Ok, this sounds much more promising than the frankly scary impression I'd gotten from the many negative Pages reviews in the App Store.
I was also concerned because of an alert I got on my iPad a few months ago, which if I remember correctly, told me my iPad Pages document would not be workable on older versions of Pages, specifically 4.3.
But in other words you're saying that if I simply update, Apple won't rewrite my 4.3 Pages to the new version lacking many of the features I rely on, it will simply put my old version away and install the 5.2. – but that I'll still be able to open and use the 4.3.
If that's the case, I'm entirely happy with updating.
Just as a matter of info, I did try control clicking – with two different keyboards – to no effect on either Pages, Keynote or Numbers.
Thanks for the debugging option too, but if I can keep my old Pages until they get the new version fully up to speed, I don't need to go there.