Just came across this free distraction-free text editor (beta, Windows). Haven't had a chance to try it yet but looks interesting:

http://wri.tt/

Does look nice. But download size: 43+ MB! Wow. They must have packed Stephen King in there.

Just fired it up. Right out of the gate, it uses 356 MB (!!) of memory. That's WAY more than anything else on my Windows 7 system, including Word and InDesign and Thunderbird put together, with room left over. I hope the developer uses the beta period to solve the deal-breaker memory issue. I wonder what an ostensibly simple program has under the hood to use that much memory.

Here is a short review on Write!

http://www.ghacks.net/2014/10/28/write-is-a-distraction-free-rich-text-editor-for-windows/

bobmclain wrote:

Just fired it up. Right out of the gate, it uses 356 MB (!!) of memory.

Just got around to trying it out. It took 62 MB RAM to run it with a 9000-word text file, in contrast to 108 MB in WriteMonkey and 84 MB in SmartDown, so that doesn't look too bad.

I really like what they call the "Navigation bar", which gives you a bird's eye view of the document in the form of a ribbon on the right and allows you to jump around in the document (a bit similar to WriteMonkey's "Map Jump" feature). I've seen it in more sophisticated text editors (can't remember if it was Vim, Emacs, or Sublime Text), but I wish more writing software would have them.

But I'm not crazy about its WYSIWYG rendering. I'd prefer if it worked like SmartDown, so you get to see both the markdown and the formatting. Also, it's lacking fine enough controls to adjust the text area width manually.

It's still in beta. It didn't warn me before closing an unsaved file, so one needs to be careful with it.

Dr Andus wrote:

It's still in beta. It didn't warn me before closing an unsaved file, so
one needs to be careful with it.

Actually it did save my file. I just didn't realise that closing the app minimised it to the system tray.

Interesting. While I haven't downloaded it yet, what I really like about this - as with Smartdown - is the built-in text folding - which is the piece that I find most useful.

On Dr. Andus's recommendation, I looked at WriteMonkey, and I liked its "jump" navigation (much like the OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice navigator, without the section manipulation guides). But Smartdown's text folding was pretty cool, as was the preview, neither of which were part of WriteMonkey.

I gather than Write! is following a similar model to Smardown? - give it away to get a little buzz, then tell you what it costs. So depending on the price, this might be a very fine writing environment. But I can't quite tell what the file format is, either. Plain text, RTF, other?

jaslar wrote:

what I really like about
this is the built-in text folding

Oh, I missed that somehow. Thanks for pointing that out. Yes, there is a lot to like about Write!

But Smartdown's text folding
was pretty cool, as was the preview, neither of which were part of
WriteMonkey.

I do like SmartDown's text folding as well, effectively it turns it into a single-pane outliner.

But WriteMonkey does have a preview window plugin now. It even allows you to view the text in a variety of styles. You can have it open beside the text editor or in another monitor. See:

http://writemonkey.com/preview.php

But I can't
quite tell what the file format is, either. Plain text, RTF, other?

I don't have my Win machine on so can't check right now, but I recall seeing the option to save or export as .TXT or .RTF, I can't remember the third format (HTML or PDF?). I just closed down the app and it saved my file without me choosing a format, I presume it was in their native format.

Dr Andus wrote:

jaslar wrote:
>But I can't
>quite tell what the file format is, either. Plain text, RTF, other?

I don't have my Win machine on so can't check right now, but I recall
seeing the option to save or export as .TXT or .RTF, I can't remember
the third format (HTML or PDF?). I just closed down the app and it saved
my file without me choosing a format, I presume it was in their native
format.

Files are saved in its native .draft or .wtt format (depending on whether you choose "save" or "save as"), and then the export options are PDF, ODF (.ODT), .TXT, and .mdown for Textile, Markdown, and Wiki.