Are Pages, Numbers and Keynote here to stay?

[Padcatt]

Over the years, Apple has seemed to have a choppy relationship with its productivity software..tends to come and go...suddenly yanked and morphed into something new...

I am using Pages for iPad for writing a book because all of my macs, and my iphone have it. I want to be able to move my writing to any platform...open office doesn’t have a strong presence on iPad..

I’m concerned that fortunes will shift and that Pages and the other productivity apps will be yanked, morphed, disappeared..

Anyone have a sense of Apple’s commitment to these software apps?

Thank you

 

[scifan57]

Pages has been around for years and has been regularly updated over the years. I don’t see Apple discontinuing it’s productivity software.

 

[twerppoet]

As a general rule, books are best written in apps that save them as text files. Apps like Pages, Office (Open Office), etc. should be reserved fo when you want to format the text for publishing.

Text (.txt) is the most portable format, precily because it has almost no formating. Also, because it is non-proprietaty.

The excpetion might be if the book requires a lot of foot notes, end notes, and glossery. In that case it’s hard to get away from Word (or maybe Open Office). Nothing is more poweful than Word, which is also why it is difficult to master.

That said, Pages is a combination of a decent layout (publishing) app and word processor. It can save your text in other popular formats that can be imported to other app. However; you will probalby lose some (if not all) formating, and you have to remember to keep some alternate formats saved as archives.

Pages is likely to be around for some time, and even though Apple may update and change featurs, they’ve always provided reasonable forward compatibilty. Meaning, new versions of Pages can import older versions (up to a point); though not always with all formating intact.

Personally, I would only use Pages for self publishing. If I were serious about a book, and wanted to use the iPad, I’d probably use either Scrivener or Storyist. From my research they keep the files very compatible (text) while offering some nice ogranizing tools.

Of couse, like all nice tools, they are not free.

For emphasis: for long term insurance you should always have a .txt version of your book saved in a couple of reliable places. Losing formating is a pain. Losing the content is a tragedy.

 

[Padcatt]

my first desire was to keep my story files all in .txt, but iPad doesn’t have a TextEdit counterpart. You’re saying that scrivener and storyist do save in txt? and what about when I transfer to Mac..TextEdit will be able to open them easily?

Thank you for this extra information!

 

[twerppoet]

A list of good Text editors, in no particular order.

Byword
Editorial
Drafts
iA Write

I have the first three. Of them I’m most likely to Byword. It’s the easiest to use with iCloud Drive and other cloud services. I don’t have iA Writer, but I hear nothing but good things about it when bloggers mention text editors. It’s probably the most expensive of the bunch.

And one that will export in .txt, .rtf (basic Word), epub, and few other formats.

Textilus Pro

This is actually a pretty good compromise between a text editor and a word processor; but all I use it for is the occational .rtf document that I need to open. RTF is an older Microsoft format still included in Word and a few other editors. Only a handful Word clones and other editors will use it because it requires a licence by Microsoft.

This is a drop in the bucket. There are dozens of text editors for iOS. It’s one of the more common App types out there. Searching for best iPad text editor should get you a lot of apps to choose from.

 

[twerppoet]

I see I forgot to answer you actual question:

Scrivener has a .txt export option; but I think it saves as .rtf by default.

Stoyist does not say so explicitly, but the description suggests plain text (.txt) is the default. It is bound to have a .txt export option. More research is wise before purchasing. I did not go to their website.

This is from reading the descriptions. I don’t own either one of these apps. While not bank breakers, they cost too much for me to pay for unless I actually have a book to write; a project I’ve been a bit too lazy to tackle. Short articles and instructions are about my limit.

 

[Padcatt]

I went with scrivener. Has the writing tools and file formats, and works across apple devices.

thank you for suggesting it. I’ve been seeing it a lot lately, or I guess I’m noticing it more - in various writing forum circles. Looks like good software..

 

[twerppoet]

Awesome. Let me know how you like it. Who knows, maybe I’ll get some ambition some day.

 

[Padcatt]

I shall let you know, absolutely!