Forum Posts Feed
Minimalist champions
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 4, 2013 at 09:47 PM
On the PC I remain addicted to NoteTab for much of my writing. It’s a simple plain text editor with lots of tools you can use or ignore. It has a tabbed MDI so you can switch from document to document. Small footprint. I’ve been using it for probably 12 years now.
I can save my plain text files to Dropbox, then import them quickly and easily into a new favorite on my MacBook, Ulysses III. Maybe Ulysses III isn’t exactly a minimalist app—but compared with Scrivener it is. I can also write in the companion app for iOS, Daedalus, and sync back and forth. So I’ve now got a nice synergy among these three apps and devices, which is perfect for a recent project I’ve been working on.
I guess Brainstorm is a minimalist app, and I still find it useful, even though it hasn’t been developed in years.
I would like FoldingText if it were further developed to improve some things about it. I like the concept, but it still needs work to be useful to me, and I am not sure Jesse Grosjean has the attention span to keep his focus on it.
Steve Z.
Posted by Hugh
Aug 5, 2013 at 09:42 AM
Another fan of Ulysses III and Daedalus here.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Aug 5, 2013 at 10:00 AM
Those who enjoy minimalist apps and are seriously irritated by Catch’s cop-out might be amused by quip.com
It sells itself as a word processor for mobile apps, but actually it’s a collaboration-optimised notes tool - quite powerful, with an iOS app and an Android app in beta.
I’ve run across a couple of funny issues, but nothing serious. For collaboration purposes it’s actually very powerful; very nice markup, very easy to share.
The interface is very minimalist but quite clever, and makes full use of the attractive iOS slide-in/slide-out thing.
Another iOS app I’ve just discovered, by the nice German developer who created TiddlyNotes for iOS, is ‘As Noted’, which is currently free and extremely good (syncs with Dropbox, imports Evernote notes, imports TiddlyWiki files…). Also pleasantly minimalist, but with hidden power. Am still investigating, but will report back with findings.
Posted by Dr Andus
Aug 5, 2013 at 11:13 AM
I should have included Fences, specifically the “double-click anywhere on the desktop to hide all icons,” which I use all the time. Obviously it’s only minimalist if you don’t have some garish wallpaper :)
Posted by jaslar
Aug 5, 2013 at 04:17 PM
Lately, minimalist is the way I roll.
- Gedit. Text, word wrap, spell check, word count. Just about enough. Linux, Gnome text editor. I wrote newspaper columns in it for years. If it folded text, I’d probably still use it.
- tkoutline. A one page, cross-platform outliner/wiki. Don’t use it as much as I used to.
- Notecase. Outliner on the left, Gedit-like text editor on the right. My workhorse on Linux and Windows.
- Plaintext. Two pane, plain text editor for the iPad. From Hog Bay. Pretty much handles long form writing, easily transferrable to anything. Syncs to Dropbox.
- Google tasks. It’s just a list of to dos, and you can attach short notes and a date. Integrates with Google calendar, apps for any platform.
- Workflowy. Quick, elegant and powerful.
- Simplemind. Mind mapper for the iPad, Mac, Android, and Windows.
- Xmind. Linux and Windows.
- Evernote.
What all of these have in common is that the user interface just gets out of the way. It’s perfectly obvious what to do with it, the functions take just a few minutes to grasp, and then it’s just you trying to get something done.
I’m noticing a tendency here lately to go with cross-platform apps that make their data available through Dropbox. When I shift platforms, I just want to keep working on the document I may have started elsewhere.