NVMUG eNews 3/19/2005
Last updated 3/29/2005
iWork Pages
Hartley Jackson showed some of the features of iWorks Pages and how he has used it.
1. The Meeting News - iWork Pages
Macworld Collage prepared by dragging images into iWork Pages and resizing and rearranging them. It couldn't be easier.
NVMUG Members Learn To Create Pages With Pages
The Northern Vermont Macintosh Users group learned about a new Apple Macintosh word processing and page layout program, iWork Pages, at an informal meeting in St. Johnsbury Saturday, March 19. Hartley Jackson demonstrated how he uses the program and many of the features. He said is fun to use, and so easy that you do not realize how powerful it is.
Jackson asked for a demonstration by an Apple expert at Macworld in San Francisco before he bought the program. The expert showed how easy it is to change a paragraph in the middle of a page from one column to three columns. When he received the program at home, he tried this first. But, when he highlighted one paragraph, three paragraphs were turned into columns. To change just one paragraph, insert Layout Breaks around it. Pages has Layout Breaks in addition to the Section Breaks, Page Breaks and Column Breaks that were in AppleWorks.
iWorks consists of Pages and Keynote 2, a presentation program that contains more appearance enhancing feature than Power Point. Jackson said it will replace AppleWorks for word processing, page layout and presentations, but AppleWorks will still be needed for its spreadsheet and database features.
Pages comes with 40 professionally designed templates. When the program opens you start with a template, one of which is a blank page. For his first project after he bought the program, Jackson started with a template of a marketing flyer. He inserted his own pictures and words, added another picture and changed it a bit, and produced a professional looking House for Sale poster before he read the small manual. He also demonstrated what can happen to the layout when you insert too much and expand layout breaks.
It is easy to create your own templates for use with Pages. For his second project, Jackson started with Pages Personal Letter and Personal Envelope stationery templates, modified them for his own use, and saved them as Friendly Letter and Friendly Envelope stationery.
His third project was to create collages of pictures of the Macworld using Pages. He dragged pictures and positioned them in Pages. He demonstrated how easy it is to move and resize a picture partially covering another picture. Then he uncovered the picture behind by bringing it forward. He could also have adjusted the transparency of a picture. It was quick, easy and natural to do in Pages.
Jackson then showed a page from his diary. Pages text looks better on screen than an AppleWorks document because it takes full advantage of AppleÕs Quartz graphics and Unicode text. Then he showed a page made more attractive by adding a portrait of his cat.
Next Jackson showed papers he had created by dragging information and diagrams downloaded from the Web Pages to organize and edit them. Some of the information was easier to understand when put into a table. With Pages he could start building the table and add rows as he needed them. If he needed more rows than would fit on one page, Pages automatically inserted the tableÕs header on the second page. There was no need to draw the table on paper first.
He showed the Text Inspector window which he had used to create a List or outline, and how easy it is to modify the indent level of the information. The Inspector window gives easy access to tools for laying out documents, formatting text, manipulating and positioning objects, creating tables and charts, and much more.
Jackson showed the many commands available in the File, Edit, Insert, Format, Arrange, View, Window and Help menus Pages. For example, Paste which to paste in text in the format from the source document, or Paste and Match Style to paste the text in the style of Pages where you are pasting it. Another command opens a Chart Editor which you use to edit data to create of modify a chart, or paste data from a spreadsheet.
The Help menu contains the usual help and resource information, a complete Pages User Guide, and a iWork Tour which Jackson demonstrated.
Used the Media menu to end the program. With this menu, you can browse iTunes, iPhotos, and Movies to import into Pages. Jackson imported a 1984 movie of the introduction of the first Macintosh computer, and played it within Pages.
Jackson finished by quoting two reviews. One was from a writer in The Seattle Times who said iWork Pages is nearly a dream come true,
and In the two weeks I've had Pages, I haven't had to open Word once.
The author who has been in the design and publishing industry for over 35 years said, At first look however, if you don't need high-end pre-press capabilities, and you're not publishing newspapers, phone books or encyclopedias, then Pages on the Mac could be a home run.
And, Yes, you can probably do all this with the software you already own -- it just won't be as easy, as fun, or as good-looking!
2. More iWork Pages
Warren Walker brought in his new Princeton 18" LCD display which ha bought with a bargain rebate of about $100 so only cost him about $300. I used it for the presentation.
Macworld Collage prepared by dragging images into iWork Pages and resizing and rearranging them. It couldn't be easier.
