iWork '09

[suavito]

Yuck.

Footnotes still disappear when they are inside of an imported rtf or doc. And in rtfd they get converted to 'endnotes', i. e. numbered chunks beginning of normal text. Similar behaviour of annotations: none/red but otherwise normal text.

So it's the same as with its predecessor. Not usable.

Nothing new? Oh, there is some internet thing going on—and there is a full screen mode. Does work. Does not come close to Scrivener's full screen mode in miles.

[p a t r i c k]

Hi

I heard it first here

Your posting is the first time I hear about iWork '09.

I'm a fan of iWork so I am looking forward to checking it out. That Internet thing looks very interesting, I've just watched the tutorial on that at the Apple website.

I think that Internet thing would be very good for people like me who are in the academic sphere. I can put documents up for others to comment on them. This will be useful for me methinks.

Soon I will be starting my iWork '09 trial.

I do agree that it would have been very good if they'd sorted out the footnote compatibility problems

I might send something using one of those Apple online feedback forms where-ever they are.

[Jaysen]

I use the iWork Suite simply to "not use" microsnot solutions. For me this is acceptable. I do like the bundle of iWork, iLife and Leopard. It will make it hard for folks with intel machines to avoid the move from tiger. Maybe that is the plan…

[brett]

I like Pages' new internet mode, too, at least at a distance. Not sure I'll get it, as I have the previous version, but it would make online collaboration with my coauthor easier. Then again I'd rather he just buy a copy of Scrivener so we could email files back and forth without exporting.
Looks like Pages has also added, at long last, an outliner, finally catching up with AppleWorks, which had it a decade ago, at least, and that looks useful, so maybe I'll try the 30 day demo and see how it works. I requested better rtf compatibility as KB has often urged, but Apple didn't listen to us.
And I agree about the bundle. I've long thought Apple would increase sales and reward customer loyalty with some kind of bundle involving iLife, iWork, each new OSX release, and AppleCare.

[druid]

Well, guess I am keener than you lot, since I've ordered both iLife and iWork '09.

For me, the best improvements are in Pages:
true outlining at last!
integration with Endnote
send file to Mail
easy open, edit, and return of Word files
online sharing of files with collaborators
mail-merge via Numbers and Address Book

Will have to see if its RTF factors are any better.
If you qualify for educational license, both products are $39.

[Timotheus]

The problem with every new version of iWork and Pages is always that Apple makes a lot of fuss about some glossy new features that have been added, but doesn't say anything about improvements of existing features; which makes it rather difficult to judge a new version without having tried it out thoroughly.

Talking about footnotes, I have a question: is it possible in Pages '09 to split a footnote between two pages? This was not yet possible in version '08, which made it rather unusable for writing of the academic kind.

[Eddie]

If you qualify for educational license, both products are $39.

Where?
I just checked their Education store, and they're $71 each.
For $39 I may give iWork a try. Otherwise, Office 2004 and 2008 have worked better for me.
Since Apple offers no upgrade path and some upgrades are glorified bug fixes I stopped caring about iWork. Maybe this new version is different.
Keynote has been the exception. It has been pretty good almost from the start.

[bodsham]

I just tried out Pages 09 and I find it incredibly disappointing. Yes, there's outlining, but it's very rudimentary. As far as I can see there's no way of seeing the outline in the sidebar - all you can do is switch the outline mode and see the whole thing in the page document, scroll to where you want, then go back to normal mode.
Also, they still don't offer an option to view a document in draft mode without page breaks and headers. Even in the new full screen mode (the one which is supposed to be the least obtrusive) you still get to see them, which is ludicrous. I really do wonder if Apple talk to their customers sometimes.
I tried exporting a Scrivener document to Word for my editor then doing revisions in both Pages and Word. It wasn't worth the hassle. Now I just export the docus to Words and do all the revision, everything in Scrivener, and export a new version. I doubt I will fork out for this upgrade.

