Thinksecret-Pages 3 improvements

hmurchison

http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0607pages3.html



Apple's Pages software is set to receiver a number of significant improvements when version 3 rolls out early next year as part of iWork '07, sources have told Think Secret. Among the most notable will be the introduction of two new modes, Word Processing and Layout, that will each be optimized for their respective tasks as opposed to Pages' current handling of both types of documents with one common set of templates and tools.





Apple hopes the new Word Processing mode will better position Pages for day-to-day document creation. A number of convenient features catered to writers and typists will also be wrapped into Pages 3, including a thesaurus, Spotlight, Wikipedia, and Google integration. Apple is also said to be looking to build a robust grammar checking engine for Pages that could find its way into other Apple and Cocoa applications.





Nice. I like the idea of being able to switch "modes" depending on what I'm doing. There's also more info about the improvements to the inspector so click the link and read more. Grammar checking that isn't annoying would be appreciated especially if it becomes standard in some apps.

bergermeister

Sounds like some good improvements to an already nice app. Now if they can just round out iWork they may actually have a money-maker on their hands.



I'd like to see even more sample elements that can be drag-and-dropped onto the user's page.



I'd also like to see better graphics capabilities (I used to use AppleWorks Draw for all of my layout and additional artwork).

ireland

Die "Office" die!! ...only joking.

carson o'genic

I use pages for a few things, but being a scientist my big limitation is that it doesn't work with referencing software. I use mostly Sente, but also Endnote if needed. A year back or so the folks at Sente said they had now way to plug in to Pages since Apple wasn't providing any tools for 3rd parties.