My 12" PowerBook was set to show a separate image on the external screen, and we had to set it to mirror the PowerBook image because I had never worked with an external screen before. Maybe someday I will own one.
He presented a program at the Cabot Public Library on the digital camera where there were people with a digital camera but no computer. Without a computer there are severe photo storage and editing limitations.
Since the meeting, another review by Mike Wendland, some kind of Free Press columnist, wrote.
Sooner or later, every computer owner gets the urge to make something slick, be it a family newsletter, a brochure for your kid's soccer team or even a cover for that genealogy research you've been doing. And that takes us to desktop publishing and graphic design software.
Today, I have two programs to suggest, representing both ends of the design application extremes.
At the lower end ($79) is Apple's new Pages program, part of its iWork application suite that also includes Keynote, Apple's answer to the ubiquitous Microsoft PowerPoint presentation program.
After first being blasé about Pages, I am now gaga over it. The more I use it, the more blown away I am by its elegance. Alas, it only works with Apple computers, but with all the people who have been switching to the Mac platform recently, we need to talk about it.
At the higher end of the design software category ($699) is Adobe InDesign CS. It's not for the everyday user. But this program is so powerful you could design a slick magazine, a book or an album cover. It's used by commercial designers and comes in PC and Mac versions.
He says that, I'll use Pages for my annual family Christmas letter and for that alone, I'd pay the $79. You can drag pictures and images onto it, resize them and place them by using your mouse to pull or push the corners to the proper perspective. Just one click inserts tables and charts or changes colors and font styles.
And, I've played around with most of the other design software over the years, and Pages beats them all in ease of operation and the sheer beauty of its output. It's immediately usable by kids and even computer-challenged adults.
I believe that the only serious problem Pages has is that it is so easy to use, it may be difficult to get people to realize how powerful the program is.
3. Answers to Macintosh Problems
Stephen Farber answers two questions may be of use you.
The first was what to do if the cursor freezes. Stephen recommended holding the power-off button for a few seconds, He said it doesnÕt hurt, and usually corrects the problem.
It sure is a lot simpler than the method we used when we had the cursor freeze on an iMac.
- We inserted Panther System Disk 1 to use Disk Utility
- We pressed the Control-Eject keys to bring up a dialog box with Shutdown, Sleep, or Restart options.
- We pressed the R key to select Restart in the dialog box
- We held down the C key when it restarted to start up from the Mac OS X CD
- Under the Installer menu we selected Disk Utilities and Selected the system disk to highlight it
- We selected Repair Permissions It corrected a problem in /System/Library/Filesystem
- We selected Verify Disk and it reported Volume Verified, no problems
- We selected Quit under the Installer menu to restart
The problem was corrected when the iMac restarted
The second question was about an external hard drive that ran fine for awhile, then sent some message and quit working. The member managed to reformat the drive to get it running again, but the screen showed lots of jumbo and something like it appears to be a Mac drive, but does not show on the screen.
Stephen recommended the next time you have to reformat, partitioning it into two partitions, one less than 120 gigs may help. He has had experience where he set up 4 partitions, 3 worked, 1 didnÕt. Stephen does not know the reason, but it saved most of the drive.
4. Geof Gonter Offered Some Recommendations
Geof attended a Apple Tech Showcase in Montpelier where they demonstrated features of the new Tiger, iLife, and iWorks. He was impressed by iPhoto '05 editting.
This first suggestion came from there. Geof said that with iBooks and PowerBooks if the cursor jumps around at times, put your hand on the mouse pad for 5 t0 6 seconds to get rid of static electricity.
The menu under the name of most new Mac OS X programs contains an option called Services. I was using Pages -> Services -> Convert and selecting lowercase or all caps until I learned that these features were is Pages under Format -> Font -> Capitalization.
Geof recommended using Program Name -> Services -> Grab to take pictures of just about anything on the screen
Geof recommended a free program, Print Selection - print just the selected, highlighted, text or image. By not printing the whole page you can save a lot of paper.
They are recommending it to schools and many students use it for selecting information from the Web pages. They are able to include images which is important for most of our use. You can find the program under Version Tracker.
I found two almost identical print selection programs, PrintSelection, and Print.Selection.services.
They both put a small program in the System->Libary->Services folder. The program Geof recommends is Print.Selection.service which moves the selection directly to the print control dialog for printing.
Geof also said that, if AppleWorks is printing extra blank pages, look at the scroll bar to see if there are extra pages. Extra pages may be created every time you enter enter It is generally a good idea to look at the scroll bar to see if you are really at the bottom before printing.
