Sonny Software

Hey when will you support Pages (http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/) natively ?

Greetings
/Jaemon

Hi Jaemon,

The answer is...I don't know. Bookends should work with Pages as well as it does with any word processor (as far as inserting citations, formatted references, etc.). And scanning an RTF file saved from Pages should work just fine.

If you mean direct scanning of Pages documents initiated from within the word processor, as Bookends does with Word, Mellel, and NWE (and I assume you do), that depends on the degree to which Apple provides access (via plug-ins, macros, APIs, etc.). We should know soon.

Jon
Sonny Software

Now that I have Pages, I can tell you that it isn't designed to work nicely with other apps.

First, it is not scriptable. That means when you Copy Citation in Bookends you will switch to Pages (if it is linked), but you'll have to Paste in the temporary citation yourself.

Second, its file format is a proprietary (undocumented, at least at this time) XML that is zipped and contained in a bundle. So for Bookends to scan the document you have to export it from Pages as RTF first.

Third, there does not appear to be any plug-in architecture or macro capability.

So, Bookends will certainly work with Pages. But there is no way at this time to get the kind of integration we have with Mellel (very good), Word (good), or even NWE (fair).

Jon
Sonny Software

Hi,

Pages is a non starter just now if you're using references, since it exports in a strange rtf format (rtfx) if you have images in your file, so you can't even do a RTF scan. Any chance support for this could be added to bookends? If it did i'd buy it overnight, and i'd imagine you'd get quite a few endnote switchers...

best,
Barry

Barry Brown wrote:Pages is a non starter just now if you're using references, since it exports in a strange rtf format (rtfx) if you have images in your file, so you can't even do a RTF scan. Any chance support for this could be added to bookends?

Hi Barry,

Pages RTF export saves papers with images as rftd, which is actually a bundle (or package). You can open its contents by right-clicking on it and selecting Show Package Contents.

You can remove the actual rtf file (called TXT.rtf) from the package, scan it, and replace it. So it will work (cumbersome, though).

As far as scanning native Pages XML, we will just have to wait and see. It will not be trivial to implement and will break if Apple changes anything.

Since most people create documents without images, exporting as RTF is a satisfactory option for them for now (not ideal, of course, but workable). Once Bookends 8 is out the door and the dust has settled, we will reevaluate the possibility of scanning native Pages files.

Jon
Sonny Software

Many thanks. Shame. Mind you keynote had an open xml format, so maybe there's hope for pages.

-Barry

Yes, I came here when I saw there was an update to Bookends, hoping for Pages support.

I understand the problems you face, but if you (with help from Apple) can get it straightened out, I would purchase the software.

Trog wrote:Yes, I came here when I saw there was an update to Bookends, hoping for Pages support.

I understand the problems you face, but if you (with help from Apple) can get it straightened out, I would purchase the software.

As much as I love Macs, I have to tell you that Apple is not in the helping business...

Bookends should work just fine with Pages documents saved as RTF. If better integration is desired, I suggest Mellel, which is far better suited for academic and scholarly writing than Pages.

But we'll see what can be done...

Jon
Sonny Software

This I can confirm - if you are writing scholarly texts, choose Mellel.

gke wrote:This I can confirm - if you are writing scholarly texts, choose Mellel.

I can second that.

Can you guys elaborate as to what exactly Mellel is better for? I have looked at the web page but never used the software, and wondered why this software is so much better.

In my mind, the biggest change I've had recently is the absolute joy to write review articles with > 100 references, due to the simple means of organizing and citing my references with Bookends. If I can make this even better with Mellel, I would. I'm just not sure what advantages it would offer me. Thanks.

Prop, you might just want to download it and try it out — the unpaid version is fully functional except for printing.

Basically, the advantages it offers are manifold, and include outlining (document navigation), very good non-Roman script support, very configurable footnotes/endnotes, and very tight bibliographic database integration. Its styles are also very powerful, particularly if you work in multiple languages.

Hey Jon,

I know it's not perfect but to support pages you might consider doing some scanning and inserting stuff into the pages XML file. I did some perl code which copied refs to/from word docs (with endnote) into pages documents. I included my extra information as a URL attached to the reference (hardly perfect i know, but it works) since i couldn't work out the XML schema. That lets you reformat docs which have already been scanned.

One possible problem is that I think pages assumes that the XML has correct pagination information (obviously, if you go changing references that mucks with that).

Any chance I could beg you chaps to try a similar approach for pages?

My perl code (for all it's faults...) is here:

http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~barry/endnote ... s2pages.pl
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~barry/endnote ... etsback.pl

some discussion here:

http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx? ... @.68a94dbc

Mind you, the pages team needs a good talking to. No applescript? I mean, come on! Pages is like 75% of a good application, if only the other 25% was added. I know you guys are big fans of mellel, but i just don't like the UI...

Best,
Barry

Thanks, Barry.

There is the issue of the XML file being zipped.

Then there is the issue of pagination (yikes, I hadn't even noted that before -- Bookends would certainly break that).

Then there is the whole issue of maintaining yet another format for scanning (text, RTF, and then Pages). This is bound to cause trouble going forward.

Right now Bookends scan Pages documents saved as RTF just fine, so for most folks it is fine. The only problem is with RTFD bundles. Even there I think you can do it by opening the bundle, taking out the RTF file, scanning that, and then putting it back (I tried that a while ago and it worked for me, at least).

So, I'll definitely keep an eye on Pages, but...

Jon
Sonny Software

Hey Jon,

Good points - all anoying things about pages. One thing you can do is use the gzip terminal command (well i could in perl anyway) to get at the zipped file - ie just do a gunzip file.pages/index.xml.gz > ~/index.xml and then a gzip ~/index.xml > file.pages/index.xml.gz.

The annoying thing of course it that the main reason to use pages is because it's image relocation thing isn't brain dead, and that... breaks the use of rtf files (i've always found problems with the resulting rtfd files for some reason taking them out and putting them back into the bundle doesn't work).

Any chance of a fix to the rtfd thing then - that's just a simple file copy...

cheers
-barry