WriteRoom comes to iPhone, but what's the point?
One of my favorite productivity apps for the Mac is WriteRoom by Hog Bay Software. It's little more than a text editor: its genius is its incredible, program-defining full screen feature. My left thumb presses Command, my right pink slaps Enter, and suddenly the alabaster and lanugo of Apple's OS is stripped away, revealing the pulsing circulatory system upon which all computer interfaces are based: the word processing progenitor, the pure function of the terminal, green text glowing on black. It's easy enough to switch out of, just Command+Enter again, but once I've stripped everything else away, I find myself lost in a sort of pure dimension of prose, where inch high letters spell out my thoughts, their ebb and flow undisturbed by the burbling of instant messages or the emergence of a sudden tweet inviting me to wile away some time watching a movie about a kitten-hugging gorilla.
Now, Hog Bay Software have released a version of WriteRoom for the iPhone, but as much as I immediately want to hand them my fin, I really don't understand the point. The iPhone doesn't really have multi-tasking. It doesn't have lots of distracting little windows popping up all over the screen. WriteRoom on the Mac's most brilliant feature is the way it can absorb, but on the iPhone, every app must absorb your attention for as long as its up.
Which makes WriteRoom for the iPhone a bit of a "huh": it's a pretty text editor with some nice features (you can create documents on your computer in Safari and they are automatically synced to your iPhone) but it's just a text editor, where as WriteRoom on the Mac simply sucks you in, redolent of some kind of feeling of being alone with your words, like the midnight absorption of an 80s novelist cast in cathode rays as he hunches over his IBM word processor deep into the night.
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Ahhh, this brings me back to the days when I'd spend hours trying to format school papers in VI for printing.
Forgive my iPhone ignorance, but what happens if a call comes in while you're pounding out text in this WriteRoom? Does it ignore the phone call?
It lets you type text with the landscape keyboard. Apple's Notes app doesn't. That's justification enough.
I'm also an avid user of WriteRoom in OS X, and your point is well taken. Going a step further, just how many apps would there be in the App Store if they were all put through your logical scrutiny?
Even if it doesn't have much practical use, it's existence is easily justifiable over about 10,000 other iPhone Apps.
Or, for those of us that don't want to spend $25 on a text editor whose only feature is the ability to go full screen, you could download Megazoomer, which is FOSS, and get the same functionality in any application.
The problem I face with WriteRoom (on the desktop) is that it only fills up one monitor--the other is left full of distractions.
Hi this is Jesse Grosjean from Hog Bay Software.
You've got a good point. The iPhone isn't an idea place to write. And so porting a writing app to it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. (not sure I so much agree about distractions though, most similar apps on the iPhone are adding more features/distractions by the week. Copy paste/rich text editing/simulated paper backgrounds, etc)
Anyway here's my logic:
1. The truth is that WriteRoom.iPhone started out as TaskPaper.iPhone. But I soon realized that WriteRoom.iPhone would be much faster to launch, it that would give me a chance to task the document managment logic and document sharing logic, all of which will also be used on TaskPaper.
2. Long term I want WriteRoom users to have the option to saver their documents into "the cloud". Once that's in place I think it will be useful to be able to read and edit then via the WriteRoom.iPhone client. I don't think writing an entire piece on the iPhone is something that most people will do, but I do think it will be a useful place to read things and make minor edits.
3. Apples default notes app was some low hanging fruit that in the end pushed me to release WriteRoom.iPhone. It seemed like lots of people were using Notes, but also lots of them were not happy with the app. I realized that WriteRoom.iPhone could at least make some subset of those people happy so that's what made me go forward with the project in the end.
As it stands WriteRoom.iPhone is a bit of a line extension. It uses the same brand, but isn't really used for the same purpose.
WriteRoom.iPhone isn't really for distraction free writing, at this point it's really just a (for some people) better replacement for the default notes app. But over time (not a promise, but a hope) I expect to add features that will integration WriteRoom.iPhone with the desktop app and make for a better overall writing/reading/editing solution.
I hope a bit of context will help explain the logic for WriteRoom.iPhone.
"revealing the pulsing circulatory system upon which all computer interfaces are based: the word processing progenitor, the pure function of the terminal, green text glowing on black"
Wahaha! If you only knew the complexity of the code making up Apple's AppKit text layout engine running that interface! It supports Unicode, bidirectional text layout, ligatures, kerning and more — the fact that it's green-on-black and covers the other windows hardly makes it a VT-100.
Besides, full-screen is such a minor detail. You can easily get this in any text editor by hiding the Dock (Cmd-Opt-D) and zooming the window. I'd be more interested in the actual text editing features.
Ah, wonderful app. It reminds me of my olden-golden days of writing on an old Apple IIe, the tiny whirring floppy drive scritch-scratching a satisfying chorus as bytes were written magnetically. Back then I actually wrote stuff without a paycheck dangling before me. I will give WriteRoom a try. Perhaps it will rejuvenate the wide-eyed 13-year-old within me that used to pound out page after page without fear, just for the pure joy and love of writing.
Or maybe a second glass of wine will do the trick . . . Better give both a try, just to be certain.
Any program like WriteRoom for windows?
(That one of the things I find about the whole Win/OSX thing is when a program comes out for mac only nobody complains, yet when it comes out only for windows people talk like heads will roll)
[Disclaimer: I use both systems equally, Mac for work/photoshop; Win for personal, modding, and music editing]
There are a few alternatives to WriteRoom that are F/OSS. I use JWriteroom and the web app Writer in a site specific browser instance. You could also use a nice, basic text editor like Joe's Own Editor in pico-mode in a full screen editor. I've done that before I found JWriteroom.
I cannot recommend the mac writing app Scrivener enough. http://literatureandlatte.com
This program is the single best program made for writers on any platform in history. Period. In fact, I would go so far as to call it the greatest program for Mac ever made.
It has the full-screen mode that you love so well. And so, so much more. The organizational tools alone...
A really nice text editor is great for blogging or other short form writing. But if you're going to write a book, having all the bells and whistles makes SUCH a difference. All your research right on hand. It has every feature I ever wanted out of a piece of writing software and nothing extraneous or frivolous.
Also, the tutorial is second-to-none. Written by one passionate writer, being his very first coding project, it is rock solid and so comprehensive as to astound the mind.
Seriously, if you're a mac-using writer of any kind and you're not familiar with it, you owe it to yourself. THE BEST.