Comments on: REVIEW: iWork ’08 – Pages

By: Moe

Moe — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 19:47:08 +0000

totally disappointed with the way iWork handles RTL languages.
and people wonder why most of the computers in the middle east run a windows platform. who’d want to run an OS with crippled abilities in their native language. (= zero productivity)

By: Anne

Anne — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 02:25:06 +0000

Does the iWork’08 have Spanish-language symbols such as Ã± ,accents and Â¿ as well as Â¡ ???

By: david Poole

david Poole — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 12:43:00 +0000

|n Arabic is anyone having problems with nunation? The fatha and kasra will nunate but the dhamma comes up with what looks like a programme development symbol which has a black border around the arabic letter taa. I an running a trial version of pages 08 and have installed leopard on a macbokpro.

David

By: ad_cairo

ad_cairo — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 07:56:16 +0000

Another problem with using Arabic – although the Arabic functionality is useable (but not great) within the program, when I exported a pages file to a word doc, then opened the doc in Word on Winxp, the Arabic text was still ok, but the order of the words was completely reversed. What should have been the first word on the right was the first word on the left, and so forth. This makes file sharing and collaboration with non-Pages users impossible for Arabic and any other RTL languages.

By: Anon

Anon — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 21:34:56 +0000

This review sucks. There are two VITAL features that Pages 08 doesn’t have and even a bare-bones application like TextEdit has: 1- Export files to HTML, I mean, come on! 2- Multilingual spelling, a feature that even the Mail application takes advantage of and without it they leave a lot of people who make their living writing translations. These two options should be so obvious in a word processing program that is unaceptable Pages doesn’t have them.

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 01:15:21 +0000

if ((iWork 08) or (iWork 06)) and ((Pages) or (Numbers)) then
‘iBook G4′ = ‘max out all system resources’

else if (iBook) = increased RAM
‘iBook G4′ = ‘max out all system resources’

else if (buy new imac or macbook) and (wait for Leopard) then maybe
imac or macbook = ‘no repetitive spinning rainbow wheel’

else ‘Keynote’ = ‘Excellent regardless’

endif

By: Yisrael Dov

Yisrael Dov — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:24:42 +0000

You can enter characters in Right-To-Left languages (Hebrew, Arabic ) but it is almost impossible to edit. The cursor either shows up at the end of the line or the begging of the line. You can’t select a region of text. Column flow can’t be set RTL..

What is really amazing is that textedit has real RTL support ( as well as almost every other cocoa app ) but they can’t work it in to their word-processor !!??

Take a look at text edit :
Format > Text > Writing Direction > Right to Left…

Where is that option in pages ?!

> I donâ€™t know what you are talking about. I just went into Pagesâ€™08
> and used Arabic just fine in there. Could you be more explicit?

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 22:10:47 +0000

@Jen

Yes. In fact, iWork 08 is currently the only application that I know of that can read and write to Microsoft’s new document format.

You will be able to send out your documents in just about any form you can think of.

By: Jen

Jen — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 18:31:39 +0000

Can other people with MS Office open files you create using iWork ’08? I am one of the only people I know with a Mac and need other people to be able to access the documents I create.

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 09:53:52 +0000

Compatibility with Powerpoint files could have been better.

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 13:51:14 +0000

I’ve purchased iWork 08 and must say: great job Apple! One of the things I found most annoying [next to what Michael also said already: word processing vs page lay-outing] was the speed of Pages. It was slow! But not any more. And the compatibility with Office [I have only tried .Doc; still need to try out Powerpoint douments and Keynote!!!] has also improved, it’s amazing!! I love it

By: Pierre

Pierre — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 12:30:54 +0000

I don’t know what you are talking about. I just went into Pages’08 and used Arabic just fine in there. Could you be more explicit?

By: Zviki

Zviki — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 15:23:24 +0000

Still no support for right-to-left languages like Hebrew and Arabic.

Come on, Apple, there’s a whole world out there…

By: krye

krye — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 12:47:33 +0000

Apple is offereing a 30 day trial….

http://www.apple.com/iwork/trial/

It’s a 400+ Meg download, but well worth it. I think I’ll be buying it shortly.