iWork 9.0.4 adds ePub exporting for iBooks
updated 05:50 pm EDT, Thu August 26, 2010
Bug fixes also included
Apple has released an update to its iWork suite of productivity applications. Version 9.0.4 addresses unnamed issues in Keynote, Pages and Numbers. The update also adds an ePub export option in Pages, enabling users to save documents in a format compatible with the iBooks reader app for iOS devices.
iWork 9.0.4 is now available directly from Apple's Support site or via Software Update. [download - 63MB]




Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: May 2004
Fixes?
I can't download the update yet, but I am wondering if the addition of the ePub stuff will fix some of the rendering issues that iWork '09 brought. Specifically, you used to be able to copy a chart in Numbers, and create a new document in Preview from the clipboard copy of the chart. The result would be a clean vector PDF or image of the original chart (depending on how you save it).
With iWork '09, the charts lose legend text, or other formatting, so the only work-around would be to print the entire Numbers document to PDF, then open it in Preview to crop out the desired chart. Major pain, compared to the elegant way it used to work.
I should add though that I'm not sure if this was entirely due to iWork '09, or the changes to Preview in Snow Leopard. I just know that it used to work great, and now it doesn't. Hopefully the addition of ePub stuff has the development team looking at this rendering issue. I understand ePub to be a flavoring for XML, and the copied charts would be essentially snippets of XML code that the iWork suite uses for data files.
-- Len