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Scrivener Windows Beta - makes we want alternatives
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Posted by Dr Andus
Mar 5, 2011 at 05:37 PM
GeorgeB wrote:
>Alexander,
>TextRoom is a good find. I’ve been playing with it this afternoon and it’s
>a keeper. Thank you. gB
Textroom does look nice, but it crashed a couple of times on Windows 7 when I tried to use the flowchart feature (the buttons for which also didn’t show, BTW), without saving the text. So that’s not sufficiently stable for my liking. I’m still looking forward to the full-screen feature of Scriveners Windows.
My latest find in my quest for minimalist writing interfaces is iA Writer on iPad: http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/writer-for-ipad/ You probably need a wireless keyboard to make full use of it, however, it’s the closest I could get to the experience of writing on an old style portable typewriter. There is nothing to distract you. The font is beautiful, and there is a nifty feature where you can make it focus on 3 lines only and grey out the rest of the text. It creates .txt files and allows you to back it up on Dropbox or email it out. No formatting or any other distractions. Just like a typewriter. Okay, the iPad screen (with an external keyboard) would only allow you to display one or two paragraphs at a time, however, it can also be an advantage, as it forces you to focus on the paragraphs you are actually writing.
Apparently they are working on an iA Writer for desktop as well, but unfortunately only for the Mac at the moment. I’d love to have this on Windows.
Posted by JohnK
Mar 12, 2011 at 02:22 PM
>Apparently they are working on an iA Writer for desktop as well, but
>unfortunately only for the Mac at the moment. I’d love to have this on Windows.
Have you tried Writemonkey? http://writemonkey.com/
Posted by Dr Andus
Mar 12, 2011 at 04:11 PM
JohnK wrote:
>Have you tried
>Writemonkey? http://writemonkey.com/
Yeah, Writemonkey is almost there. However, I wish I could block out the rest of the screen around the paper by making it black, like you can do in the full-screen mode in Scriveners. Scriveners is almost perfect in that regard, except I wish they would lose the scroll-bar, which kind of ruins the illusion that it’s like typing on paper.
Posted by JohnK
Mar 12, 2011 at 07:50 PM
Full-screen mode in Writemonkey does block out the whole screen. That was the developer’s main purpose in creating Writemonkey (it is more or less a clone of Writeroom - http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom)
Posted by Paulo Brabo
Mar 12, 2011 at 07:59 PM
Hi, I’m Paulo, Brazilian writer and illustrator, long time lurker. I just had to leave my two cents:
> Scriveners is almost perfect in that regard, except I wish they would
>lose the scroll-bar, which kind of ruins the illusion that it’s like typing on paper.
In the latest beta (020) of Scrivener the full screen scroll bar fades away after a couple of seconds.
I’m in no way associated with the product, so let me say I don’t think there’s a real alternative to Scrivener. Scrivener is openly a writing tool, not a formatting one. Writemonkey (another excellent tool) doesn’t offer any formatting either, and this is advertised (and should be understood) as a feature, not a bug. The whole concept is using Scrivener to write the bulk of the manuscript and do the formatting elsewhere, when it’s finished. This may not be ideal solution to those who are used to “build” their text around the formatting styles with which the final text will be presented—but to some of us the “just write in chunks, do the formatting when it’s finished” thing is definitely appealing.
That said, each new beta of Scrivener comes more polished. IMO anyone interested in writing should give it a try.
Cheers!
——-
Paulo Brabo
http://www.e- brabo.com
http://www.baciadasalmas.com