Favorite Writing Program?

[graywolf]

What is/was your favorite program to use for writing?

Ok, I will start this off, my favorite editor for writing was Q&A Write. It was a DOS program that had just the basic word processing capabilities. Text entry, rudimentary formating, basic printing, and an after the fact spelling checker. When you get down to it what more do you really need? Beyond that you are getting into desktop publishing programs.

My two least favorite ones are EMACS, fortunately no one ever insisted that I use it, and Word. I was not so lucky with Word, I had you use it a lot.

[iMav]

I use vi more than anything else.  So I guess I would have to say it is my favorite...at the very least, it is where I am the most comfortable.  

I liked TextMate enough to purchase it...so it is definitely high on the list as well (but is strictly for my Mac's).

There were a couple of DOS text editors I used to use on a regular basis "back in the day"...but their names escape me.  

[bigpook]

I remember when DOS was king. IIRC, you were the shizzle if you had MS-DOS 3.2.....

DOS was the thing, but thats like saying she looked really good through the beer goggles......

[ashort]

Umm...QEdit?

[xsphat]

A freebie for Mac — iText Express. A small Japanese developer made it and I like it because it reminds me of my other favorite — NewsEditPro, which I don't know how to get a copy of. It's professional for print media and it is so stripped down it's perfect.

[iMav]

Umm...QEdit?

VDE.  It was the only text editor I could use on my 286 with 1MB of ram to open up the various source code files for WWIV without getting an out-of-memory error.  You could have multiple documents open...blocking text and then cutting and pasting to another open document was a breeze.  I never saw anything else like it for DOS (at the time).

[graywolf]

Vim, I used it a lot when I was using Slackware.

I just looked a couple of things up on the web.

First XSPhat's NewEditPro. I do not know what the editor in it is like, but it is a vertical business application to run a newspaper on. Superexpensive.

Then I tried "writing software". Wow! You can get software that will teach you to write like Hemingway via cut and paste. Nowhere did I see a basic writing editor that just helped a writer get words from his head into the computer and nothing else. It seems "features" sell software, "does the job with minimum hassles" is is not a feature, I guess.

Maybe I should write my own prose editor. Of course the market would only be about as big as this list, maybe 200 users world wide. But it would do exactly what I wanted it to do. "You want me to add what? I suggest you buy another product, this one is for real writers. You have to have the equivalent of a sixth grade education to use it*."


*I know people with Masters Degrees that don't.

[D-EJ915]

THis is a cool site if you just want to sit and jot stuff down

http://writer.bighugelabs.com/

[xsphat]

I like iText Express so much, I just bought a license for iText Pro. It has more features like Word, but they are turned off. I just wanted to give them money to keep them doing what they do.

[xsphat]

First XSPhat's NewEditPro. I do not know what the editor in it is like, but it is a vertical business application to run a newspaper on. Superexpensive.

All iText Pro is is a window where you write. I have the menu options hidden, grammar and spellcheck off, and invisible characters shown. There is no page separation,  no bells or whistles and it saves to RTF, TXT, DOC or whatever.

This sounds like something you'd be into, if you are on a Mac. BTW, what I am describing is identical to the  story window in NewsEditPro Ique, which is perfect in it's  simplicity.

[xsphat]

And here is a picture of it:

[zwmalone]

When I use the Nasty, I prefer to use DarkRoom

[graywolf]

When I use the Nasty, I prefer to use DarkRoom

Hello what am I doing with this? What are those arrows ->

This is supposed to be a great editor? Little tiny green letters in the middle of the screen? Maybe if I was using VGA? It does not even have mnemonic controls. Well, seems I am wrong, ctl+s is save file.

The above two paragraphs were written using Dark Room. It gets a bit too primitive for me. I have this expensive dual processor workstation, I do not want it to act like my old TRS-80. Although, come to think of it, SuperScripsit did fill up the screen with seeable characters. Nice idea, poor implementation.

In the end, Wordpad may be the simplest answer for us windows users. But I hope not. Of course I guess I could dust off my C compiler and in a week have anything I wanted.

OK, OK, OK, I am wrong. You can set most stuff. 24pt type and a 1200 pixel screen helps. I guess I will look at this (DarkRoom) a bit more. But I will never claim Dark Room is a good name for and editor program.

