Tuesday
Jul132010
Comments NOW Working
Tuesday, July 13, 2010 at 9:40AM If you've submitted a comment here since July 5, no, I'm not censoring you—unless you're a spammer.
I've discovered that there's a problem with my comments here on This Lamp. I kept receiving notices of new comments that were blank. At first, I thought these might actually be some kind of spam comments, but I kept getting them. And I noticed I wasn't getting any new comments.
I'm trying to get to the bottom of the problem. If you know what might be causing it, please email me directly at RMansfield@mac.com.
Okay, I believe comments are now working. If you don't mind, throw out a comment or two on this post to test it out. We don't need many--maybe just four or five.
Reader Comments (10)
Testing, Rick.
Looks like maybe it's now working.
New thread test.
Happy to oblige
Hello again!
I'm glad everything seems to be in order again.
So I am going to take this opportunity to ask a couple of questions: is there any advantages of pages for the iPad over evernote? Especially since I don't use pages for Mac. And do you think the lack of rtf formatting on the iPad is detrimental for student/academic use?
Hi Shawn.
Well, I'd say that Pages and Evernote serve two different purposes. If you're going to write an academic paper on your iPad--which is not entirely out of the range of possibilities--Evernote's not going to do it. It's going to come down to a question of how you're going to use your iPad. I have both Pages and Evernote on my iPad. When I need to create a true word processing document, obviously, I'm going to use Pages.
As for lack of RTF formatting, I'm assuming you're referring to Evernote. My hunch is that while the initial version doesn't have it, later versions will.
I searched around on line a little bit, and I think that the issue with Pages and footnotes is a symptom of the fact that RTF (as such) is not supported on the iOS. I am inferring some of this based on the comments that the developer for Scrivener noted on his blog. Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to be an iPad hater (I love my iPad), and I think it has a lot of promise. I trying to be a little judicious in the apps that I purchase, but you talk so much about Pages, I was wandering if I should get it.
If you are interested, I would love to here your thoughts concerning some of the issues brought up in http://nondefixi.blogspot.com/2010/07/academic-toys-tools.html" rel="nofollow">this guest post.
So for the issue concerning pages, I would love to read a full review on it. Especially from for the purpose of writing an Academic paper.
Shawn, you bring up some interesting points.
When I spoke on classroom instructional use with the iPad at IWU's education conference last month, I did take a moment to discuss whether or not a student could write a paper on the iPad. The answer was probably. In fact, I took one of my student's papers, with her permission, and converted it from Word to Pages and projected it for all to see. Everything was correct with the exception of the second page header because in v. 1, Pages for the iPad doesn't allow for a different first page header.
What has to be kept in mind in this discussion is the formatting requirements of a school or academic journal--whatever the context for writing an academic paper. IWU uses APA (which is not my favorite style, but it mostly works for my students at an undergraduate level). So, if a student was writing an academic paper using APA, I know of no reason why an iPad couldn't be used with the exception of the header issue I just mentioned. But the iPad is not an independent system yet anyway, so perhaps that one header issue could then be fixed on the user's main computer.
For me, working on my dissertation at SBTS, the iPad isn't a consideration for writing because of the footnote issue. I assume that Pages will become more robust over time. I'm not even entirely uncertain that Microsoft won't release a mobile version of Office for the iPad eventually if it continues to gain momentum. But by the time either of those scenarios come to be, I'll be on to something else.
I've actually used Pages on the iPad quite a bit, but not for formal academic writing at this point.
I found the Scrivener blog post you mentioned. I guess I don't completely understand the RTF issue. When it's said that RTF is not supported, what does that mean? And further, what does this have to do with Pages? These questions may have obvious answers, but as I always say, I'm no programmer, so I can get lost in some of those details. For what it's worth, and this probably doesn't address the issue, but just now, I took one of my student's papers, converted it to RTF and emailed it to myself to open on the iPad. I could view it fine in the email app and I could save it to GoodReader where I could view it, too. So, as I said, I don't completely understand the issue regarding RTF, the iPad, and how Pages is affected.
I did look at the link. I want to go back and read it in more detail, but his workflow is very impressive. I wish I was so organized, but it takes time to get organized like that which will then save one much time! Just as he uses Papers, I used Devonthink Pro, but I'm not yet fully using it to its potential. Supposedly, there's an iPad version in the works. I'll be interested to see how that works when it becomes available.
Thanks for your comments. It's great to hear more detail about this.