Tuesday, August 7, 2007

iWork '08 w/ Pages '08

iWork ‘08 w/ Pages ‘08

Finally, a horizontal formatting toolbar. Just what I needed. Pages would now be my favourite word processor if not for its annoying file-format behaviour.

It supports Microsoft Word (.doc) files, as well as new Word 2007 (.docx) files, although in my tests, opening a simple .docx file I created with NeoOffice would always crash Pages (not sure which program is at fault here, but I tend to think crashing is not ever an acceptable action). Pages will also refuse to let you edit a Word file in-place; you can open and edit them, but when you go to save, it insists on saving in Pages format. You’d have to go to the Export menu item, click Word, and overwrite the existing file each time you want to save, if you’re going to be sharing files with Word users. Even Microsoft isn’t this bad about forcing their formats on you.

Almost needless to say, neither Pages nor the rest of iWork supports OpenDocument in any way, which is inconvenient because almost all of my documents are already in that format, and I’d kind of rather they stay that way for maximum future-proofing.

Still, I like the interface a lot.

There’s a 30-day trial available, and after it expires, the programs still work in view-only mode.