[xsphat]

I've used Write Room (the Mac version) and you can set the zoom default to 200% so the 12 pt letters are easy to see. Dark Room may have a preference pane like that, if Windows lets you have preferences that is.

[zwmalone]

Hello what am I doing with this? What are those arrows ->

This is supposed to be a great editor? Little tiny green letters in the middle of the screen? Maybe if I was using VGA? It does not even have mnemonic controls. Well, seems I am wrong, ctl+s is save file.

The above two paragraphs were written using Dark Room. It gets a bit too primitive for me. I have this expensive dual processor workstation, I do not want it to act like my old TRS-80. Although, come to think of it, SuperScripsit did fill up the screen with seeable characters. Nice idea, poor implementation.

In the end, Wordpad may be the simplest answer for us windows users. But I hope not. Of course I guess I could dust off my C compiler and in a week have anything I wanted.

OK, OK, OK, I am wrong. You can set most stuff. 24pt type and a 1200 pixel screen helps. I guess I will look at this (DarkRoom) a bit more. But I will never claim Dark Room is a good name for and editor program.

Also if you hit the escape key you get this:

[graywolf]

Yes, after looking closer, I think Dark Room  may be what I was looking for. Still don't like the name though.

Screen shot:



Full screen image 1600x1200 pixels, 24pt type, my choice of colors. F11 switches between this and Window View. A right click gives most of the options too.

[G.A.Pster]

MS word, I tried abiword and that freeware one that has the seagull on it’s icon.

I use a black background and olive green text.
I read the human eye is the most sensitive to shades of green, so that's what I picked besides green is my favorite color. lol

[graywolf]

MS word, I tried abiword and that freeware one that has the seagull on it’s icon.

I use a black background and olive green text.
I read the human eye is the most sensitive to shades of green, so that's what I picked besides green is my favorite color. lol

The human eys is most sensitive to yellow-green. But green on black is not the most comfortable to stare at for long periods. The yellow-orange on black was considered the best back in the monochrome monitor days but the phosphors were considerably more expensive so you did not see many of those amber monitors. Anyway the lime-green text is the default with that DarkRoom editor, I was just fiddling around with the settings.

[FunkTrooper]

i like metapad. it's like notepad, but a bit better http://www.liquidninja.com/metapad/
yes, yes, so i use windows.
metapad has a rather handy feature: it can add newlines to your text to make it fit within, say, 80 character width. so when you want your text to fit that width, you don't have to manually press enter at the end of each line. it can do that for you.

[joqueza]

I love VIM but you have to get used to its key bindings (emacs gets worse).

And also you can change to a gazillion of color schemes depending on your mood: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~maverick/VimColorSchemeTest/index-pl.html (not 56kbps safe)

[D-EJ915]

I love VIM but you have to get used to its key bindings (emacs gets worse).

And also you can change to a gazillion of color schemes depending on your mood: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~maverick/VimColorSchemeTest/index-pl.html (not 56kbps safe)

that site is brutal on your web browser

[megarat]

Like most people here, I enjoy text editors and word processors that are streamlined and based around text, not document layout and production.  A couple applications of note, historically:

Xywrite:  a fabulously feature-rich-yet-streamlined text editor, designed largely for newspapers but usable by anyone.  DOS-based, practically no mice allowed.  I never used this much, as I'm typically a Mac/Unix guy, but I love the spirit of it, and noodled around (unsuccessfully) trying to get it to work on various ultraportable devices.

WriteNow:  IMHO, the best lightweight word processor for Classic Mac.  I composed probably an aggregate 400,000 words on WriteNow 4.0, starting with an Apple Duo 280, but then downgrading (for the long term) to a Powerbook 100.  I would switch back and forth between WN4 and the American Heritage Dictionary Deluxe, and it was brilliant.

I still haven't found a favorite/ideal word processor for Mac OS X.  (Xsphat:  thanks for the referral to iText Express/Pro ... I just downloaded the demo.)  The perfect word processor for me would be a full-screen (or -window) text editor with very basic text-formatting abilities (different fonts, different sizes, different styles (italic, underline, etc.)), the ability to export to standard file formats (RTF, DOC, XML, TXT), bookmarking (more on this in a bit), and performance/behavior that doesn't get in the way.

