Why TextEdit is better than Pages

Apple currently delivers two word processors. One comes free with the operating system - TextEdit. The other is paying software included in the suit iWork - Pages.

The strange thing is that the free software is better than the paying one in several respects.

• Only TextEdit opens MS Word 6.0 or MS Word 95 and earlier Word formats.
• Only TextEdit can specify the encoding for exported text documents.
• Only TextEdit saves odt and docx formats.
• Only TextEdit can open text files in other unicode encodings than UTF16.
• Only TextEdit can edit HTML files.
  
• Only TextEdit has a "Save" function to foreign file formats. Pages forces the user to go through an export process.
• Only TextEdit has autosave.
• TextEdit handles some OpenType glyphs that Pages does not handle.
• Only TextEdit handles right-to-left script like Arabic and Hebrew.
  
• Only TextEdit displays the name of substituted fonts.
• TextEdit has kerning while Pages has tracking.
• Only TextEdit can correctly create spaces around French « chevrons ».
• Only TextEdit handles Japanese and Greek wordbreak rules.
  
• Only TextEdit supports Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) grammar checker. It contains some checks for pure grammatical errors like:
• Verb conjugation ("I is". "I have did".)
• The difference between "their" and "there" (as in "there house").
• Sentence fragments (sentences without a verb - like this one).

And then some firsts:

• TextEdit could handle tables in RTF files before Pages could.
• TextEdit could handle subpixel font rendering before Pages could.

If you wonder why this comparison list is not posted at the excellent PagesFaq blog, it is because it is of little use to anyone. Pages has plenty of advantages over TextEdit as well. The list is just compiled as a curiosity.