[View this page as PDF](/blog/2007/08/09/07-24-13.570887/100.pdf)
Back in 2005 [I complained about Apple's pages application launching
with no mention of HTML export
functionality](http://ptsefton.com/blog/2005/01/12/pages).
They're at it again, the Apple site says:
> Getting the word out.
>
> When it’s time to share Pages
> documents with friends and colleagues, you can export them as PDF
> documents, in Word .doc format, as RTF, or as plain text documents. Or
> send your documents to iWeb for publication on your website as Pages
> ’08 or PDF documents. (For the
> former, readers will need a copy of Pages; for the latter, Preview or
> Adobe Reader.)
Look at that – no mention of HTML.
You can put your documents up on the web in PDF or Pages format, like
that would be a smart idea. This is the kind of application design that
leads to this post from Peter Suber [Why do online-only OA journals use
PDF?](http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_08_05_fosblogarchive.html#2172582245207222227)
[update: the [original post is
here](http://efoundations.typepad.com/efoundations/2007/08/open-online-jou.html)]
It's because word processors don't ship with proper HTML export, that's
why. See [my recent adventures trying to write a paper in
HTML](http://del.icio.us/ptsefton/xhtmlchallenge) using standard word
processing software.
Oh, and Brian Jones says that [iWork ‘08 supports the Open XML
formats](http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2007/08/07/iwork-08-supports-the-open-xml-formats.aspx)only
the page about Pages says that you can import the new OOXML (Word)
format, nothing about saving to it, you're stuck with .doc and RTF for
that – and I bet it's a lossy
export.
People, don't lock your documents up in proprietary paper-lovingformats.
Use [ICE](http://ice.usq.edu.au/).
(We're about to start beta testing the online version of ICE, so you
won't need to install anything soon, apart from a Word template or an
OpenOffice.org extension.)
[Update: fixed a couple of typos]