Pages- any good for long documents?

resres
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
I'm still trying to find something that can replace framemaker on the Mac. Anyone know how well Pages wlll handle long (200+ page) documents?



Right now there is really no program for long documents on the Mac, and if Pages can handle them well it would be a big plus.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 11
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    Well, I do know someone who wrote an entire novel in AppleWorks, but that's probably not the answer you're looking for.
  • Reply 2 of 11
    hobbeshobbes Posts: 1,252member
    I just purchased iWork. Pages is an interesting program.



    200+ pages just text, or 200+ pages w/ pictures -- and if so, how many, and what average size?



    I can try to give it a run-through.



    (Chances are, though, Pages 1.0 isn't up to the task you're looking for.)
  • Reply 3 of 11
    dr vannostrandr vannostran Posts: 110member
    I would say either Quark Xpress or Adobe InDesign. They might not have all of the same features as FrameMaker but the features that they don't have could be added with a few extensions (Indexing, ect..). Both are fine applications with the ability to import text from many different sources and I would say the way they handle images is superior to Framemaker.



    I have worked on books that were done in PageMaker and Quark (600 + Pages) and all we did was just split the book up into smaller Page divisions. Pages 1-100, 101-200, ect...



    Before I put to much work into creating a book in any application, I would check with your publisher to make sure it is supported, it might save you some money in the long run.
  • Reply 4 of 11
    nevergobacknevergoback Posts: 1member
    Pages is very nice, I have been using it for the past few days. However, for multi-hundred page documents, you want Adobe InCopy, little known underdog wonder.
  • Reply 5 of 11
    resres Posts: 711member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Hobbes

    I just purchased iWork. Pages is an interesting program.



    200+ pages just text, or 200+ pages w/ pictures -- and if so, how many, and what average size?



    I can try to give it a run-through.



    (Chances are, though, Pages 1.0 isn't up to the task you're looking for.)



    Average of 250-300 pages with about 50 drawings. You don't have to bother with the run-through, I decided to get it anyway.



    Quote:

    Originally posted by Dr VanNostran

    I would say either Quark Xpress or Adobe InDesign. They might not have all of the same features as FrameMaker but the features that they don't have could be added with a few extensions (Indexing, ect..). Both are fine applications with the ability to import text from many different sources and I would say the way they handle images is superior to Framemaker.



    I've been writing and laying out the books in FrameMaker so I don't have to import the text (one of the reasons I went with FM so many years ago was that it is a good environment for creating the content as well as layout. I've tried Quark and InDesign and they just don't cut it for me. InDesign has a lot of nice features (some which are a great improvement over FrameMaker's), but there are some things that I need that are still missing.



    Since they canceled FrameMaker for the Mac I've really been hopping that Adobe would add FM's feature set to InDesign, but so far it has not happened.



    Quote:

    Originally posted by Dr VanNostran

    Pages is very nice, I have been using it for the past few days. However, for multi-hundred page documents, you want Adobe InCopy, little known underdog wonder.



    I've never tried InCopy. Does it handle cross-references well (dynamically updating and attachable to a paragraph or sentence)?
  • Reply 6 of 11
    karl kuehnkarl kuehn Posts: 756member
    One disappointing note on Pages: it does not allow you to delete a page. This is normal for a word processor, but a real drawback as a page layout program. And since Pages templating system seems to push it somewhere in between these two classes of programs this is a disappointing oversight. There has already been talk of hoping that this will be included in a 1.1 release.
  • Reply 7 of 11
    hobbeshobbes Posts: 1,252member
    Yeah, the absence of page addition, deletion, layout, & navigation controls is Pages' biggest lacuna.
  • Reply 8 of 11
    scoodotcomscoodotcom Posts: 12member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Karl Kuehn

    One disappointing note on Pages: it does not allow you to delete a page. This is normal for a word processor, but a real drawback as a page layout program. And since Pages templating system seems to push it somewhere in between these two classes of programs this is a disappointing oversight. There has already been talk of hoping that this will be included in a 1.1 release.



