Pages with git

Disclaimer: I know how to use git but only vaguely know how it works internally.

1. Am I understanding correctly if I say that Pages '09 does not work well with git? I haven't seen any indication that it supports it like Xcode does, and it's got lots of special formatting, so it could be problematic.

2. Am I just crazy, or would git support in iWork be super useful? I've been using GitHub to store all my class notes and essays because it requires much less bloat and setup than Dropbox, and it works well enough with RTF to let me merge versions of notes if I edit on separate computers without syncing. I use Pages with it too and just make sure I don't have to merge changes. So far, it's been extremely convenient. Pages could save its documents in a way easy for git to understand, right?

3. Pages already has "track changes" for multiple authors to edit a document, and it looks a lot like what you'd see on a git browser like GitHub. It tracks different authors and allows people to accept/reject changes. But it's not git, just some proprietary thing. It seems perfectly natural for it to use git instead.

P.S. Word doesn't work well with git, but there is a git plugin to make it work: http://xcafebabe.blogspot.hu/2012/09/sexy-comparison-of-word-documents-with.html

kufford said:

I use Git a lot for a bunch of weird things, including school work. The only difference is that I use Pages very little (generally, only for quick formatting that I don't want to do by hand.) Since you're Comp-Sci, I would recommend learning how to use LaTeX. Generally, anything I write goes into SublimeText and is either in .tex or plain text that can be put into anything. These can be diff'd and work great in Git.

It's a worthwhile investment in time, the software is free. YMMV.

Click to expand...

Ah, it never occurred to me that LaTeX is for anything other than math typesetting. I could do all my English homework in it. Thanks, I'll try it tonight. I do already use LaTeX ("cloud" workspace on sharelatex.com) for taking my math notes and doing math homework but have been thinking about switching to a local LaTeX program so I can manage my files myself.

Still, images and special formatting in Pages can be hard to deal with in LaTeX. I really like how Pages handles images and such. I'll also send Apple feedback about Pages working with git.

Edit: I've nearly got MLA formatting working in this. Just the page numbers won't work quite the way my teacher wants it, but it's fine so far for single page documents. So I just did this weekend's English homework in it. Ah, I've got the killer notes/work setup here.