Although this feature will have to take into account we can't assume that page is in a same state on public just because it has green activation status (e.g. import or clone or manipulation via unwrapped jcr api) so whatever we do, it still has to be possible to activate even the page that is marked as activated

Added option to publish only unpublished or modified pages, while Publishing pages incl. subnodes. To turn on this feature add new property to node cofiguration>modules>pages>apps>pages>subapps>browser>actions>activateRecursive - new property modifiedOnly with value true