Since I mentioned Apple's great Pages word processor earlier this week lots of people have expressed surprise I prefer it over Word. I don't just prefer it -- it's a complete Word replacement for me. A fantastic all-purpose word processor, the best there is once you get the hang of it. It's part of <a href="http://www.apple.com/iwork/download-trial/" target="_blank">Apple's relatively inexpensive iWork package</a> which is available on a 30-day free trial too.

And much more powerful than you might think at first glance too. So let me kick off here with A Few Great Things about Pages you may not have spotted to give you a bit of insight. And to balance things -- because balance is important -- I'll return tomorrow with A Few Stupid Things about Pages to give you the, quite limited, downside.

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<strong>Speed</strong>

Pages is fast in just about everything (with one exception which I'll discuss tomorrow). Much, much faster than Word, and much less clunky to use. No idea why this should be the case. It just is.

<strong>File format</strong>

<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/screen-shot-2010-04-07-at-16-29-44.png"><img style="float:right;padding-left:4px;" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/screen-shot-2010-04-07-at-16-29-44-tm.jpg" alt="Screen shot 2010-04-07 at 16.29.44.png" width="158" height="193"></a>

Pages stores documents in a good old-fashioned file format in which everything is kept in a single file. This means that you are unlikely to face problems with cloud services such as Mobile Me, Dropbox and Sugar Sync. Some Mac apps, Scrivener among them, don't do this. They produce things called packages, which are essentially a folder of files that look as if they're just a single document. You can check whether a file is a file or a package just by right clicking on it. If you see the message 'Show Package Contents' it's really a folder.

There are arguments for packages. If something goes wrong you can just open them up and retrieve the basic components -- text files in the case of Scrivener. It's a personal preference but I'm more in favour of standard, simple single files for word processing documents. I like the security you get from Dropbox and Sugar Sync (though if you want to use Scrivener with them just work out the simple 'backup to a zip file' option on the File menu and you'll be fine).

<strong>Search</strong>

<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/screen-shot-2010-04-07-at-16-35-59.png"><img class="alignright" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/screen-shot-2010-04-07-at-16-35-59-tm.jpg" alt="Screen shot 2010-04-07 at 16.35.59.png" width="188" height="152"></a>Pages has a search function designed for the 21st century, not 1985. Search for something in Word and many other word processors and all you get is the search box and the ability to go from instance to instance of your chosen word. This is ridiculous.

You can do that in Pages if you want. But you can also call up a global search sidebar which will go through the whole document and show you instances of the word in context, as on the right. This is incredibly fast -- I assume the document must be indexed beforehand somehow. It's a fantastic way of finding character and location mentions very quickly, a replacement for bookmarks in many ways.

If you're trying out Pages for the first time I suggest you pull in a Word doc and try this out for yourself. It sold me immediately.

<strong>Outline</strong>

Outlining only came to Pages with the latest version. It's simple, but outlining should be. It works, ties into document headings and styles very easily, and can be used to plan out a linear book if you like. I wrote <em>The Garden of Evil</em> entirely in Pages, before outlining came to it. Would be a lot easier now.

<strong>Compatibility</strong>

Pages imports and exports Word documents with ease. There are issues with footnotes and endnotes I think. But I don't use them. If you do -- check out the problems.

<strong>Commenting and track changes</strong>

Again these are new to the latest version (I think). They work very well and don't stray into the body of the document too much. They also transfer to Word in both directions too. So if your editor sends you back a commented Word doc you can read the remarks and deal with them in Pages (a lot more quickly and effectively in Word in my opinion).

<strong>Word count</strong>

<img src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/screen-shot-2010-04-07-at-16-43-14.png" alt="Screen shot 2010-04-07 at 16.43.14.png" width="333" height="24">

There it is at the bottom. On the Mac Word stops giving you a running word count at 99,999 words for some reason. Pages just keeps on going.

<strong>Reasonable navigation controls</strong>

<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/screen-shot-2010-04-07-at-16-44-45.png"><img style="float:right;padding-left:4px;" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/screen-shot-2010-04-07-at-16-44-45-tm.jpg" alt="Screen shot 2010-04-07 at 16.44.45.png" width="212" height="201"></a>Take another look at the bottom of the screen and you'll see this. It will let you navigate by styles, bookmarks, comments and a lot more besides. I use it during the revision process like this. I go through the book on screen and make comments on what needs to be addressed. Then I bounce from one to the next using this. Nothing to it.

I'm sure there are a lot more things I like about Pages. But that's as much as I can think of for now. Once you get the hang of it this is a very friendly and surprisingly powerful app. In fact the whole of <em>Saved</em>, my non-fiction book, was not just written but typeset using it too.

If you're a Mac user looking to take on a book from Scrivener or something into a fully formatted Word document, it could be just the thing.

But there are gremlins. More on them tomorrow....