WWDC Live: Ross Carter and Pagehand, typography-aware word processor

Ross Carter of Cocomot has a pretty cool new word processor, Pagehand, in the works. It reads and writes in PDF format, so you don't have to think twice about sending a document to anyone; they may not be able to edit it -- depending on the software they're running -- but you're pretty much guaranteed they'll be able to see it exactly the way you did on your screen. That's important because Pagehand's features are heavily geared towards making correct and beautiful typography easy for everyone, and providing many of the advanced features you'd only find in applications such as InDesign or Quark. Ross demoed the word processor for me at WWDC. Check out the video for a brief overview of the application and some of the philosophy behind it. While it hasn't been "officially" released yet, it's available for download and trial in its 1.0 incarnation.

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Source: http://pagehand.com/

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Ross Carter of Cocomot has a pretty cool new word processor, Pagehand, in the works. It reads and writes in PDF format, so you don't have...

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HandyMac

Looks very nice. I like the attention to typography, and convenient placement of the various controls in a side panel rather than the awkward sheets of TextEdit -- which it looks to be based on. I was so impressed I was about to buy it, until I discovered it apparently doesn't work with any complex non-Latin script (e.g. Chinese, Devanagari, Tibetan). I dunno why, since TextEdit works fine with all.

June 19 2009 at 10:56 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

ManekiNico

Nice video, guys. Will it be part of the Cloverfield sequel?
Seriously, I realize you were at WWDC and space there is at a premium, but please next time put the laptop on a table or the floor, get a Gorillapod or something for your iPhone, and keep the image steady!!
Now where's my scopolamine? :-p

June 19 2009 at 12:38 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

uhuznaa

I totally don't see the point of using PDF as document format. It can read and edit only PDFs it has saved and *every* OS X app can save as PDF. Honestly, I don't see much here that Text Edit can't do and apps like Pages can do much more.

June 19 2009 at 7:34 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

valthewu

a likeable presentation.

June 19 2009 at 2:31 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Yakov Chodosh

No RTL support :(

June 18 2009 at 11:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Slartibartfast

You know, for a one-dot-oh app its not bad at all. I'll keep an eye on this program to see how it matures over the next year. I have to say I didn't realize that it was possible to work directly in PDF format; always thought of it as a distribution format and not a working format (e.g. Pages, Word, etc).

Just a suggestion to Ross Carter, putting some video tutorials (screen-casts) on your website would go a long way to improving the adoption of your product.

Well done, keep of the excellent work.

June 18 2009 at 1:54 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

borstel

Does it use TeX as backend?

June 18 2009 at 10:06 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

rwzehr

An excellent 1.0 release of an excellent product.

June 18 2009 at 9:24 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Adrian vG

iLike!

June 18 2009 at 7:52 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply