Jerry is right about the manuals shrinking. I have used Keynote since 1.0. It's original manual (I hoard old stuff) was 6" x 9", 100 pages, included a reference card. iWork 1.0 included 5" x 6" manuals for Pages and Keynote, 168 pages; about the same amt. of info; still had the reference cards.
iWorks 2.0 manuals are flimsy 4" x 5" jobs and no reference cards. The boxes are shrinking, of course. IMHO, Apple, like others, are moving to online help, PDF's, etc. and saving the forests by shorting users on written manuals. Things change, not always for the better depending on your point of view, are becoming universal. Marta, the really good news is that using the iWork programs is hyperintuitive. Do go over the intro manuals then play around with simple projects. In no time you will be very pleased with the results. The full integration of iApps via the media browser is worth the price of admission. I recently used Keynote for a class that spanned 4 hours. My boring dissertation was made tolerable by movies, iTunes music, and pictures from iPhoto as well as graphics I made or got off the web and dragged into iPhoto, then into my Keynote. It was amazingly simple and looked great. The 4 page synopsis distributed to students, done in Pages, using the same notes and graphics took me about 15 minutes to complete. Pages is not just a word processor, but a journeyman desktop publisher. The only complaint I have is navigating the Inspector. It is not as intuitive as the program overall; slows me down a bit. But for under $80 (less for educators) it is a steal with or without paper manuals. And for those who must use older, slower equipment (e.g. G3 iMacs), the resources required by iWorks are small enough to not be a problem. ctw On Mar 10, 2006, at 8:43 PM, Jerry Freeman wrote: > The links were for PDF's of "the measly little booklet". Your first > post lead me to believe you had missed placed the "measly little > booklet". Apple?amongst many others?are leaving the manual writing > to third parties Missing Manual and QuickStart series authors, > simply because most people never RTFM?in this case?MLB. > > I notice a transition in the online AW Usergroups towards the iWork > Usergroup..jf > > On Mar 10, 2006, at 9:19 PM, Marta Edie wrote: > >> I have pages 2 ( iWork 6) and I have this measly booklet "Getting >> started" which tells me actually nothing. I never used Appleworks >> for anything else but writing an article or a letter, and I >> thought now before passing into the Elysian Fields, I would like >> to use Pages more extensively, as it does correct as you type, a >> feature very necessary for my hands not feeling whether I press a >> key or just imagine having pressed it. And hose help menus are a >> pain --- | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be March 28 at Pitt Academy, 6010 Preston Highway. | The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>
