Bookends and Pages 2

[Edwin Sanchez]

Jon, I remember that the problem with getting BE to work natively with Pages v1 was that it did not allow scripting. Hope I got that right. Anyway, any idea now that Pages 2 is out whether it will now be possible? Its the only thing that is stopping me from using Pages for all my grant applications.

Eddie

[Jon]

Hi Eddie,

I have to admit I didn't upgrade to Pages 2 myself. Can anyone tell me if it is scriptable now (I didn't see this in the release notes)?

Jon
Sonny Software

[san]

Pages 2.0 does not include support for Automator, but does include support for AppleScript. Opening the Pages "Dictionary" in AppleScript editor shows several Pages suites including the "Pages Text Suite" with the following commands:

insert page break
character
character style
insertion point
list level
list style
paragraph
paragraph style
table attachment
text
word

Can you use this to help BookEnds work with Pages?

[Jon]

Hi,

Thanks for the info. It might help with automatic insertion of citations (so you don't have to do the paste yourself). Would you please try Copy Citation with Pages 2 and see if the insertion occurs automatically? You have to be linked to Pages 2 first (Bookends Preferences).

Thanks,

Jon
Sonny Software

[san]

From BookEnds, Copy>Selected Citations works half-way with Pages 2. Bookends switches to Pages, but doesn't paste in the references. But typing Command-V puts them in.

From Pages, I can save the document as RTF that Bookends scans. It puts the bibliography on the clipboard, which I can then paste into the original Pages document. However, the text citations don't get changed (in this case to the bibliography numbers).

So the functionality is about half there. If there was a script to replace the text citations with the correct ones from Bookends, it would be working.

[Jon]

Hi san,

I think the in-text citations are replaced (they should be for all RTF files that are scanned). Was the format you used one that replaces citations with author-date?

Please contact me directly for tech support if you have problems with this...

Jon
Sonny Software

[san]

Hi -

You are right, the text citations are replaced in the NEW .rtf file. However, that file lacks all the figures that I inserted in the original document. In my previous post, I meant that I could past the bibliography into the original Pages document (with the figures). However, that one doesn't have the text citations replaced.

I suppose a work-around would be to copy and past the text from the new .rtf file (with text citations replaced) into the original .pages document (with the figures and the added bibliography).

[Jon]

That's odd. RTF handles pictures just fine. I would have thought that Pages 2 would include them in the RTF file. I'll check with Pages (v1) when I get to a machine that has it later today.

Jon
Sonny Software

[niklas]

Hi -

You are right, the text citations are replaced in the NEW .rtf file. However, that file lacks all the figures that I inserted in the original document. In my previous post, I meant that I could past the bibliography into the original Pages document (with the figures). However, that one doesn't have the text citations replaced.

I suppose a work-around would be to copy and past the text from the new .rtf file (with text citations replaced) into the original .pages document (with the figures and the added bibliography).

First, when Pages exports a document that includes images to rtf, it actually creates a .rtfd file, that Bookends can't scan, because it is really a folder (containing the text file and the images).
Second, Bookends always inserts the replaced citations into the newly created file (the one that Bookends calles ".revised.rtf" by default), not in the old one, which is left untouched (a good thing, as you can keep working on the original document).

What I don't really understand is that it sounds as if you actually managed to scan an exported rtf file containing images... It shouldn't be possible, and I certainly can't do it.

Anyway, I think the way to go, if you want to use Pages, is to wait with the images until you are ready for submission, and then add them to the formatted document after Bookends has done its thing. This should work.

However, I have come to like Pages 2 as well, but using it with Bookends do seem a bit complicated. First you have to export your .pages document to rtf, then scan it with Bookends, which gives you a new rtf file. Finally you need to import the new rtf file into Pages and save it as .pages again... Only to (most probably) export it into .doc or .pdf for submission...

Niklas

[Jon]

Yes, rtfd, of course. These are bundles, as I recall. You can open the bundle, move the RTF portion to the desktop (or whever), scan that, and then move it back into the rtfd bundle. A small pain, yes. But it should work.

Pages uses a proprietary XML format that can be changed anytime Apple wants. Supporting it natively would be a major effort and it would be prone to break. Perhaps in the future...

Jon
Sonny Software

[san]

All I did was Export to RTF, and Pages made an rtf file (not rtfd) that BookEnds could scan without any problem. However, the rtf file Pages made didn't have any figures in it.

[Chemist]

Its the only thing that is stopping me from using Pages for all my grant applications.

Hi- I picked up that you are using BE for grant applications. That is also my primary use for this program, and I had some unresolved issues with BE in that regard. Do you know how to compound several references into a single bibliographic entry? This saves a lot of space, if you see what I mean. Jon said that this was not possible, but I'm just checking in case there was any misunderstanding.

OK I'm using MS Word, and not your processor so things might be a little different.

thanks

Fenton

[Edwin Sanchez]

Chemist, I have never tried combining references into a single biblio entry. I know that Science and Nature often use that style, but I have not tried that using BE for that purpose. Sorry.

Eddie

[Jon]

That's not correct. Nature has never combined references in a bibliography (at least since I have followed it, which is for some time). And Science dropped it a few years ago (because it made it difficult to have embedded HTML links to the on-line references, I was told).

Jon
Sonny Software

[Chemist]

That's not correct. Nature has never combined references in a bibliography (at least since I have followed it, which is for some time). And Science dropped it a few years ago (because it made it difficult to have embedded HTML links to the on-line references, I was told).

Sure, but Science and Nature publish a handful of journals (5? 10?). The ACS, the RSC, Wiley an Elsevier together probably publish > 100 journals, and in the overwhelming number of cases compounding references is standard. Then of course for grant applications to NSF, NIH etc. it is a "must".

Sorry for being a troublemaker, I'm just telling it like it is .

ciao

Fenton(aka Chemist)