[OS X TeX] OT: Pages from iWork

[Bruno Voisin]

Some OT reflections on first minutes of use of a just installed Pages:

- I was counting on it, as a kind of resurrection of MacWrite, to be 
able to open old MacWrite II and MacWrite Pro files. Alas, it can't: it 
only recognizes the latest versions of the MS Word or AppleWorks file 
formats.

- It includes no internal way, nor interface with any external way, for 
creating formulas. The straightforward solution is, then, to include 
formulas as PDF files. On the other hand, I was able to paste inside a 
Pages document a formula created with the antique Expressionist, and to 
paste back then edit this formula from Pages to Expressionist. Which 
seems to indicate that:

(i) There should be a way to create formulas in a dedicated software 
(TeX?), copy them in a specific format preserving the TeX markup, then 
paste them in Pages and still be able to paste them back and edit them 
in this dedicated software.

(ii) Maybe some tips could be gained, for achieving that aim, by 
looking at how MathEQ <http://www.livemath.com/matheq/>, the most 
recent incarnation of Expressionist 
<http://www.livemath.com/about/oldnames.php>, works.

Looking at the Pages user guide, I noted something very clever (valid 
for Keynote 2 as well, and the iLife applications): the documentation 
"Pages User Guide", which has a PDF icon and opens Preview.app upon 
double-clicking, is actually an application (a .app bundle), containing 
several versions of the PDF user guide in different languages, and 
opening the version corresponding to the Finder language upon 
double-clicking.

Ironically enough, if you navigate inside the bundle to the directories 
like "Pages User Guide.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/" 
containing the actual user guides, like "Pages User Guide.pdf", open 
these in Adobe Reader and look for document properties, you'll notice 
the Pages doc was actually created with FrameMaker 6 and Distiller 6. 
Sad!

Bruno Voisin 

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