Please also note that I’m using Pages here, but the file types are similar across the iWork suite. It’s set in black 12-point Helvetica, which happens to be the default for Pages. The action takes place in a gzip-compressed XML file, which looks something like this: This is an extremely exciting Pages document. There’s your usual OS X Package garbage in the way of the plist and /Contents/ directory, your QuickLook previews (in both a super-nice PDF format, and a super-compressed JPG file), and some thumbnails. pages extension, and it looked something like this: ist A document created in Pages was a package with the. To explore that in more detail, though, it’s necessary to travel back five years to iWork ’08. Sure, it’s no plain text format or HTML file, but it’s not too bad. The iWork suite has typically been a little bit better at future readability. This isn’t a data file format: it’s a nightmare! doc file you virtually have to write a mini-implementation of Microsoft Word. ![]() And “fast save” made the picture worse, by appending a journal of changes to the application’s in-memory state. doc file format was also obfuscated, deliberately or intentionally: rather than a parseable document containing formatting and macro metadata, it was effectively a dump of the in-memory data structures used by word, with pointers to the subroutines that provided formatting or macro support. One of the reasons cited, among many, was its document format: If your document is written using an app which saves files in a byzantine proprietary format, you may not be able to recover it in a few years’ time without having access to that same application.Ī few weeks ago, an article by Charles Stross circulated which proclaimed that Microsoft Word must die. Why are file formats important? While it’s unlikely that applications will be wiped off the face of the earth, it might be important for you to ensure that any document created now is readable in the future. ![]() ![]() For those of us who keep track of these things, a major update to iWork is likely to come with a modification of the file formats for each application. The updates to each of the apps haven’t been without controversy, as you’d expect, but the apps are now simpler, easier to use, and therefore have the foundations for a better suite of software. Many of us have been desperate for an iWork update for a long time, and Apple certainly delivered that this week.
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