List of Pages Pages 5.2 fixes and bugs

I was hesitant to try the new version as other versions of 5 did not respect file associations, once you opened up a document all Pages documents became associated with the new version - once a document was opened it was irretrievable in a prior version. I am happy to say that while the file association behaviour is a bit bizarre it now more-or-less does respects them. If you right-click on a document it says 5.2 as default, but it seems if you specify 4 it will respect that even though the default doesn't change what it says.

When you do open a document, as soon as you try to edit it, 5.2 asks if you want to make a copy. I did this, edited the copy, and then closed out the session. When I clicked on the original I was first met with the 'can't open/unknown developer' dialog, yet when I right clicked (allowing me to open it) it opened nicely with Pages 4 and has respected that decision since. Oddly, if I right click it stills says 5.2 as the default app even though if I double-click it opens in Pages 4!?!

You can add captions to pictures (which is necessary for what I do). Again, the behaviour is different, but there is now an extensive online manual to help. Essentially, pictures and text boxes are both considered objects which can be grouped. To be honest, once I got used to it I almost like this way better. Further, it does seem to 'know' when you are trying to make a caption by sliding elements around. While the prescribed way is better, you can still do it this way. However, the old way of inserting an image into a textbox doesn't work at all. Bullets also seem to work and have choices.

I opened a previously published book of mine to see if it would respect the formatting. It actually did a much better job than prior versions, but some captions worked, some were broken. The Table of Contents was a bit broken, and I have not found how to edit its styles. The help does say it is possible.

Document properties does not list a 6x9 standard book format, but you can create one from page setup under 'file.' Yet, it does not add it to the document list, just saying 'other', which disappears next time you use it.

Also, while writing this, I closed out the documents I was viewing while not exiting Pages 5. As soon as I started typing in Safari Pages shut down... odd...

The over all behaviour is certainly different and less intuitive (which would change through familiarity), but I was able to do most all of the things I could do with Pages 4. There are also several things I found new, such as importing a picture directly from a screen capture if you right-click at an insertion point.

In general, I could live with this, but two-up viewing is still broken, which is very helpful for book publishing. It might be a deal-breaker for me. I'm sure there are more hidden surprises, but at least I can now experiment without fear of breaking my old documents. Of course it would take time to get used to. I can't call it a totally polished product, it still feels a bit beta-ish. This is the version Apple should have released originally with a beta disclaimer.

AppleScript support has expanded to include dictionary content as follows:

This lets me directly produce a list of unique fonts used in the current Pages document. Also, support for Services written in other scripting languages has been restored. My ruby script that sorts lists in place now works again.

Ongoing discoveries...

Insert Page is still there for a Page Layout document, but it is Insert Page Break for Word Processing documents.

At any rate, without captured pages it is a pretty crippled function.

It won't help between documents, but within a document, you can select a section in the thumbnails and use Edit Menu > Duplicate Selection to repeat it.

Peter, afaik the layout break function is still there, but it went to full automatic hence no UI for it. E.g. if you change the number of columns for a paragraph, it will insert a layout break.

Has anyone else encountered this selection bug? The goal is to select a line (i.e. paragraph) of text WITHOUT including the invisible carriage return at the end of the paragraph:

1. Place cursor at the beginning of a line of text that's followed by a carriage return

2. Holding down the shift key, press the down arrow to select the entire line of text:

3. In previous versions of Pages, if you continued to hold down the shift key and then pressed the left arrow, the carriage return would be unselected:

but in Pages 5.2, this is what happens:

In Pages v5.2, place the cursor at the beginning of the line you wish to select. Now, press shift+command+right-arrow to select everything up to, but not including the pilcrow symbol.

Pages for Mac 5.0: Keyboard shortcuts