Pre-purchase Q's - Pagemaker features and font "problems"

Question

I am running a PB G4 17" 1.5 gig memory with B/W Postscript printers and a Brother Inkjet. I have not purchased Pages but i have been following this forum for several days.
Two pre-purchase questions.
I have used Pagemaker for a long, long time (my serial number is 02-201-xxxxx) going back to Mac SE's and II ci's. Pagemaker 7 will not run under 10.4.x even in classic (believe me I've tried, Adobe has tried and Apple has tried - but no luck). It will run classic under 10.3.x but I've come to the conclusion that it just ain't worth having a seperate FW start-up disk just for a decades old product.
I used Pagemaker primarily for marketing material, white papers, proposals and other documents that are mainly text with a few charts, graphs, callouts and some simple graphics. Some of the things that I liked was the "master" page concept (that is you could format and place text/objects on the master pages and they would appear on every page), that I had complete control of how the text "flowed" on a page (over, around, through and even over a graphic if I wasn't careful), and that I could "write" different parts of the document in a word processor and then "import" the text into Pagemaker making it flow wherever I wanted, even over multiple, non-contiguous pages.
Can I do this with Pages?
Second, since I've never used Pages i am not sure what the font/WYSIWYG discussions are all about. It seems that Pages does not display the text in the font/size/style selected. Am I correct or am I missing something?
Thank you

Answer 1

Hullo Pachyx:
To answer your last question first, I've been tempted to reply "OMG not this again!" to those who beat this old drum. It's a preconception from Appleworks and other programs, that you have to be able to run up all your fonts with the font name as a sample. Actually you can do this in Pages by piling all your fonts into a "favourites" collection; but frankly, why would you bother? Merely the font name is hardly sufficient sample to judge a font's usefulness, and if you're using fonts with any appreciation, you should really spend some time acquainting yourself with what you have before churning out fancified guff in them.
Sorry if you're of that ilk, but Pages does serious typography. Your access to fonts is - quickly, in actual use - via the Mac OsX font panel, immediately accessible from your tool bar or from Format / Font / Show Fonts in the menu. This does have the option to view a small sample of any selected font, but more importantly has an option in the cog-wheel box at the bottom right hand corner of it to "Manage Fonts." This brings up the Font Book, which has options to display an alpha-numeric sample of your font in any size you choose, the complete repertoire of your font to see all characters it has, or a custom option into which you can enter any text you choose to give a good view of your font in use: Like Ipso Lorum, or Caesar ad sum iam for te, whatever you prefer. There is also an option to view font info, and again you can bring up an alpha-numeric sample of reasonable, but not selectable, size by just double clicking on the font in Font Book; and there are other options back in the font panel to access any special features of the font, such as ligatures or alternative glyphs.
So anything you've heard about font deficiencies in Pages is nonsense. And Pages represents your typography, with all the right kerning details & etc on screen, as all too many programs don't. It takes a bit of detailed work, but you can also perform proper "leading" and kerning adjustment from the facilities that Pages provides. You've used what was a serious layout and publication program in Pagemaker. Pages is a new and worthy iteration of the same - for all the niggles you'll hear, that are endemic to software anyway.
So now to your first question. Of course it won't be easy to switch from anything you probably know like the back of your own hand. But you can, and the formula for success in this is to approach the new program afresh and on its own merits, and not befuddle your understanding of it with expectations of more of the same that you're used to. Pages provides many templates that may be useful on occasion, but might also primarily suggest the scope of what Pages can do. Once you've got the picture, and explored the menus, inspector panels and help, you'll find that the blank template will allow you a freedom that I doubt you'd find excelled much anywhere else at all.
As to the detail of that question. The answer really is that, although you will need to find new methods to do the same, you will find them readily enough to hand. I'd be inclined to recommend, though, that you first try these with new material, since reformatting a mixture of old and new will naturally enough require some fluency in the new environment to understand at a glance what needs to be done, and to recognise how to do it.
That said, it's a curiously sometimes intuitive, and at others an inscrutable interface. Do spend some time to savvy it before you begin to commit any serious project to it. Pages does to an extent rely on your setting up a basic page layout and other details from the outset. On the other hand, it does have a powerful "undo" facility, so there's no need to be afraid of messing about with it - which will generally show you more than all the help and manuals, and even overall these forums, which are really a consensus of our meddling with it too. It's also a program in its youth, and will ask you for some indulgence: and as yet the odd workaround you shouldn't really need.
But we don't all persevere with it for nothing. At root and core it's a beauty.
Cheers.