    You can delete pages from a document, it's just really well hidden. Go to menu Format> Advanced> Manage Pages. From there you can delete, reorder and rename pages. If it were up to me, this functionality would be available from the inspector.
  • Reply 9 of 11
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    Kind of surprising. They should take a cue from Stone and have a document navigator/thumbnail view or something. Can you at least dump long text onto a bunch of pages automatically -- autoflow text or somesuch? I did a re-layout of my thesis in Create (no equations in it, science boys), and I just clicked the plus sign thingy at the bttom of the first text block, went to the add pages placard and it dumped my text on as many sheets as needed using the same area as the first text block. I could go back later and add divider pages between and not affect anything else. Can Pages easily insert new sheets in the middle of a layout? (I assume it requires page breaks since it is a WP.)
  • Reply 10 of 11
    johnqjohnq Posts: 2,763member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Scoodotcom

    You can delete pages from a document, it's just really well hidden. Go to menu Format> Advanced> Manage Pages. From there you can delete, reorder and rename pages. If it were up to me, this functionality would be available from the inspector.



    Sorry, but that's wrong. (I have Pages)



    With each template you choose, there are a variety of sub-pages with alternate layouts. "Manage Pages" merely allows you to reorder these templates or add and delete sub-templates (my phrase).



    Think of a Pages document as a theme set, each Pages document, after choosing the initial master theme, comes with an additional set of sub-page templates. Some have one, some have 5 or 6 or so. There are far more sub-templates than shown in the initial template selection sheet.



    This has nothing to do with the actual page count.



    Pasting 22 pages worth of text into a Pages document, it all populates copies of the initial template chosen. You can alter each page using other templates or free form editing each one.



    But there is no way to navigate/delete/manage the actual pages. (Well you can of course scroll up and down/use arrow keys or the two page up/down buttons.)



    Beats me how you would reorder pages beyond complicated cut and paste. I am still learning it and haven't read the manual in detail yet.



    The entire document is one huge flowing string (usually) so deleting portions reflows the rest.



    Pages kinda forces you to insert the content in small chunks, per-page so that reflow doesn't mess things up further down the document. This of course depends on the layout. Simpler layouts don't really require each page to have an exact look, so reflow might shake out okay.



    I love it but it needs work.



    Also I wish it would dumb down the resolution for inserted images. As it is, I'm dragging large images in, it scales them down, looks great but when exported into PDF, they are positively sluggish to scroll, blinking and bamfing in and out, because each image is it's original size. So you really need to scale your images down beforehand to about the size you want to used them in Pages, to make the size more manageable.



  • Reply 11 of 11
    scoodotcomscoodotcom Posts: 12member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by johnq

    Sorry, but that's wrong. (I have Pages)



    With each template you choose, there are a variety of sub-pages with alternate layouts. "Manage Pages" merely allows you to reorder these templates or add and delete sub-templates (my phrase).



    Think of a Pages document as a theme set, each Pages document, after choosing the initial master theme, comes with an additional set of sub-page templates. Some have one, some have 5 or 6 or so. There are far more sub-templates than shown in the initial template selection sheet.



    This has nothing to do with the actual page count.



    Pasting 22 pages worth of text into a Pages document, it all populates copies of the initial template chosen. You can alter each page using other templates or free form editing each one.



    But there is no way to navigate/delete/manage the actual pages. (Well you can of course scroll up and down/use arrow keys or the two page up/down buttons.)



    Beats me how you would reorder pages beyond complicated cut and paste. I am still learning it and haven't read the manual in detail yet.



    The entire document is one huge flowing string (usually) so deleting portions reflows the rest.



    Oh ho! I too have Pages and just pasted a 5000 word text block into a new blank document. Ouch! I stand corrected. I'm willing to be patient seeing as how this is One-point-oh software (also, I'm really in the Keynote for $20 off plus this new word processor thrown for free crowd).



    Looking forward to 1.x....
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