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DESCRIPTION
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:
- 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 for people who want to produce attractive documents, rather than the same old ugly stuff we've seen for years. People who want to unlock the typographic capabilities of their fonts. People who make the layout and fonts just right and want that same precise appearance to be viewed by others.
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.
WHAT'S NEW
Version 1.0.7:
- Adds some interface improvements and bug fixes.
REQUIREMENTS
Mac OS X 10.5 or later. Snow Leopard compatible.
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| Pagehand User Reviews (4 posts) | Write A Review |
 | Sep 23 2009 |
BRINDSLEY QUIVES it's a quite interesting, elegant looking and bloat-free word processor. however the main selling point; native PDF format and editing is a bit of a red herring: 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.
(Version 1.0.6) | |
| [ 1 Reply - Reply ] | |
Replies:
 | Oct 1 2009 |
RTC As the developer of Pagehand, I have to say that Brindsley misses the point about what Pagehand is, especially when he claims that "there's nothing here that can't be achieved by using print > save as PDF from any other mac application.." 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.
(Version 1.0.6) | |
 | Aug 4 2009 |
DARYLF2 How does saved document size compare with the same document saved in TextEdit as RTF, in Word 2008 as doc/docx, or in Pages'09?
(Version 1.0.4) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Jul 27 2009 |
FRANKNS Some very interesting choices in the user interface, e.g. labels with words rather than icons, because when you write, you're thinking in words. Of course, that's not for everyone ... But the deal breaker here is that you can't save as an RTF and share a document with your MS Office friends ... or anyone else. Ouch.
(Version 1.0.4) | |
| [ 5 Replies - Reply ] | |
Replies:
| Jul 27 2009 |
TIM27 It's PDF, you can share it with anyone that has Adobe Reader.
(Version 1.0.4) | |
| Jul 28 2009 |
FRANKNS Let me clarify: I cannot send a PDF to my MS Office colleague and ask him/her to edit it. (I can do this with an RTF and it's what I do every day with Nisus). Now, there may be an export function that I missed, but it doesn't appear in the 'Save/as' dialogue.
(Version 1.0.4) | |
| Aug 8 2009 |
KRIONI I don't know if you missed it either, since you're commenting on 1.0.4 and I have 1.0.5, but there is an Export option in the File menu on 1.0.5, and RTF is one of the choices. So, if it wasn't there before, it is now.
(Version 1.0.5) | |
| Aug 9 2009 |
TIM27 Also, if the PDF is enabled for editing anyone can edit it using Adobe Reader. I do it all the time with clients.
(Version 1.0.5) | |
| Aug 9 2009 |
KRIONI Note that if you send a Pagehand PDF to someone who then edits it with Adobe Acrobat, the resulting PDF will no longer be able to be edited by Pagehand.
(Version 1.0.5) | |
| Jul 27 2009 |
JFM It is not yet complete, it is a work in process, but it is a very nice tool. I would like especially to praise the elegant, pleasant, non intrusive interface. Moreover, the entire tool is clearly meant for people who write and enjoy writing. 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.
(Version 1.0.4) | |
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