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Pages > Word ?
- Thread starter djejrejk
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they each have their pros and cons. pages is great at what it does, but its not a 'pure' word processing app. which is what i need, and word works better for my heavily formatted stuff.
I can't use Pages for Word processing on my powerbook. There's a delay between what I type and when it appears on the screen, and I can't handle that.
But I still love the app. It's not really a word processor. It's more like a stripped down Adobe InDesign. It's great for making brochures/fliers, etc. But for straight word processing, I stick to Word (or textedit for light stuff)
But I still love the app. It's not really a word processor. It's more like a stripped down Adobe InDesign. It's great for making brochures/fliers, etc. But for straight word processing, I stick to Word (or textedit for light stuff)
I'm not sure I'd use Word to edit and format a thesis. How would you even go about that in word anyway - I've never found a good way to split something across multiple .doc files sensibly?
LaTeX all the way...
LaTeX is great, but it isn't entirely straightforward either. Something about having to debug my *.tex files that just kills me sometimes. Word isn't too bad for documents that are <~200 pages and are not graphically intense. You can create master documents wherein each chapter is a seperate file. This works well, but you have to know what you are doing and are better off learning on a sample document before embarking upon thesis writing.
The formating of LaTeX is fantastic, but there are some learning hurdles to overcome. It is still closer to a coding language and can interrupt (at least me) with the actualy writing process. If your thesis is math intensive the you can do well with LaTeX, but Word still hobbles along just fine.
Not trying to hijack the thread to I'll try to get on topic for the OP.
I don't find pages to be useful for word processing. It is nice for very simple page layout, but not for proper word processing. Too many missing features. Keynote on the other hand far exceeds crappy PowerPoint.
I use Pages and love it. I'm a college student who writes papers. I don't require anything too fancy. I want something that loads fast, but above all, it must be stable as a rock. In my experience, Pages is both fast and stable as a rock (it's the most stable word processor I've used).
Word has simple, straightforward and efficient footnoting and endnoting features, good support for tracking changes, and I like to autosave/autobackups. Pages is nice for making things look nice, but seems to lack some of the things that I need for research papers.
I wouldnt say Pages is more stable than Word...infact i would say pages is a little buggy. I really like the format, so I use it, but save every couple of minutes.
NeoOffice is too slow for me... I get very annoyed waiting for it to load. I typed a huge research project on it last semester and when I exported the file and opened it in word, my paper was screwed. That was the last time I opened NeoOffice.
I will check out LaTEX.. I agree about keynote.
For me, Word Opens faster than NeoOffice despite the Rosetta handicap. The big plus for pages is that it opens very quickly and the UI is very nice.
Prefer Pages to Word any day, though I don't use it as much now because of what I do. Before I changed to Mac, though, I had to use Word for layout stuff. Put three boxes of graphics over one another and crash!! No problems like that in Pages.
I find it great for word processing though I don't do long documents.
I find it great for word processing though I don't do long documents.