Start here

I didn’t look at Apple’s Getting Started video until my third day, and even then it saved me some time. It is totally worth spending 7 minutes viewing this before even starting the program.

Child-approved

MJ (11 years old) found this easy. The first feel-good moment (the second text import) happened within minutes and the first page layout was complete in an hour. The first draft of a 10 page magazine was completed the same day, and the final print by the end of the second day, with very little technical guidance. The finished newsletter compares well with official school publications.

Glitches

Printable area

Not documented anywhere that I could find, and not evident on screen or through warnings, my printer cannot print on the top 11.5 mm of the second side of a double-sided A4 page in high-quality mode even though it can print borderless photographs. Printer limitations like this are common, and often only discovered by testing.

Text background

I started with a template that had white text on a black background in the header. It turns out that the black background was a separate object, not bound to move or resize with the header text. I did not find a way to change the height of the header text box: it is a special area.

Alignment

I didn’t find a way to exactly align two objects; my best results came from manual nudging at maximum zoom. I found myself wishing for an Align object command, or snap to grid function, or even a numeric coordinate display.

Language

It is apparently impossible to set any thing but US English to be the default for spellchecking all future documents. It even takes effort to set the language in the current document.

Text colour

Pasting paragraph style or character style does not always set the text colour.

Help

Help is beautifully simple, clear, easy to follow, and completely lacking mention of the glitches I found. Google is your friend; search the forums for solutions.

Export

When exporting to Word format, I was warned that text would overlap images because Word does not support wrap within textboxes. This was obviously true, when I opened the document in Word. It is hardly Apple’s fault, but does mean that every exported document needs a lot of manual adjustment.

Crop

Cropping a picture within Pages 09 is possible, but not obvious or direct.

Import

Import of Word 2003 documents was reasonably successful, but not 100%. For example, it has been reported that footnotes that are in tables in Word will be dropped.

Product Comparisons

Microsoft and Adobe offer whole-school licences that are about as cheap as iWork.

Microsoft Publisher 2007	Creating the first document is slower in Publisher, starting with choosing a template from a far less attractive gallery. The selection takes longer, and then requires more adjustment. Publisher beats Pages 09 on all of the above glitches, but it seemed that almost every action takes an extra click, and every click saps user confidence. The similarity of menus to other Office products helps, but does make some attributes more awkward to access. The print settings, or the properties of text boxes provide a good example: the heirarchical organisation of properties in Pages 09 feels more intuitive than the order in the Microsoft product. Pages 09 natively produces a PDF and provides colour adjustment. When layout is more sophisticated than Pages or Publisher will handle, the next step is typically to Adobe InDesign CS4. Pages 09 feels more similar in its presentation of page management and object property management.	Advantage: Pages 09
Microsoft Word 2007	Microsoft Word is still not a good framework for precise layout: every textbox or object sits above the wordprocessing layer, and can be easily accidentally deleted or moved. Pages has a Word Processing mode which is similar but much easier to control. The Table of Contents, Section formatting and Outline interfaces are a breeze. Word 2007 seems to support more complex section properties, not well: but I have rescued too many mangled manuscripts. Texts that are too complex for Pages are better handled with InDesign. It has been reported that Pages 09 hesitates when opening long documents. Word 2007 shows the first page quickly, but pagination continues as a background task for some time and calculated fields such as page numbers may be out of date.	Advantage: Pages 09
InDesign CS4	InDesign has a steep learning curve, even for simple use.	Advantage: Pages 09

Fit-for-purpose guide

My aim is to empower students to tackle the issues of the future. Students should be taught to prefer and seek out  efficient technology that generates a product or effect with minimum effort and cognitive load. The right tool for the job is:

Page layout or a small book	Pages 09
Including text bound to paths, or many embedded objects, or objects crossing page breaks	InDesign CS4
Extensive shared editing without layout	GoogleDocs
Editing in turns with Word users	Word 2007

Recommended workflow

For a project with a printed output of more than one page, with more than one source:

Collect	If you intend to acknowledge your sources (as you should), every time you find something good online, click the Zotero button. Zotero keeps a snapshot of the page attached to the URL and any referencing information it can discover in metadata. Zotero will synchronise this with an online copy, if you use more than one computer.
Draft	If you need to use more than one computer (as I always do) or work with a team, or to log the development of your draft, build your text in GoogleDocs. Use heading styles but don’t get sidetracked by formatting and layout issues until you leave GoogleDocs. Caveat: GoogleDocs will hold tables and allow basic editing of the text in tables, but its table editor is very clumsy. If you must use tables, leave them in spreadsheets and don’t get sidetracked by formatting and layout until you leave GoogleDocs.
Layout	Pick a suitable template. Modify it if need be. Get this sorted out first, so that the only formatting you do in Pages will be for exceptions. Use the ‘Paste and keep style consistent’ option liberally. Instead of aligning text boxes, create a (white) line and set its ‘Wrap’ property, then position it over the text boxes.
Proof	There is no way to avoid this. The screen is not a printer and cannot show you exactly what the printer will do. Print, carefully check margins, overlaps, colours, etc., adjust settings and repeat until the output is acceptable.

Acknowledgements

• Apple 2009, Pages ’09 Tutorials, Apple, http://www.apple.com/iwork/tutorials/#pages
• Igot, P 2009, Performance tips for Pages ’09 with large documents, Betalogue, http://www.betalogue.com/2009/03/18/pages-large-documents/
• Tang S 2009, Using iWork as an image editor, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, http://www.tuaw.com/2009/09/19/using-iwork-as-an-image-editor/

• Image – http://internetgenblog.com/