Bookends and Apple Pages '09

[matthias]

Jon,

I installed it now to try the service. So far, it works fine. After installing the "plug-in", I could add a button clicking on which will upload the file to the service. They implemented this through SIMBL, which allows to develop hacks for cocoa apps. So, I don't know whether this would be a role model for Bookends-Pages collaboration.

Matthias

[Jon]

Very interesting. Thanks for the followup. I suspect this is suitable for only simple actions, like that performed by the getbackboard "plugin", not something as complex and interactive as the reference citation interface. Apple should just supply an API, but it doesn't look like they will.

Jon
Sonny Software

[ozean]

Ah, too bad that it is SIMBL stuff – after some bad experiences with SIMBL plugins I am now avoiding this kind of “hack”. (Although I am not sure to what degree this is unreasonable or not )

[laup]

If I am writing in Pages, and along the way I change a Bookends bibliographic item (say to correct the year of publication), will that correction be made in the Pages document by scanning again? Since BE doesn't "unscan," I would think that the answer is no and that the correction could be made only be deleting the citation in the document, reentering, and rescanning. To put things another way, it may be that one should plan to scan only at the very very very end of a writing project if using Pages. That would be quite inconvenient, since it is very nice to be able to see drafts that look right (with permanent citations), even though others will be added, corrections will be made, etc.

If the problem that I am imagining with Pages doesn't exist, then I might switch to Pages instead of Word 2008 for my next collaborative document.

By the way, there have now been enough forum items on Pages, so that it's a bit confusing to know what's authoritative, especially since searching for "Pages" doesn't work (it's too common a term). When things settle down, a summary item might be posted.

[Jon]

You can't unscan or rescan a Pages document.

You can scan during writing so you see the results (and make sure it's working as you want), but any modifications to the paper should always be made to the original document. Scan that at the end when you're ready.

Jon
Sonny Software

[laup]

Jon's advice to scan only at the end of a project with Pages, or on a COPY of the manuscript along the way, is sensible because it is the only way to assuredly avoid problems. After all, the document does not contain the markers that would allow for unscanning (or "rescanning" in the sense of the combined unscan/scan process).

However, for those of us who really want to be viewing "final" formats along the way without creating copies for that purpose, there is an alternative. This works well if one's formats are solid. The process would be, e.g.

a. Write a chapter, inserting temporary citations with BE. Scan the closed document. Read, edit, and make corrections.
b. Write the next chapter, inserting new citations with BE. Scan. Read, edit,... Note that this is "rescanning" in the sense of sequential scanning, but not in the sense of unscanning/scanning.

This approach has two problems that I can think of: (1) some references may prove wrong (e.g., the wrong year was entered in the BE data base) and (2) instead of one bibliography, there will be a number of them, one for each scan. The fixes would be, respectively:

(1) Either fix the reference in the data base and manually alter the relevant citations in the document; or fix the reference in the data base, delete the relevant citations in the document AND the bibliography item, and scan.

(2) Select the whole set of bibliographies, use Pages' Format/Table/Text into Table, order the items using Pages' Table inspector, and use Pages' Format/Table/Table into Text to generate the combined, ordered bibliography. This sounds much worse than it is; it takes only seconds. Unfortunately, Pages doesn't allow sorting of pure text, just items in a table.

But what if it turns out that a format syntax has to be changed? The most likely case of this would affect only the bibliography. Some manual editing at the end of the project would hardly be a big deal.

This is a klugey workaround rather than the cleaner approach Jon suggests. but I may not be the only one to prefer it. Maybe there is a fatal flaw, but I don't know what it would be.

By the way, I've dinged Apple again, although I'm not holding my breath for it to release the API that would make Bookends integration feasible.

[ml502]

Hi,
I have two questions:
1.) I have recently aimed to complete a paper (ca 10 000 words) in pages 09 following the forum's suggestions. I did not format the document until the very end. Unfortunately after formatting I ended up with a number of empty footnotes. Saving as a packages was activated. I could not find any mistake. Some footnotes included text preceding the references. However the number of empty footnotes was greater than the number of footnotes including text as well as references.

Any ideas on making sure that it works properly next time?

2.)What do I have to do to make sure that footnotes with text preceeding or following references in pages 09 really work?

[Jon]

Hi,

It may be that you've uncovered a bug. Please reduce the paper to the smallest size that demonstrates the problem (ideally sentence and one footnote), then zip it and a database containing that reference and submit them both to tech support (support@sonnysoftware.com).

Jon
Sonny Software

[cmann50]

I posted the following to the apple pages comment page listed earlier in this thread.

I have recently purchased the "bookends" bibliography product and planned to purchase a license for pages as well. It appears pages does not offer seamless integration with bookends, but does offer such integration with endnote. The bookends developers are actively trying to integrate their product with pages in a similar fashion as endnote. Does endnote integrate with pages using a standard API that any bibliography program can access, or is the API proprietary and inaccessible from other bibliographic products? If an open-standard API is offered, could you please provide a link to the reference documentation? If not, do you plan to offer an open-standard API for integration in the future?

Hopefully it will do some good.

[Jon]

I'd like to think so, but this is Apple ya know. :-)

Thanks!

Jon
Sonny Software

[ppnkg]

I just wrote to apple and asked them to consider releasing the API. I'm using pages more and more lately, and I'd really love to see BE work better with pages