I tried (and abandoned) Mellel and Nisus Writer Express.  Both were lacking in certain curious ways.  E.g., Mellel's "full screen view" still has left and right margins.  Oddly enough, and worst of all, both of these "light, modern" word processors would underperform with large documents.

This was the stupidest thing, and the computer scientist part of me is still appalled:  I could work with a document of 200k words in WN4 on my PB100 (8MB RAM, 16MHz 68HC000 CPU) with no problems and lightning fast screen refreshes, even when paging/scrolling through the document.  But load that same bulk-text document into NWE or Mellel on my G4 Powermac with 1 GB of RAM, and the screen couldn't even keep up with a leisurely 20wpm typing, especially at the end of a long paragraph.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  Granted, these problems have been remedied a little with both applications, but I had to be their bug reporters in both cases, and the apps are still not as responsive as they should be.  (Word, for all of its misgivings, has no problems with this.)

Today, I'm using Nisus Writer Pro, which is over-featured and still suspiciously underperforming.  It's fine, but I'm not in love with it.  It does, however, have one very nice feature:  bookmarks.  Like bookmarks in a PDF document, you click on a menu item and it takes you to a set location in your document.  When you're working with a file that has many sections/chapters/parts and is 100k+ words in length, being able to zing around to certain parts without searching it out is one of those "never go back" features.  Nisus's implementation of bookmarks is reasonable but not perfect.  You still need to mouse over to a screen-cluttering menu, and you can't jump around by keystroke.  I would probably be okay with NWP if the rest of the application was a better fit, but that's not the case and I'm still (passively) looking.

Oh, and I almost forgot:  I use LaTeX frequently for work, via TeXshop and a fink-based LaTeX back-end.  TeXshop is the best LaTeX front-end I've seen thus far for Mac OS X, although I admit I haven't shopped around much.  I've considered using it for raw text processing, but I'd rather not work with (and around) typesetting primitives unless I have to.

[xsphat]

You are welcome for the tip. I use iText Pro ($15) every day. All Pro adds is extra customization, but after playing with it a bit it's really good. You might also like Write Room for OS X. With the options I think it could be what you're looking for. I think I'm going to buy it soon.

[megarat]

Whoa baby ... WriteRoom is da shiznit.

Well, okay ... it doesn't have bookmarks, but other than that it's asymptotically approaching perfect.  I'll probably pay him the $25 up-front and put in bookmarks as a feature request.  Or if I'm lucky, perhaps he has feature bounties as part of his business model, in which case I'll gladly pitch in for this.

Many thanks for the re-reference ... I had checked out WriteRoom a year or two ago, when it started getting lots of attention, and I don't remember why but I wasn't impressed.  Maybe something critical happened between that version and this one.

[lowpoly]

I use Textmaker which is part of Softmaker Office. Small application that starts fast. Have it on my PDA too. It can read and write Word .docs.

Just got an email that the Linux version is finished.

[secularzarathustra]

Try emacs,

you can actually make it do whatever you want, map the keys however you want, and make it look however you want.

Check out the emacswiki.

[DMuk]

jdarkroom is also worth a look.

[Fox]

When I wrote documentation during an internship, it was nothing but LyX. It's a LaTeX frontend that does almost everything under the sun as far as typesetting goes. The only caveat: it's not for the faint of heart. It's the kind of thing you have to sit down with for a few days to really get the hang of. But once you get it in gear, you can just go with it.

Darkroom looks pretty cool though - I'll have to look into it for when I just have something to write and I don't want a huge bulky MS Word GUI to distract me from the act of writing.

[wellington1869]

has anyone mentioned q10? Its another darkroom-style simple editor for Windows.  I like it better than darkroom actually. I use it every day.

[DMuk]

Bloody hell. These full screen editors are everywhere:

WriteMonkey
WestEdit
TextRoom
JDarkRoom

So far JDarkRoom is still my favourite.

[wellington1869]

Bloody hell. These full screen editors are everywhere:

WriteMonkey
WestEdit
TextRoom
JDarkRoom

So far JDarkRoom is still my favourite.

