[OS X TeX] OT: Pages from iWork
Bruno Voisin
bvoisin at mac.com
Fri Feb 25 10:12:27 CET 2005
Since I initiated this thread a month ago, I think I should at least
report on negative user experience since then. Here's a message I just
posted to another list:
> Aside regarding iWork: it's really software that should have been
> worked upon for significantly more time before being released, it does
> suck. The French localization of Pages is especially buggy. Examples:
> "row" for a table is translated as "rang" which means "rank", instead
> of "rangée"; basic functions like displacement and insertion of rows
> and columns by drag-and-drop aren't implemented apparently; resizing
> rows or columns by hand doesn't allow specification, apparently, of
> whether the adjacents rows or columns, or the whole table, follow
> accordingly; when you look for "texte encadré" (which means "framed
> text") in the help you are directed to the menu item Format > Police >
> Cadre only to realize "cadre" is there an erroneous translation for
> "outline" font, corresponding more or less to the French "relief"; and
> many more of the same. Don't buy it right now! I can but agree with
> the opinion at
> <http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1804&ncid=738&e=6&u=/
> washpost/20050219/tc_washpost/a37119_2005feb19>.
Finally this application only calls more for an external equation
editor less graphics-based than the current Equation Service or LaTeX
Equation Editor: for them, the TeX code for an equation is lost when
the equation is pasted inside the WYSIWYG application, and the notion
of a baseline of the equation isn't preserved, preventing proper
alignment of the equation with the surrounding text. This is all the
more unfortunate since the existence of the OpenOffice.org macro
OOoLaTeX <http://www.fyma.ucl.ac.be/wiki/~piroux/OOo+macro> seems to
indicate such things are indeed possible (not that I have the faintest
idea of how). With OOoLaTeX, the equations are imported as PNG
pictures; with pdfTeX it should be possible to do even better, by
creating PDF pictures. (This is no criticism of the existing editors, I
wouldn't be able to do any of the work that has already been done. It's
rather suggestions for possible improvement. I remember Maarten
mentioned working along similar lines.)
Bruno Voisin
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