Verifiable Pages "Bug"? Can others confirm

Question

I'm still having recurring issues crop up surrounding Apple's changes to the file format of Pages documents since the shift toward iCloud in Mountain Lion. First off I should say that I'm running the latest version of ML on my Macs (OS X 10.8.2) and the latest version of iOS on my iDevices (iOS 6.0.2).
Here's the issue and the steps to replicate it:
1. Open Pages, Create a New Document, and save it to iCloud. Then close the document.
2. Select (or click) Open Document. Then from the file viewer (with iCloud selected) select the document you just created, click share at the buttom and choose to send it through messages to another user.
The problem is this: the file will be sent as a Zip file. It will Open on the Mac version of Messagse because it can unpack the zip file, but on an iOS device the file will come through as an unrecognized docuemnt and it can't be opened on an iOS device.
Now, I am calling this a "bug" because you can send Pages files back and forth through Messages with no problem as long as you choose Pages documents saved directly to your computer's HD (and not to iCloud). Indeed, you can test this by opening the same Pages File above, then selecting "Move To..." (from the little triangle in the title bar) and moving the file to your desktop. From there, control click on the Pages file and choose "Share" and then send the Pages file through Messages. It will come through as a Pages file that does not need to be unzipped on the mac and that can be opened direclty on iOS.
I've replicated this on two iMacs running 10.8.2. Are others seeing this behavior as well?

Answer 1

Yes, what Viking says is all correct, but there's still more to it than this. A few points:
1) iCloud documents shared over email do NOT arrive as zipped files, even when received on iOS devices.
2) iCloud documents that I haven't updated since November, can be shared and arrive on iOS devices as Pages files – no zip problems at all.
This is only effecting recently-created or recenlty-updated Pages files, saved in iCloud and shared in Messages.
So it's NOT just that all Pages documents stored in iCloud get shared as Zip files, because Pages documents stored in iCloud used to be shareable directty as Pages files, and even current Pages documents on iCloud can be emailed directly as Pages documents.
The issue here is that Apple is using a Package File (with multiple files inside) but that Package is NOT supposed to be visible to the user; it's all supposed to happen behind the scenes so that the user always only sees a file that's in "Pages format." The OS (both OS's, in fact) is supposed to seamlessly convert these files back and forth, and most of the time it does.
Right now that conversion process is failing, but it's only failing when there are a combination of conditions:
New Pages Documents
Saved in iCloud
Shared through Messages
One final bit of information. So far as I can tell, if you take a newly-created document that fails to send through messages on the Mac, THEN open that document in Pages on an iOS device and make changes, and THEN try sharing that document, the file format will come through (correctly) as Pages.