Here's a comparison/review of those and a few more too. Apparently there are purely web-based versions of these now.

[secularzarathustra]

not a single feature has been listed that emacs doesn't do, it has bookmarks, and it's free software...

[Fox]

It's not about the features or lack thereof, it's about simplicity. Why would I use something that makes me learn a bunch of obscure shortcuts when I can just use something with the basics? Editors are great for editing code. But when I write in English, I don't want to have to consult a man page just to figure out how to do a simple task.

[xsphat]

There's a Mac version of JDarkroom and it is pretty cool. I'm gonna give it a whirl. Hell, I do anything to not give MS any more money.

[wellington1869]

Hell, I do anything to not give MS any more money.

OS's and programs (and text editors) are all like languages - we like best the one we grew up with.

If I'm honest with myself, I'm on this forum because I keep trying to recreate the experience of the IBM PC 8088. Which means a Model M keyboard paired with a flourescent green monochrome display.

In todays terms, a live-able (if pale) substitute for that means a cherry blues clicky keyboard paired with the q10 editor.  And presto, I'm transported (well, sort of) to the 80s and the halcion days of my computing youth when anything was possible (in, er, BASICA).

Decades later, its funny, that experience remains the standard aesthetic experience by which I measure my computing setup nirvana.  

And why? No other reason but that thats what I grew up with. Mother's cookies, mac and cheese, froot loops, English, and Model M's and green monochrome screens. There will never be true substitutes for these things for me.  If you grew up with apple II extended keyboards and computers and Frosted Flakes, you'd feel that way about those things, trying to recreate those things.  (Or if you grew up with X-windows and emacs...). Of course in the end we're all doing this in vain. The world has moved on (and probably for the better in most cases). We havent!

[xsphat]

I learned to type on a Model M, and that is the last time I enjoyed using Windows.

[wellington1869]

I learned to type on a Model M, and that is the last time I enjoyed using Windows.

I was forced to use mac os in college once.

[xsphat]

I was forced to use mac os in college once.

You poor thing.

Seriously, in the beginning there was a forced simplicity to computing, and ever since then we have been doing more and more things on computers, so it's natural that for things like writing we want to get back to that. When I write fiction, I have my notes on real paper so all I need is a word processor and I'm golden.

One thing I wish JDarkroom did was allow me to open a web browser to do research without shutting down the app. A small concern for writing, but for homework it makes the program damn near unusable.

[wellington1869]

I have my notes on real paper

now thats old fashioned! But efficient. Its hard to beat the random-access capability of pen and paper actually. Or index cards.  
I only recently dropped paper (like 6 months ago). I spent a looong time trying to find a solution for the laptop that came close to the efficiency that index cards had. Finally I now use a combination of 4 different programs to replace the cards.  Not sure if its worth it but I'm experimenting.

Do you have multiple monitors? I have q10 on one monitor and a browser window on the other. I turn the browser monitor off when I just want to write.

[DMuk]

Do you have multiple monitors? I have q10 on one monitor and a browser window on the other. I turn the browser monitor off when I just want to write.

That's cheating Wellington.

Obviously a new breed of text editors are now needed that can detect if other monitors are connected and then blow them up!

[wellington1869]

That's cheating Wellington.

Obviously a new breed of text editors are now needed that can detect if other monitors are connected and then blow them up!

hee hee

I want my old-days nostalgia but not at the expense of efficiency I guess. I want it all!

[brojgar]

Writemonkey is *the best* distraction free editor. I agree with
http://bweaver.net/writemonkey-text-editor
b.

[secularzarathustra]

Do you have multiple monitors? I have q10 on one monitor and a browser window on the other. I turn the browser monitor off when I just want to write.

I just switch between the buffer i'm writing in and the one browsing the net...or ctr-x 2 to display both buffers in the same window

[itlnstln]

now thats old fashioned! But efficient. Its hard to beat the random-access capability of pen and paper actually. Or index cards.  
I only recently dropped paper (like 6 months ago). I spent a looong time trying to find a solution for the laptop that came close to the efficiency that index cards had. Finally I now use a combination of 4 different programs to replace the cards.  Not sure if its worth it but I'm experimenting.

