very large images in my documents, I have been resizing the images to be less than a megabyte each before using them and have had no further performance problems with Pages.

Is there anyone who is just editing plain text documents or documents with modestly sized images experiencing performance problems with Pages?

I do not have the problem myself, but I definitely remember people in this forum claiming they had text only documents where typing was very slow.

For me, the grammar checker in Word is indespensible.
Pages does not offer a grammar check feature. If
Pages did offer a grammar check feature, I would use
it exclusively and ditch Word ... but for now, I
continue to use both apps.

I came in late on this discussion. I write a lot and need a grammar checker. Word's grammar checker is ok, but I much prefer Grammarian X Pro. I used it even when I was using word - catches a lot of things Word misses, far more comprehensive and customizable.

http://linguisoft.com/

Scott

I love Pages it is so much better than Word in every aspect. Like all Apple software it just works and is simple to learn. But yet it is very powerful. I convert it to .doc when needed and does an excellent job converting. (Also for checking over my work I find the use of highlight and let the mac speak it back to you to be of great use and find errors I would never of found)

Pages is amazing and am really excited for whenever they release Charts.

I saw a few people suggesting some key command tools- personally I prefer Menu Master by Unsanity http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/menumaster

You can change the export feature to work when you hit (apple)(option)(S) which is a nice combo since you can still use 2 fingers to do it and it doesn't replace the save as command. You still have the options dialog but you can breeze through that. The other option is to simply use textedit which will let you open word docs (most without issue) and even save as the same format. Textedit isn't pretty but it works.

Unsanity's tools are quite good and they keep up to date with OS updates. It seems there are no automator actions of r Pages yet (not built in anyway) or that could be another option. Juat save everything as .pages docs and then batch them all to word at once.

TextEdit certainly works but even better get iText Express which is a version of TextEdit's open source with many of TextEdit's hidden features editable.

I've tossed TextEdit and now use iText Express exclusively. You don't have to worry about compatibility. TextEdit can open all of iText Express's documents, you just may lose some of the formatting like multiple columns, headers and footers.

iText Express offers editable links, headers, footers, editable margins, improved styles, tables, highlight and background colors, a full font menu, bookmarks, footnotes etc. It keeps all of the simplicity of TextEdit but adds most of what you want from a full blown word processor.

....and it is FREE!!!! Brilliant!