iPad Pages & PDFs

[Ray Bentsen]

I agree with Richard in that the easiest way to do this on an iPad is to use iPad Keynote.

Just add the sheet music to each slide and then rotate the images using two fingers.

To use music, just run the presentation holding the iPad in portrait orientation ... then just tap anywhere on the screen to advance to the next piece of music.

[Ray Bentsen]

Karen,

As you have discovered Pages on iPad does not give you the same image placement capabilities as with Pages on Mac.

The best I could do creating your document using Pages on iPad was to start by just holding the Return key long enough to make the number of pages that you need. This seemed better than just inserting page breaks, since with the Return characters, you could at least position the cursor on a particular page. Then, go to each page and insert your sheet music (I did mine using iCloud Drive).

For each image, I would suggest turning off "Move with Text", so that changes to one image would not affect any of the others. The "Move with Text" attribute can also be turned off by clicking on the "flagpole" icon next to a selected image (see screenshot).

[Richard Serkes]

Going back to an earlier entry from the OP, she mentions she has a Mac. Why not create the Keynote presentation on the Mac and then use iCloud to transfer the presentation to the iPad version of Keynote? All the former iWork programs are now free so that's not an issue. And using iCloud is also free.

Steve Jobs once said that the Mac was best for creating content and the iDevices were best for consuming content. Yes, there are iOS versions of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote and I use them all but if I'm going to spend much time trying to create a large document in Pages, or a spreadsheet in Numbers, or a presentation in Keynote I'm going to be sitting in front of my Mac. Flipping that coin, I can read a book on my Macbook using iBooks but I'd rather read a book on my iPad using iBooks. Create on the Mac, consume on the iDevice.

[Ray Bentsen]

There's obviously a lot I don't know about the iOS version of Pages.

For anyone wanting to learn all about Pages, including Pages on iPad, I would recommend the text by Michael E. Cohen published by Take Control Books.

There is more information here.

Note that free updates to the book are available whenever Pages gets updated.

[Stephen Hart]

Steve Jobs once said that the Mac was best for creating content and the iDevices were best for consuming content. Yes, there are iOS versions of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote and I use them all but if I'm going to spend much time trying to create a large document in Pages, or a spreadsheet in Numbers, or a presentation in Keynote I'm going to be sitting in front of my Mac.

Spot on, Richard.
I think the idea of the rebuilt iWork for iOS is to be able to edit on the iPad. Yes, you could build something from scratch on a plane when you get a brilliant idea to run up the flagpole at your ad agency meeting, but it's hard to see someone working on an iPad when sitting at the Mac. The extra ease that comes with a real keyboard, a mouse, and real windows, not to mention extra features in the apps, makes the Mac much easier for many tasks.

iOS devices are also good for very short creative projects, such as adding an item to Reminders, saving a thought in Notes, "sharing" something with yourself or others by e-mail, etc. Minor editing of Pages documents works fine, but if I need to do whole paragraphs, I'll often go to the Mac.

(BTW, I added an attachment to a previous message.)

[Stephen Hart]

The New York Times has an article on apps for musicians. It includes this:

On iPads or iPhones, the DeepDish GigBook app, which costs $10, takes this idea one step further. As well as displaying sheet music for you to play, it also lets you scribble on the screen to annotate the score with information like fingerings. The app also has a set list creator, so you can collect all the music you need for a gig, and it’s also compatible with page-turning peripherals.

[KarenColes]

I appreciate the time and efforts of all of you on my behalf so much!

I love the "Take Control" books. I have several of them, but not the one for Pages. I'll get it.

For now, I'm convinced that managing this task using Pages on the iPad is too complicated for my friend to do. I've done what she wants to do using my Mac, saving the document to iCloud, and then opening it on my iPad to use for a performance. But the friend I'm helping only has an iPad, and wanted to be able to do this on her own.

It might be possible for her to do it on Keynote if we could overcome the problem I'm having trying to rotate the image. It sounds so simple: just tap on the image, and then use 2 fingers to rotate it. It seems that different things can happen each time I tap on the image, and none of them will let me use 2 fingers to rotate. There are several menu bars that can pop up when I tap, such as:

Select All Paste Comment

Cut Copy Paste Delete Comment Animate

Vertical

Fit

Sometimes, purely by accident it seems, I am able to rotate the image. But I can't figure out what I'm doing differently when I get it to work. And if I don't rotate it all the way, and take my fingers off, putting them back on will not result in being able to rotate it the rest of the way.

I'm beginning to think that I'll solve this whole iPad dilemma by simply having my friend email the music to me. I'll pop it into Pages on my Mac (taking me no more than 30 seconds,) and email the completed script back for her to use in her performance. Just because something can be done on an iPad doesn't mean it makes any sense to do it on an iPad.