Do you have multiple monitors? I have q10 on one monitor and a browser window on the other. I turn the browser monitor off when I just want to write.

I have long stopped using paper.  I have a piece of scratch paper to write a quick note or phone number, but I have all but lost my handwriting skills.  I used to have great handwriting all through school, but when I gradutated from college, I pretty much stopped writing by hand.  These days I almost have to use grade-school paper (the kind with the 2 inch wide lines with the dotted line in the middle) and crayons.

[philodox]

After reading this thread and doing some looking around, I've settled on:

Windows: Q10
Linux: PyRoom
Mac: WriteRoom

Really liking Q10 so far.  Haven't had a chance to try PyRoom yet, but will do as soon as I rebuild my computer... no Linux install on it at the moment.

[bigpook]

Just checking this thread out, I am using Ubuntu so I went and got PyRoom.
I am not a writer but it looks nice if only for the complete lack of distraction. Pyroom acts as a full screen text editor. Which I guess is the whole point.

[philodox]

It's too bad that PyRoom doesn't have a spellchecker... that's one piece of bloat that I don't mind.

Looks like there is a branch where they are trying to implement one, but it still has some issues and I'm no sure it is being currently developed: https://code.launchpad.net/~abelianr/pyroom/Spellcheck

Does WriteRoom have a spellchecker?

[megarat]

Does WriteRoom have a spellchecker?

It does, both "check while you write" and "check all at once".

To keep this thread alive, has anyone played with Scrivener?  (For Mac OS X only.)

I'm playing w/it right now, and granted it's not as minimalistic as WriteRoom (which I've come to adore), it does have some of the same full-screen editing functionality, plus some of other features for organizing content, specifically for large writing projects.  

I'm not a fan of clutter and feature-bloat, but on paper it sounds like this could be exactly what I'm looking for.  We'll see.  I also love the fact that it's only US$39.95.

[xsphat]

I tried Scriviner but I didn't like it. I have lost novels in the past to using programs like this and Voodoo Pad, so I like to stick with standard file formats and well known programs.

[megarat]

I tried Scriviner but I didn't like it. I have lost novels in the past to using programs like this and Voodoo Pad, so I like to stick with standard file formats and well known programs.

I haven't played around with this too much, but it appears that the text for Scrivener "projects" are actually saved in RTF files.  A standard Scrivener "file" -- i.e., the "project binder" -- is actually a directory, which contains all the associated files.  It appears that an XML file makes all the associations, and there is a directory where all text goes, in a file called TXT.rtf.  This file is as portable as any other RTF file, and it's possible that you can pull it out, edit it on a different platform, and move it back, and Scrivener won't be none the wiser.

(The .scriv file appears as a single file in the Finder, rather than a directory, because of the way Mac OS X can "reidentify" directories as individual files or applications.  Personally, I use the terminal to examine the directory's actual contents, although there may be ways to do this in the Finder as well.)

Re: Voodoo Pad.  I was under the impression that this was effectively a standard wiki, and saved the text into HTML files in the same way as mentioned above.  Although I haven't used it, so I don't know for certain.

[xsphat]

Voodoo Pad is a wiki thing, but it worked so well, but just by the files sitting on my HD for about six months, every single one of the Voodoo files was corrupt and I couldn't retrieve any data. I almost killed somebody.

[andb]

Voodoo Pad is a wiki thing, but it worked so well, but just by the files sitting on my HD for about six months, every single one of the Voodoo files was corrupt and I couldn't retrieve any data. I almost killed somebody.

Do you still have the "corrupt" files? Often the majority of the information inside the file the important text, is still ok. If you have it and want to see if it can be recovered, PM me. Or just dload a good hex editor and see whats really inside those files.

EDIT: Oh, and remember one thing - regular backups

[xsphat]

EDIT: Oh, and remember one thing - regular backups

My backups were the same file format (learned my lesson there) and they were corrupt too.

[lowpoly]

Incremental save?

[wellington1869]

Voodoo Pad is a wiki thing, but it worked so well, but just by the files sitting on my HD for about six months, every single one of the Voodoo files was corrupt and I couldn't retrieve any data. I almost killed somebody.

