Remember Remember the 5th of ... every month (Scriv + Pages)

Latte Other Software & Development
1

For the first monthly event I like to call IRFRTFSIP Day, I’m simply drawing attention to this posting. I likely will forget to do this on the 5th which is a Saturday, so I will be making my feature request/bug report on IRFRTFSIP Eve.

Thanks for participating!

----------Original text----------------
I’ve suggested that we as the Lit & Lat Mac community do this for quite some time, so I’m taking action now…

Let’s make the 5th of every month “International Request Full Rich Text Format support in Pages Day”. IRFRTFSIPD is the day we should (politely) request a feature of Apple: To fully support the RTF format in Pages so that we can export our work from Scrivener and into Pages for final touch-up. Apple has had long enough to do so, but has failed to make it a priority; together we can get their attention.

So, below is a sample text you can copy and paste into the Comments box:

========== Copy from below this line… ============================
Please fully support the RTF file format when opening or saving files. Specifically, I want Pages to import page breaks, images, footnotes, headers, and comments just as do a number of word processors, including MS Word. I would very much prefer to continue using Pages, and I would upgrade to future versions if these features were added.

Thank you for considering my request.
========== … to above this line, and paste into “Comments” ==========

Here is the link: apple.com/feedback/pages.html
And here are my suggestions on what to fill out in the other required fields besides your person info:
Subject: Rich Text importing
Feedback Type: Enhancement Request

Feel free to modify the wording of any text above so they don’t think this is some kind of one-man crusade. Add in your own comments, but please keep it polite, since they may trace this little campaign back to Lit & Lat. Also, if there is something I left out or got wrong, please send me a direct message and I’ll edit this post.

Finally: Don’t wait until the 5th! Make up for lost time and do it now. What we want is a constant influx of requests to be coming from as large a set of unique people as possible.

2

Done.

Apollo16

3

You do realize that Apple may be taking this approach to bolster the “Mac vs PC” debate? Remember with .doc was closed to non-M$ software? M$ let that continue until they had so large a foothold that they would never loose market share. Given that Apple’s new target market is moving to the casual user, this policy actually encourages folks to only use Apple’s solutions deepening Apple market share across devices. Think “you have to use pages for iPad to get good docs on your Mac”.

Just an unpopular thought.

4

No matter what, they’re not getting my money for another version of Pages unless they make this change. Since you can save as .Doc and .Docx, they aren’t locking you into the Apple solution as far as I can tell. Not at this point at least.

Import .Doc to Pages, transfer to iPad, work on it, load on you Mac, export to .Doc. I can’t see how poor RTF support helps them keep people on the Apple platforms at all.

5

I sometimes wonder if they have anyone left that is an expert at RTF. Think about how in the first half of the decade, the text engine was routinely getting updates and features added, then suddenly it all stopped. We’ve got a few extra pieces of candy, but the original RTF stuff is pretty much how it was left in 2005 and 2006, complete with all of the bugs, bad UI design, and limitations. The export/import engine hasn’t seen dramatic improvement either. I think Apple’s out of talent in this area, either that or they’ve changed their mind on the matter and intend to see RTF disappear like the floppy disk. They were right about floppies, but if that’s the case here, I think they got it wrong; the world needs a universal format between word processors. RTF isn’t the best format in the world, it’s pretty far from it, but strictly speaking from inertia, it’s already there, and they aren’t offering any clear alternatives to the “floppy” like they did with Macs turn of the millennium.

6

I think Apple has made their opinion clear on what the universal format is: doc/docx.

Or am I missing something there?

7

I would say yes, the alternative to floppies. If you are going to push .doc/x as the standard (which I would say is a poor position to take given that it hinges so mightily upon Microsoft’s whim, but whatever) then produce system tools to properly handle it; make TextEdit use it natively; provide the frameworks so developers can work in it like they have with RTF. The .doc/x importer/exporter routines in Cocoa are not even adequate for simple files, and there is nothing for using the format in a basic text editing view.

8

Remember that I am a flaming anti-MS guy. Remember that.

Consider the situation from Apple’s view. They recognize that doc/x is here to stay thanks to the evil empire. They also see that many users are willing to pay a nominal fee for a decent “home user” WP. Why in the world would profit focused business teams agree to making compatibility a core OS feature? Especially given that OO/NeoO manages to do it without OS level compatibility?

From the “empire building” MBA view the current status quo is profitable and ensures continued revenue from all but a few power users (who probably wouldn’t like Pages all the much for a WP platform). The only real approach that I see Apple considering with this, from a business view, is to offer libraries to developers for a fee. But then those exist already.

Again, flaming anti-M$ person wrote this.

9

Done, too.

10

Done.
Filed as a bug report… :slight_smile:

11

Jaysen, I respect and even empathize with your position, but I am ever the optimist. I started this thread to organize and hopefully grow the number of such requests to a point where they can’t be ignored. At the point where they see that not only are there a moderate number of people repeatedly requesting this change, but that there is a growing number of people adding their voices… then it’s a matter of if they care at all about something that will add to their bottom line, even if only a little. They’re always improving the development tools… maybe they’ll add the libraries for import/export, and through that channel, their own Pages programmers will just slap them into their code base and be done with it…

But even if this effort is futile, I’d still like to cheer it on for a while. Maybe a year or more… so please, and I ask this with the utmost repect for your personal oppinion:

Stop pissing in my corn flakes. :mrgreen:

12

Consider the stream choked off. Where’s the windows section?

13

Bob, These fundamentalists, are always pissing on someone’s corn flakes! :frowning:
vic

14

Done.
Filed as a workflow issue: I complained that I always have to pass RTF-files through OpenOffice first. This should bug developers :smiling_imp: .

15

I’m re-submitting my feature request a day early. Feel free to follow suit, or if you are coming to this thread late, there’s no time like the present!

16

You inspired me to tweet your suggestion. Let’s see if #IRFRTFSIPD becomes a Twitter trend (unlikely, I know, but one can dream…). :slight_smile:
twitter.com/tim_e_h/status/43809087657484288