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-   -   OmniOutline vs Pages (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=18001)

TomC 2010-09-17 03:44 PM

OmniOutline vs Pages
 
I've been looking at OO for several months and have often wondered
• What can OO do that Pages can't do and what can Pages do that OO can't? In other words, if I had Pages, would I need OO, and if I had OO, would I need Pages?

Or to put it another way,
• If you had to choose one of the programs to the exclusion of the other, which one would you choose?

I'm interested to know what your thoughts are.

Thanks.
Tom

dax 2010-09-19 02:07 PM

I'm a teacher; I use both of these programs every day. There are things I love about each.
I frequently work with tables to organize vocabulary lists and other information. OmniOutliner doesn't sort data; if you want to alphabetize a list in a table, Pages does this easily, but OO does not.
I use OO for my lesson plans, typing stories, making multiple choice quizzes. I have a lot of curricular information organized in OO. For this kind of task, OO is unsurpassed. I also use TaskPaper a lot, but it lacks the ability to fold, which is often very handy.
I use Pages when I want to format something for printing. It's easy to see the page layout and make changes without going back and forth between Preview and the document. It has more options. When I print from OO I'm never sure whether something will fit on one page or how big the font will look.
I'm sure there are features of each program that I haven't yet explored, but that is my summary of their usefulness. I would not want to give up either of them.

xiamenese 2010-09-19 04:20 PM

Clearly, OmniOutliner is a dedicated outliner — with a few tricks up its sleeve, particularly the Pro version — whereas Pages is a word-processor with page-layout pretensions ... so far they are entirely different. But where there is a point of comparison is the inclusion of an outliner within the latest version of pages.

I haven't tried it, as I use OOP for any outlining purposes, and the truth is the only purpose for which I use pages is opening .DOC files which include tables, as badly set-up tables and nested tables in .DOCs are handled much better by Pages than by Nisus Writer Pro.

But MacUser UK recently carried an article by one of its columnists on the Pages outliner and its problems. You can find it here:

[url]http://www.macuser.co.uk/2226-an-outline-of-grievances-with-pages-planning-tool[/url]


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