(4)
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Pagehand.com
Pagehand... Everybody knows what a word processor should do: things like styles, sections, columns, tables, tab leaders, document properties, autosave, document templates, keep together, keep with next, widow/orphan control, automatic formatting and replacement of text, numbered paragraphs, bullets, adjustable hyphenation, layout guides, split views, and small caps. That sort of thing.
But what if a word processor offered more than the usual list of features? A good word processor ought to:
But what if a word processor offered more than the usual list of features? A good word processor ought to:
- Use PDF as its file format, so anyone can read your documents perfectly, fonts
What's New
Version 1.0.8.1: Release notes were unavailable when this listing was updated.
Requirements
PPC / Intel, Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
PPC / Intel, Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
Pagehand User Discussion (Write a Review)
Overall:
(4)
(4)
| Downloads:3,146 |
| Version Downloads:1,034 |
| Type:Business : Word Processing |
| License:Demo |
| Date:15 Feb 2010 |
| Platform:PPC / Intel |
| Price: $39.95 |
Overall (Version 1.x):  |
Features: |
| Ease of Use: |
| Value: |
| Stability: |
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Pagehand... Everybody knows what a word processor should do: things like styles, sections, columns, tables, tab leaders, document properties, autosave, document templates, keep together, keep with next, widow/orphan control, automatic formatting and replacement of text, numbered paragraphs, bullets, adjustable hyphenation, layout guides, split views, and small caps. That sort of thing.
But what if a word processor offered more than the usual list of features? A good word processor ought to:
Pagehand is also for people who are tired of fighting the interface of their word processor and just want to get on with their work.
But what if a word processor offered more than the usual list of features? A good word processor ought to:
- Use PDF as its file format, so anyone can read your documents perfectly, fonts and all.
- Help you with typography, whether you are making fractions, using a special character, or looking for a nice ornament.
- Avoid dialog boxes or inspectors that cover up your work.
- Categorize your fonts for you, so you don't have to scroll through a long list every time you select a font.
- Never force you to choose from a bewildering array of small icons.
- Let you open documents as separate windows, or as tabs in the same window.
- And above all, care about what you create and guide you toward making beautiful, typographically correct documents.
Pagehand is also for people who are tired of fighting the interface of their word processor and just want to get on with their work.
Copyright © 2012 MacUpdate LLC
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+17
Yavari reviewed on 14 Jan 2012
I am disappointed, however, that the developer axed the program and won't be updating it further. Well, c'est la vie. It was still worth every penny and it's staying on my computer.
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Hamdi reviewed on 19 Jan 2010
I have and am currently using almost all the writing applications in the Mac app market: Scrivener, Ulysses, Word 97, Pages 09, Writeroom, Bean, nowadays OmmWriter, along with a few journalling and notetaking software. But Pagehand is superior to them in its wonderful manipulation of formal elements. This is something that may not be seen at first glance (I too missed its forte at first try; I too was misled by some negative reviews here like PDF thing etc. -but then I saw that I was allowed to save/export a document as docx.) Its niceties come off in time, especially for those of us who have come to forget to savour the first lazy moments before a blank page.
Another strong point is its use of tabs a la Ulysses. You can open and edit multiple documents within the same window. So it also acts like a temporary database with integrated side by side and under view options. I find this aspect especially useful. The only thing I miss is full screen editing.
Pagehand, in short, is about pleasurable writing. I heartily recommend it.
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Brindsley Quives reviewed on 23 Sep 2009
sure, pagehand edits PDFs it has created itself and it saves as PDF by default. but when you consider that it can't even open PDFs created in other apps [not even in read-only mode!] and that editing a pagehand PDF in any other app with PDF editing capabilities [such as adobe acrobat] will render that PDF unusable by pagehand, you realise that pagehand's alleged PDF skills are nothing more than a bit of a parlour trick
there's nothing here that can't be achieved by using print > save as PDF from any other mac application. pagehand may save you the visual clutter of having to keep separate editable and PDF versions of your files, by cleverly combining them into one. but this single 'editable' PDF format is so tied to pagehand and so easily broken that it's not really worth the hassle.
i'd love to see a WP which did offer 'proper' full PDF editing capabilities, but the sad truth is that this is not possible, because it's not the way adobe have designed the PDF format to work. so until adobe change the format itself, apps like this will crop up every now and then promising a lot, but ultimately disappointing.
finally, the price is ridiculous for a version 1 app, when you consider the wealth of fuller-featured writing tools out there for OSX.
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+5
Pagehand is not intended to be just another ho-hum word processor that lets people create boring documents to send to other people who make boring edits. If that is your workflow, then Pagehand is not for you.
Pagehand is for people who toil over the visual presentation of their work, choosing just the right glyph and just the right spacing, and who want other people to view their documents exactly as intended. If you don't care about accented characters, or ornament glyphs, or kerning, or small caps, or embedded font features, or typographically correct fractions, then you certainly might prefer to use one of the look-alike word processors out there.
I should add that Pagehand offers some features that you find nowhere else. Some things are far easier to do in Pagehand than in any other word processor--for example, writing a document in which some quotes should be curled and others should not.
Expressions such as "parlour trick" and "red herring" are particularly disingenuous when one considers that the alternative to using PDF is to use a custom format that can be read only by owners of the application. Surely it is better to use a format that can be read by just about everybody than a format that can be read by only one application.
Finally, Pagehand is currently priced lower than either Mellel or Nisus, the products to which it is most frequently compared.
+9
For typical word processing needs, I want to be able to see a document the way it is presented in Mellel, and edit it the way I can in TextEdit (if I want to change the font, I do NOT want to have to create a whole new style first.) It would also be good to have it scalable for creating styles and tables and other more advanced layout and design options.
Pagehand's icons are a little unusual, primarily because they are so different from what is typically seen, but for the most part it fits the bill perfectly. The PDF saving capability is a fantastic idea, as well. I was a little disappointed to see that it couldn't open PDFs that had been printed from web pages for annotation, but it's not a necessary feature. I was, however, excited by the fact that it would open both ODT and DOC format documents. I still haven't figured out how to change the margins on a document, but I only spent a few minutes with it.
So far, this looks like a very nice word processor with a PDF compatibility perk. I'll be giving this one more of a try throughout the demo period, though I may still have to use other programs for DOC compatibility reasons.
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Jfm reviewed on 27 Jul 2009
The use of PDF as a format for saving is unexpected, but allows to share documents with other people easily, due to PDF universality. Of course, there is a related limitation: one needs to own Pagehand for working on a document created with Pagehand. However, for documents that are not too complex, it is easy to export into some other formats, preferably RTF.
Since it is still at the initial stage, a number of improvements are needed, but they are all in the work, it is just a matter of patience for users. For instance, footnotes need to be added. I am confident it will improve: the developer is responsive, and the forum, while small at this point, is already starting to be active.
A promising tool - I used it already for writing a few small texts, and I was very pleased: writing was pleasant, fluid. And insofar I can witness from my own experience, it was completely stable.