Its one of my nightmares to lose data from my documents and writing. I'm completely paranoid about that and my ultra-redundant backup system reflects that paranoia, lol.

[Chloe]

I wrote an article today that I ended up losing because my USB stick ran out of space.

[wellington1869]

I wrote an article today that I ended up losing because my USB stick ran out of space.

Tragedy! Hate when that happens.

I'm so paranoid that I even keep a keylogger on my computer. Not to spy on myself - but to function as a "black box" for my whole computer. It works as a last resort -- I can recover all my keystrokes. The few times I've had to do that, its worked really well, it didnt take that much work to recover entire documents from it.

I use this free one called "homekeylogger"

[andb]

The best way to make sure you don't lose data is with regular snapshot style backups. For example, windows server has done this for ages, you can right click on a directory or file and see past versions which you can restore. Vista should be offering this now too.

Since I use Linux, I do this using a program called Dirvish, every night it takes a "snapshot" of my files and I keep 30 days worth of these snapshots.

A good solution will only store the "Delta", or the change in the file. So instead of having 30 copies of the same file each day, if you changed only one letter it stores the fact that only one letter changed. Dirvish is a bit simpler, by using Linux hard links it stores a full copy of each file each time it changes.

I have a lot of respect or Apple making simple, easy to use external backup systems. Which, by the way is very important - don't keep your backups on the same machine that you are working on! I'm sure that there are now tons of systems that backup to internet services for Windows, this should be a priority as high as an anti-virus package, if not higher.

The keylogger is an interesting idea. I'd take it one step further and use a hardware based keylogger, so even if the harddrive fails, you'll still have your data.

Anyone have recommendations about good internet products for Windows or Mac (or Linux?) doing regular backups which keep a history of the files?

[secularzarathustra]

I use rsync and cron for the same thing.

[xsphat]

What to hell is a snapshot backup?

I use DropBox and a portable drive and work off my computer. I backup writing to DropBox and the drive I carry around manually when I need to (right after I do big work).

[D-EJ915]

I think he's talking about differential backups...because a snapshot would be like a full backup...

[andb]

I think he's talking about differential backups...because a snapshot would be like a full backup...

A snapshot is a term used to restore a system to a given state, just as if you took a photo of it and said, ok, now be like this.

The easiest way to do this is just make a full copy of everything you have and store it on the side.

A better way is to use a system that takes a "base measurement" and then just records the changes. So what I have, as an example, is a directory called "backup" and in it are individual directories for each day. I can go into that day's directory, and the whole file system inside it looks exactly like it did on that day. What is really happening is that the unchanged files are just hardlinks (Windows kernel actually supports this too, why can't they trust their users with such cool tools?) so its essentially just a filename in the later directories pointing back to the original file. When a file changes, it doesn't get linked but its new version is copied.

Since my files don't change much, I have 10gb that I back up, with daily changes from 30 days, and it takes up about 11gb worth of space only.

I'm pretty sure that Vista has incorporated similar functionality from Server2003 which is even better in that it records only file deltas (the actual change) on each file save.

So in answer to above comment, yes differential backups done in a way to provide easy access to a system snapshot. BTW, you can see the same principle used by VMware's workstation product. The "snapshots" build off of the base OS image and as such are useless without it.

[Therac-25]

Obligatory Backup PSA link

I don't write prose or anything.  At least nothing anyone would want to read.  I don't mind the full screen editors to a degree -- anything which can stop you screwing around with software and writing is a good thing.  You can get the same effect by fullscreening a terminal window (compiz has a shortcut to fullscreen anything) and using your favorite console editor, though, so I'm not sure what the value is, other than variable width fonts ( 1920x1200 terminal example ).

When I'm writing documentation or something at work, I need a full real interface -- I'm obsessive about applying styles and formats properly, so I'd go insane without that window open.  I usually go with OpenOffice, as despite it's flaws, it behaves more consistently than MS Word does.

If I had to write prose, I would probably break out Emacs for the task.  I used to be a huge Emacs person, but times are changing, and every language now has an ideal, integrated IDE which you'd be an idiot not to write code in.  Unless I'm working on Perl, I don't go in Emacs at all at work anymore.