The following was written for previous version of Pages.
In some applications, there is a mode in which you can ignore formatting and margins and concentrate completely on the text content. The most well known such mode is probably Microsoft Word's "Normal View". Even a dedicated layout program like Adobe InDesign has its "Story Editor". Unfortunately Pages has nothing like that. There is no way to hide margins and page breaks.
There are a few other programs that have a full screen view, where all distractions on the screen are hidden even more efficiently than in Word or InDesign. In these programs you see the text and nothing else. Even the menus are gone. Examples of such applications for Mac OS X are Scrivener, Nisus, WriteRoom and CopyWrite. None of them is free.
The Poor Man's Solution
However, there is also a free solution. You may not like it, but I will tell you anyhow. It is to go back to the stone age before graphical user interfaces. Follow these steps:
- Log out.
- Highlight one of the users, and type alt-Enter. You will now get fields to type Name and Password instead of choosing them from a list.
- In the Name field, type ">console" (without the quotation marks). Leave the password field blank.
- Press Enter. You are now in character based mode.
- Type your login name. (Not the free form one displayed in the Login window, but the name of your home directory.)
- Press Enter.
- Type your password.
- Press Enter. You are in! (If all went well.)
You are now in the serene land of text only editing. There are no mail or chat programs to distract, no internet browsers, no bright colours - just letters and your creativity.
Once you are tired of text mode, you can return to the real Mac OS X by typing "exit" on the command prompt. A shortcut for this is to type ctrl-d.
Once you are back in Mac OS X, you can open the text file you created with emacs or vi and paste its content into a Pages document, to get the layout right. The result of your creativity deserves it.
7 comments:
Couldn't one simply use Text Edit? and copy and paste the text into pages? Learning emacs is overkill!
Yes, one could use TextEdit, and yes, it probably is overkill for most people to learn vi or emacs.
There is one difference between TextEdit on one hand and Scrivener, Nisus, WriteRoom and CopyWrite on the other. The other applications give you a view mode where you see nothing but the text. No Desktop background. No menus. No spotlight or network icons. No maximize or resize buttons. If you really want to be that free of distraction, TextEdit will not work.
Who should use the vi/emacs solution then? Well, anyone who wants to, to start with. And people who already know the programs since before, and who feel comfortable with them. And possibly people who have no money and a lot of time. No money, so they cannot pay for the other programs, and a lot of time to learn vi or emacs.
Magnus, hi,
I don't get it - why are you saying you can't hide margins etc in Pages?
You go to View in the screent top menu and hide whatever is available to be hidden. Then you get exactly the same view as Normal in Word.
Thanks, Alex
Unless you have found some very clever setting, there is a big difference.
In Pages you can hide the indicators of margins, but you cannot hide the margins themselves. If you have a half inch footer and a half inch header, you will have a full inch space between the last lines of page one and the first lines of page two.
The idea with the Normal view is that you compose the text completely independently of the layout.
Some people say they do not need the distinction between text and layout. Some people say they do.
Another way is to export the document as a PDF then open it in Preview and choose View > Slideshow. It will show the page full screen against black. Use the Function (fn) and up or down arrow keys simultaneously to move from page to page.
If you want to get a quick idea of what the page looks like on the fly without having to export as a PDF, you could key Command P (Print), select 'Open PDF in Preview' from the PDF button in the print dialog pane, then key Command-Shift F (Slideshow) to enter slideshow mode.
I am so sad about Pages' lack of "normal view," it really makes the transition from Microsoft less attractive.
I'm not so purist as to need just text. Eventually, when I get further in my dissertation writing, I'll move entirely to LaTex, but for now, I like the easy WYSIWYG with some formatting. Makes the note-taking process easier on the eyes for me.
I have found that Mellel 2.5 has a nearly-"Normal" view, though it still retains side margins but does not retain top and bottom margins--pages are delineated with a black line, no space lost, no top/bottom margins to mess with your flow. The application is pretty good at many things, and annoying in other ways. But you download it for a free trial. To get to the nearly-"Normal" view, go to the "Window" top menu, to "View", and choose "Compact View."
iText Express (free) offers something close with text view and no layout, but you can't hide the menubar.
Post a Comment