That's all very helpful, thank you! I wonder if reading footnotes, and some other things, is doable in Applescript? On Mar 22, 2014, at 11:39 PM, Nicholas Parsons <[email protected]> wrote:
> HI Alex, > > I've started a new job recently at a law firm where producing professional > looking documents with advanced features, and using advanced collaboration, > are all key. The industry standard for word processing is Microsoft Word. > I've been using Pages on my Mac and so far things have been working pretty > well. In fact, for some things (e.g. filling in interactive forms), Pages has > been better than some versions of Microsoft Word (e.g. Word 2010, which > really messes up interactive forms). There have been one or two formatting > issues due to incompatibility between Pages and Microsoft Word, but these > have not been major. > > I can't go through step by step explaining how Pages is different to Word--if > I did, it would take so long I'd need to start billing by the hour. But here > are the key points. The short version is, it is definitely possible to create > professional papers or essays with Pages and VoiceOver. It's simply a matter > of learning how to use it and getting comfortable with it. There are > definitely things that could be improved, but there are those with Word and > JAWS as well. IN the end, it will come down to personal preference and > willingness to learn. > > I like Pages for creating content, but not so much for reading content. > Having different visible sections for document body, header, footer etcetera > is great for creating content, but it makes navigating long documents tricky. > Word also has easier commands for navigating by paragraph (control-down > arrow). With Pages one can use option-down arrow, but this only reads the > last line of the paragraph, rather than reading the beginning of the > paragraph which is usually more informative. After moving around the Pages > interface to achieve certain things, it can be difficult to get back to where > you were in the document. With Word, however, the keyboard focus always > remains where you were last typing. All these issues would not be such a > problem for writing your own essays from scratch, but can be annoying if > you're reading a book or paper someone else has created with hundreds of > pages. > > Pages currently has an annoying bug where it's difficult to select text which > wraps over a page. This is being discussed on this list in another thread. > Not sure if we've discovered a good work around yet. > > Selecting styles in Pages can be a little fiddly, whereas in Word quick > styles are pretty easily accessible from the context menu. However, once you > have assigned shortcuts to styles in Pages it becomes really easy to use them. > > Entering and editing footnotes is much easier in Pages. In Word, JAWS becomes > highly unresponsive when editing a footnote. However, it's much easier to > read footnotes with Word. There's a shortcut key which makes JAWS read the > footnote when your curser is adjacent to the footnote number in the body of > the document. In Pages, however, you need to navigate to the footnote area, > and then navigate back when you're done. This is not super difficult, but > it's just a few extra steps compared to the single shortcut in Word. So > again, this makes Pages better for creating content (in this case, > footnotes), but Word better for reading it. > > Track Changes are another beast altogether. I'm just starting to get my head > around them. So far, track changes are not ideal in either Word or Pages. I > use them a lot in Word, but once a document has a lot of tracked changes > things get a little confusing. They are usable with Pages but can be a little > tricky and fiddly. > > Best, > Nic > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- Have a great day, Alex Hall [email protected] -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
