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New Ulysses features coming
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Posted by satis
Jan 13, 2019 at 08:57 PM
There are big differences if you look a little more carefully.
Ulysses keeps everything organized with groups and filters, Bear has elected to go with tags.
Ulysses gives you freedom to completely customized your choice of font, size, font colors, background etc. Headings/images/code_blocks, whatever - you can customize it to how you want it to look. And they have a site where users can share and download styles (and then customize them on their own machines). Any font you choose in Ulysses/Mac will sync over to the iOS app.
https://styles.ulyssesapp.com/
Bear limits you to only 5-6 select fonts, one built-in for people with dyslexia. Pro version unlocks a dozen dev-made themes, no other customization.
Bear is more of a notes app that has some Evernote-like features. Ulysses is more of a writing app, with text that can go right to a WordPress post to an eBook to a Word document, with file groups/hierarchies, version control, two types of comments (inline but won’t get printed, or in sidebar), has typewriter- and focus-modes, writing goals, and more.
Posted by Jeffery Smith
Jan 13, 2019 at 10:37 PM
Thanks for the quick comparison. It sounds like Ulysses is more aligned with my workflow. I don’t like the “one long document” paradigm. Neil Larson of MaxThink used to compare that to a single, long roll of toilet tissue. Is either of these a continuous document (to make syncing easier), or can the files be saved individually?
Posted by satis
Jan 13, 2019 at 11:22 PM
Each Ulysses ‘sheet’ is a separate Markdown document, but you can view sheets in a Group (folder) as one document if you like with the ‘glue’ command (which shows one long document with horizontal dividers indicating the end/beginning of a sheet). You can also easily split one sheet into more than one if it’s too long. Writers often make chapters or sections within chapter their own sheets, and that lets them easily rearrange them.
Good overview here:
https://zapier.com/blog/ulysses-markdown-writing-guide/
And here’s thriller writer Matt Gemmell (who write in Ulysses on his iPad Pro) discussing how he uses the app:
https://ulysses.app/blog/2018/12/write-a-novel-with-ulysses-organization-and-the-writing-process/
Posted by Jeffery Smith
Jan 14, 2019 at 01:26 AM
Thanks much. I’ll give Ulysses another shot. I’m using the iPad much more these days, so it makes sense.
Posted by Hugh
Jan 14, 2019 at 09:47 AM
I have criticisms of both Bear and Ulysses.
I like Bear’s design. But I don’t like its substitution of tags for a traditional folder and files hierarchy. It’s fundamental for me that long-term I can file my notes away in a traditional file system (or in DevonThink), and, because the tags aren’t Finder tags, I can’t easily do that with Bear.
I also like Ulysses’ design and the ease with which one can slip from using it to write on a laptop or desktop to writing on an iPad and back. But I’m an unreconstructed plotter; I like to plan, and Ulysses currently has virtually no features for doing so (which is slightly odd, for a tool designed for writing long-form). At the very least, I’d like it to import OPML, so that I can plan a structure in, say, OmniOutliner and have it headlined in Ulysses sheet by sheet.