[X4U] Item in MACWORLD on iLife09

[Dennis R. Cohen]

On 2/13/09 at 1:37 PM, Ed Gould <edgould1948 at comcast.net> transmitted
the following electronic message:

>
>On Feb 13, 2009, at 6:27 PM, Christopher Collins wrote:
>
>>
>> On 14/02/2009, at 4:56 AM, Ed Gould wrote:
>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> I am currently running an older version of ILIFE and find the help  
>>> less than lets say helpful. Several times I have looked (and read)  
>>> for 30 minutes (several different times) and came up empty handed.  
>>> I am lucky I have a guy I can call for questions. A typical mac  
>>> person does not have access to a knowledgeable person. Right now I  
>>> have a pages document that when I go to print prints out 2 pages  
>>> for a 1 page document and damned if I can figure out how to get  
>>> rid of the 2nd page (which is blank).  I can sort of see it but I  
>>> cannot figure out how to delete the page.
>>>>
>>
>> Delete the extra returns that run down onto the second page.
>>
>> cjc
>>
>
>Thanks but I have already did that to no avail.
>
>That is why I tried reading help. I also must say the pages is far  
>from intuitive. I also have a issue with the tables I created and  
>need to resize them. Resizing tables was spectacularly unsuccessful  
>as well. Maybe you need to have worked at a printing plant to know  
>this stuff. That seems to be an issue with all of pages IMO you need  
>to have experience, which I will freely admit that the closest I have  
>ever been to a printing plant is to drive by one.
>
>I even tried telling pages just to print 1 page and it insists on  
>printing both.  I am not an artist nor a type setter, I am a person  
>(like most average people) that have no experience in the field, I  
>would hope that MAC would at least produce a program that has either  
>an expert mode or beginner. One of the reasons why I like Word  
>Perfect so much is that it has display codes so a person can have an  
>idea what is going on and either delete the code or to add what is  
>needed in the document. Pages (to me) takes the low road and does  
>pretty much what MS does (the versions I have seen) and gives you no  
>clue what is going on.
>
>That is one of the reasons I refuse to upgrade to 10.5 (or higher) WP  
>will only run in classic. I would rather give up any feature to come  
>in MAC so I can keep WP a product that works and you can debug it  
>reasonably easily.
>

Okay, minor nit, but if you're talking about Pages, then the subject
line is incorrect. Pages is part of iWork (Pages, Keynote, Numbers) and
iLife consists of iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, and iWeb.

The first thing I would suggest is turning on "Show Invisibles" in the
View menu. That should show you the carriage returns, page breaks, etc.
Position the cursor at the bottom of everything and then just start
backspacing until you're back to a single page. Show Invisibles will
also get you closer to what you're accustomed to with WordPerfect,
showing you the formatting, etc that is being applied.

So far as the tables are concerned, are you talking about redimensioning
them (changing the number of rows/columns) or resizing them (changing
the size of the cells). The easiest starting point is to use the Tables
Inspector.

Printing just one page is easy, at least here. Choose Print and in the
Print dialog, click the "From" radio button and make sure it is from 1
to 1 in the text boxes.

Frankly, as much distaste as I feel for Microsoft, Word is an incredibly
powerful, flexible word processor and tracking down undesired formatting
and the like is quite simple after you've learned the tricks (the first
is "Reveal Formatting" in the View menu or clicking the ¶ icon in the
toolbar). WP is just as confusing to a new user or a switcher, it's just
that you're accustomed to its approach. Long-time Word users encountered
the same difficulty adapting to WP as you do to switching from it --
it's what you're used to and have mastered. Pages is a new kid on the
block, but it also provides most of the same capabilities for
trouble-shooting, just using a different paradigm. Show Invisibles and
the various Inspectors are the gateway with Pages.

-- 
Dennis Cohen