[Timotheus]

I played a bit with the trial version of Pages '09, and now I can answer my own question: no, footnotes still can't be split between two pages. Which means that if you're the kind of person that, by choice or by constraint, writes articles with sometimes rather lengthy footnotes, the layout of your article in Pages will look awful.

This confirms that Pages is, and probably will always be, unfit for serious academic writing. "Is", because even the fourth version of this program isn't able to divide a simple footnote between two pages; "probably will always be", because it seems highly improbable that 'academic' features like cross-references and indexing will ever be a part of Pages.

Someone might object at this point that Pages wasn't designed for academic, but for general use, and that I should not pretend Pages to be something that its developers never wanted it it be.

But that's not what Apple is telling us. In its advertising, indeed, Apple is stressing Pages '09's compatibility with strictly academic programs like MathType and Endnote. On the Apple site I read: "Pages works with MathType 6 and Endnote X2 so you can create impressive research papers and lab reports." In other words: Pages is perfect for academic use.

Unfortunately, it is not.

[Apollo16]

Depends on what you mean by academic. In math and science, all major journals forbid the use of footnotes and only allow endnotes. I won't defend iWork but I have no issues with footnotes in planetary science because none of the places where I present or publish (including book chapters) allow the use of footnotes. However, footnotes are still used extensively in foreign language and history journals. (I imagine other places as well but I have no experience in other academic areas.)

Apollo16

[Timotheus]

Well, yes, Apollo, you're right: I must confess that I was talking about academic research in the humanities, without explicitly saying so. In the field of the humanities (languages, history, philosophy ecc.) footnotes, and often rather long footnotes, are the rule, not the exception. At least for the humanities, what I said seems perfectly true.

[druid]

If you qualify for educational license, both products are $39.

Where?
I just checked their Education store, and they're $71 each.

Sorry, should have been more specific. If your school has a license contract with Apple, you may buy iWork '09 from your campus IT store at the $39 rate. For personal use, taxes are charged; if you buy it on a research account, no taxes. At least that was my experience.

[druid]

In the field of the humanities (languages, history, philosophy etc.) footnotes, and often rather long footnotes, are the rule, not the exception. At least for the humanities, what I said seems perfectly true.

I spent years training graduate students out of that habit, but if it's still "the rule," it's even less appropriate in view of the funding crisis now afflicting higher education and academic presses. Let's not go into the depressing fact that only 2% of published scholarship is ever cited by other readers, much less purchased by scholars and libraries.

My advice to students: If a point is that important, put it in the text. If you're just displaying your erudition, trim the note down. Don't use footnotes, only endnotes. Most US book publishers prefer endnotes, keyed to pages rather than note numbers. That's a better system for electronic publications, too, which are bound to become the norm--and may reach more readers than books.

[Timotheus]

Druid, unfortunately I have to disagree with you. In certain kinds of academic discourse, on certain kinds of subjects, which often have a long exegetical tradition, many details must be given, many opinions must be discussed, many sources must be cited. That's not a question of displaying useless erudition; that's a question of accurate working, of founding your argumentation upon the results of your predecessors, of offering results that can be verified by the reader.

But if you put all these details, opinions, sources etc. into the main text, it becomes absolutely unreadable. So it's not a question of putting them into the main text or rather trimming the notes down. It's a question of presenting complex things in a readable, yet complete and verifiable way.

And endnotes are no valuable alternative to footnotes. Endnotes, indeed, are doomed to stay unread, because no one likes reading simultaneously two different sections of the same book.

Fortunately, there are still many prestigious publishing houses and scientific journals which perfectly understand this, and don't put up insurmountable barriers against footnotes of the kind I'm talking about.

[druid]

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Different fields, different standards. Reading endnotes is a matter of placing a bookmark in the notes section and flipping there when needed. But I doubt very much that traditional print publishing, especially for scholarship, will last much longer. It's way too costly to print, transport, and store. In a digital text, I could tolerate long notes IF a hyperlink in the main text opened a separate window for notes. That way, we'd have the beauty of a clear reading text and the industry of notes, perhaps keyed to scroll together.