[The Wolf]

I was editing a normal multi-page text document in AppleWorks, and when I went to select all and clicked on the font menu to change the font to Times, it caused a SBOD. Apple Opt Escape confirmed it was not responding. Forced quit, and repoened the document and got the same thing several times.

Then, I tried to just copy the text and paste it into a new document, and upon selecting all and hitting copy, I get the SBOD. I restarted, fixed permission, etc. Every time I try either of the above, I get a SBOD. Ultimately, I went and copied each paragraph separately, and now I have a new usable document. So, what should I do now with the bad one? Is this something that I should sent to Apple. This is first time in over a decade that I've ever experienced anything like this on a Mac. What gives?

[Maflynn]

Try opening the doucment in another editor, ms word, or a text edit?

[Jonesy]

Could be a faulty font? Could be that it's time to give up AppleWorks? If you sent Apple the file I don't think they would care as they haven't done anything to AppleWorks in ages.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Jonesy

Could be that it's time to give up AppleWorks?

Gah! Can't do that. I've tried multiple times. Unfortunately, there are NO alternatives. Everytime I think about switching to M$ Word, I either get a crash that loses my whole document, or it gets possessed and starts applying some freaked out formatting that effs up my whole document (and experience). btw, I only lost one sentence in AW after not saving for an hour prior to the crash - which was a slight consolation after losing an hour trouble shooting.

Originally Posted by Jonesy

If you sent Apple the file I don't think they would care as they haven't done anything to AppleWorks in ages.

True

[Jonesy]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Gah! Can't do that. I've tried multiple times. Unfortunately, there are NO alternatives. Everytime I think about switching to M$ Word, I either get a crash that loses my whole document, or it gets possessed and starts applying some freaked out formatting that effs up my whole document (and experience). btw, I only lost one sentence in AW after not saving for an hour prior to the crash - which was a slight consolation after losing an hour trouble shooting.



True

The most painless way to give up AppleWorks (WP at least) is to go to Pages. Whatever you might have heard from these forums version 2 is not bad at all. I wouldn't bother if you have v. 1 as the upgrade is not so big. There are a few feature still missing though.

AppleWorks import is very good. Keeping your files in a format only readable in an application which is no longer developed seems risky. I reckon that sooner or later you will have to make the jump to something else.

[Jonesy]

By the way if you can get a demo copy have a play with it. Give it a chance though as it's quite different to AppleWorks. I found it easy to get to grips with but I had been using Keynote before Pages was released.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Jonesy

The most painless way to give up AppleWorks (WP at least) is to go to Pages.

I was looking forward to Pages coming out way back when. I even demo-ed it. Unfortunately, I wasn't crazy about it and I stopped using it before the demo expired.

I hated all the extras b/c all I need is very simple word processing: type a multipage document, maybe indent a paragraph, underline a word, insert a footnote once in a while, set justification and spellcheck. That's it.

Is Pages overkill for that? Or more importantly, will all the wonderful features of Pages get in the way of my word processing?

[Simon X]

...

[JKT]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

I was looking forward to Pages coming out way back when. I even demo-ed it. Unfortunately, I wasn't crazy about it and I stopped using it before the demo expired.

I hated all the extras b/c all I need is very simple word processing: type a multipage document, maybe indent a paragraph, underline a word, insert a footnote once in a while, set justification and spellcheck. That's it.

Is Pages overkill for that? Or more importantly, will all the wonderful features of Pages get in the way of my word processing?

If that's the case then something like Nisus Writer, Mariner Write, or Mellel (and maybe AbiWord if it is stable enough) or any of the other alternative Mac Word Processors would suit. With the exception of footnotes, you could even use TextEdit.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by JKT

If that's the case then something like Nisus Writer, Mariner Write, or Mellel (and maybe AbiWord if it is stable enough) or any of the other alternative Mac Word Processors would suit. With the exception of footnotes, you could even use TextEdit.

Thank you for the response. I don't think I've ever heard of these. Are they expected to be around for a while and is there a way to quickly convert hundreds of files to and from these apps? I did a quick search and can't find how the documents are saved, but I am assuming it's a proprietary format. I've been running my whole office with AW for the past several years. I know AW is a little dated, but I am not worried about it becoming so antiquated that I will not be able to access my files.

[JKT]

I can't comment as I don't use any of them (I would have recommended NeoOffice/OpenOffice.org, which I do use, but they are major overkill for what you apparently need). However, I do know that Nisus Writer saves as either RTF (just text) or RTFD (text plus images) format which is the same as TextEdit and is an open standard. I'm not sure about the others.

Getting your old AW files into these apps may be trickier. If they are just formatted text files, you could save them from AW as RTFs to preserve the formatting and be able to open them in any app. If they are text/image files, you could save them as (blech!) .doc files to preserve the images and as much formatting as possible (you might find some errors in the conversion but nothing that couldn't be rectified by hand).

[The Wolf]

Well, I d/l-ed Nisus. A couple things bother me a little but are not dealbreakers (ex., not being able to put the bold/ital/underline and line spacing buttons in the toolbar; a double indent is a little more complex a task to perform than in AW).

I also found a couple other differences between it and AW that would also take a little getting used to (location of items in the main menus like footnote; cmd+T doesn't make a selection "plain text" instead it opens the font menu, etc. [like Mail.app]) but again, I could adapt to that too.

The worst part tho is that I can't just open the AW files into it. As you mentioned, I apparently have to open the file in AW and then save it as something else (or I guess convert them in MacLink, etc.). Crap. I so just want Apple to not kill off AW!!!

I also looked at NeoOffice & Mellel, but it seems if I were going to go that route, that I might as well use Pages. Eff.

Is there any way to simplify Pages and set it up to resemble AW. All I want in the toolbar are the justification buttons, font size and type, and line spacing. Not a whole bunch of bells and whistles I'll never use?

[CharlesS]

Well, I don't use Pages, but if it works like most other Cocoa apps, you should be able to customize the toolbar how you like it by control-clicking on the toolbar and choosing "Customize Toolbar..." from the context menu.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

The worst part tho is that I can't just open the AW files into it.

Is there any way to simplify Pages and set it up to resemble AW.
All I want in the toolbar are the justification buttons, font size and type,
and line spacing. Not a whole bunch of bells and whistles I'll never use?

Pages doesn't have any bells or whistles... just a whole lot of useful tools.
And... yes, you can customize the toolbar to include only those you will use.

Of course, it won't open any Apple/ClarisWorks spreadsheets or databases.

<grumble, grumble>