InCopy as alternative to Word/Pages

[Ploki]

Feasible?

I'm so sick of both. No idea how to wrap my head around it.

 

[kohlson]

They are somewhat different things. Word is a word processor that also tries to be a page layout program. Pages, from the beginning, tries to be both. Then there's the design philosophy of each company ("We shall add no feature unless it is truly necessary, unique, and utterly refined." or "We shall add every feature we can think of and a corresponding number of menus.") One plays well with others, one not so much. I think you may have Grass is Greener syndrome. InCopy is a delightful product for what it's intended (high-end, highly structured publishing and page layout) and less so as a day-to-day program where you trade documents with others. Of course, I am just pontificating, because you haven't really said what's really bothering you wrt Word/Pages.

 

[Ploki]

Word is bloated, buggy, and I hate the ribbon with all my heart, as it renders the *always present* menubar of mac useless. It's just counter-intuitive.

Pages deals with all that but is just a tad weak, and the whole styles/bullets/TOC and everything is a bit buggy.

On the other hand I'm familiar and enjoy Adobe products very much.

 

[exegete77]

This writer, David Bergland, has a series of blog posts about using InDesign for all writing (beyond simple note keeping).

I have several programs for writing. I have moved to magazine editing, blog posting, and seminary curriculum development in Scrivener. If I had to use only one program overall, a solid, powerful, reliable writing tool, it would be Mellel (secondarily Nisus Writer Pro). There is nothing better for handling Hebrew properly (it should, the developers are from Israel).

But I also have Adobe CS 4. I had it originally to examine copies of the magazine in InDesign. But after reading what he says, I may move to InDesign for those items that I want to publish (print, PDF, epub, etc.). I use Pages for bulletins for Sunday worship.

I had Word 5 back in 1990, when it was a decent program. I became an expert on it. But went MS-free six years ago. Because of exchange issues I recently bought MS Office (for $99), but seldom use it. It is far more frustrating than any of the above programs.

 

[Ploki]

I actually saw both mellel and scrivener, but didn't yet try them. I'll give it a shot I guess.

Thanks for the links; very useful. Perhaps I'll just go the InCopy/InDesign route in the end. I really hate Word.