Quick question(s)

[cat_77]

Will totally post about the trip to New Orleans when I can. Normally, I'd email myself the pics from my phone, resize them to make them more journal-friendly, and make a post. Unfortunately, my mini that I use for this seems to think the ";" key is awesome beyond belief and I cannot type anything without a few dozen of those appearing and yes, we have tried cleaning it. I also don't have a photo resizing program or a way to upload the pics on the iPad, which is odd but a question for another day.

I also do the majority of my writing on the mini. The reason for this was two-fold:
1) my iPad keyboard can be frustrating due to thinking I am typing something I am not (seriously, the autocorrect loves me... or something).
2) my iPad program decided about a week in that spell check and grammar check are totally not necessary and disabled the option without a way to turn it back on. Given iPad comes with an internal spell check for all programs, this is truly impressive.

So we got my Bluetooth keyboard to finally work, but this leaves one final issue:
Does anyone know of a good word processing program for iPad?

I have been debating buying Pages, but would love some feedback on it if possible. Can you switch between US and British spell/grammar checks? I have DropBox, so I should be able to save to that, open on the server, and download to my external for safekeeping as well, I think. It just seems weird that, for a supposed learning tool, the word processing options are so limited.

Thoughts?

Comments

[egret]

I have tried a ton of iPad word processing programs, but I keep going back to Pages because of the iCloud synchronization, which now magically keeps all my documents available across my laptop, my iPad, and my phone. Also, Pages has more advanced formatting than most other iPad writing programs. It seems like most want to go in a minimalist direction and deliver text files using Markdown for formatting. I have one like this called IAWriter which works fine if you like to have no distractions and just a blank screen to type into. Many people swear by Byword for their all-syncing text editor. And some people like Notability because you can switch between typing and writing with a stylus or your finger.

I think you set the grammar checker nationality when you choose the language for your iPad. I don't think you can switch languages midstream -- and US and British are two different languages, as well as, I think, 2 different keyboard layouts. The settings for "International" and "Keyboard" are all under the General header in the Settings app. (That's where settings for spelling and grammar checker are too -- under keyboard -- but you've probably found them. )

I share your frustration that we can't upload photos from the iPad.

[sophinisba]

I chose three preferred languages for my iPad and I'm able to switch between them whenever I want, by hitting the little globe key that showed up next to the spacebar on my keyboard.

[egret]

wow, i had no idea!

[cat_77]

Can I ask how you did this? I feel kind of stupid for asking, but would love to know how.

[sophinisba]

I did it by going into Settings --> General, scroll down a bit to International --> Keyboards --> Add New Keyboard, and add whichever languages/dictionaries you like there. Then next time you bring up the keyboard it should have a circle like a globe a little to the left of the spacebar, and you can use that to switch keyboards/languages. Not sure if it'll work the same way on your iPad but it should be something similar!

[cat_77]

Have now downloaded Pages to try - anything has to be better than "Documents to Go" which has randomly decided that spellcheck is not necessary and has no way of nesting files or folders. I plan on poking at it for a bit to see what it does. Thanks!