Pages 5 features checklist

"Those who updated to Maverick/Pages 5 and have meanwhile reactivated Pages 4.3"

Unfortunately, not an option for me. I did a clean install of Mavericks then loaded apps from the app store. I originally purchase iWord 09 via DVD so I still have that, but I suspect updating it would take me from the much earlier iWork '09 straight to version 5 of the apps.

Besides which, I for one tend to avoid working from older versions of software. If the new version reflects a new direction the software is moving, and I don't like that direction, it's time to change software, however painful that may be. I'm not there yet with Pages (though I am currently downloading Office via my subscription whereas previously I didn't even keep a copy on this Mac), I'll give it some time, see what I can adjust to and what changes Apple may make, but I'm not optimistic that Apple will return the useful features. In the past they have not shown a tendency to learn from their mistakes, and they are certainly not in a hurry to release new versions of their software.

Another problem: used to be if is copied an image in one Pages or Keynote document and pasted it into another I was working on, the full resolution image was transfered. Now it seems that only a low (screen resolution?) version is copied and pasted. This is PowerPoint behavior!

Apparently not - elsewhere in these forums, I think in this (now probably overlong) thread, it is reported that Pages now has clever automagical language sensing - and will set the language for individual paragraphs as you go (so you can have multiple languages and Pages will spell check each paragraph according to the most relevant language). You can also apparently override the automatic settings. Search thread / forum for language and you should find the posts.

Gavin Lawrie, thanks for the comment! But unfortunately that doesn't help. As I write lots of technical documents in german, I often have to be able to switch the language per word between english and german. Same for my wife, she's a teacher and has tables with columns in english and in german. The automatic mode does not get these many language switches reliable (this is same in email or on the iPhone). Sometimes, she even switches between britsh and u.s. english within a table! You have to manually define this if you want to use spell checking reliable.

Overriding is no option, too, as this will switch to a single langue for the whole document.

The only way is to switch it off and get rid of the many red lines now found in my documents.

Timo, If you are writing a document that mixes words from different languages, the only option is to set the language to none, or turn off automatic spell checking. The problem is obvious. No software could go on a word-by-word basis. English "gift" and German "Gift" are entirely different; and "Mann" in an English context is misspelled, but correct in German. What about German words that have come into English, such as Wiener Schnitzel, Kindergarten, and Sauerkraut? They are capitalized in German and lowercase in English.

Imagine if you were working in Afrikaans and English. "My pen is in my hand" is spelled the same way, means the same thing, but is pronounced differently. How could the software know from that sentence which language it is?

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

I was going to get an iPad, iPhone and possibly a new Mac, but not now.

Something <http://www.apple.com/feedback/pages.html> should hear from many of us; perhaps, just perhaps then Apple might possibly rethink this persistent dumbing down of the Macintosh. (It's been happening for a looong time, just not quite as blatantly as with Pages 4.x -> 5.0.)

Kenneth, that's the point: in Pages 4.3 you could switch the language word-by-word. So it was possible to have a sentece like "He loved Wiener Schnitzel with Sauerkraut" spell-checked without any problems. This isn't possible anymore, as the language (and also the automatic mode) is now only possible document-wide. It's a shame.

I need docs organized in a tree structure. '09 Pages allowed a previously saved document to be moved into a subordinate folder. On my Macboook Pro (Mavericks), 5.0 version does not seem to allow me to move a document into anything other than a parent folder. Has this "up" grade actually done away with using a file structure? How do I move a saved document into a subordinate folder?

MacPhelim - If you install from the disc you have to update from http://support.apple.com/downloads/#iwork

Timo wrote:

I often have to be able to switch the language per word between english and german. Same for my wife, she's a teacher and has tables with columns in english and in german.

Oh well. I think to be candid the circumstances you are describing are not likely to be ones commonly encountered: for most people I think the auto-switching language feature will be quite helpful. But the ability to override the langauge setting for a section / paragraph / column / word would be an improvement for sure.

Kenneth Collins1 wrote:

No software could go on a word-by-word basis.

You are totally wrong about this. All real word processors, including Pages 4, can use internal markup to set the language even on a character basis.

"I need docs organized in a tree structure."

By default, Pages tries to save to your iCloud account which only allows one level of folders. You can, however, save a doc outside of iCloud. When you save a new doc, just change the "Where" setting to somewhere in your local filesystem. Once you've selected something in the filesystem, the down-arrow to the right of "Save As" becomes active and if you click it you'll get the more finder-like interface.