Ommwriter, a pleasant writeroom | Hacker News Reader

Ommwriter, a pleasant writeroom

ommwriter.com

41 pointsjrnkntl19 comments

I created WriteRoom, take my comments with a grain of salt if you wish. Maybe it's just sour grapes...

Ommwriter is fun and cool. But "pleasant" where WriteRoom is not? Maybe I just don't get it, but for me having just my text on screen without distraction is a good thing. WriteRoom could certainly be better, but the idea of improving the writing/thinking process by adding a new age soundtrack that responds to your keystrokes seems odd and a little wrong to me.

Ommwriter is fun software and has it's place for brainstorming, but I would change the title to "Ommwriter, a better demo then writeroom".

I'm only a (very happy) user of WriteRoom, but my comments should also be taken with a grain of salt.

I find WriteRoom to be extremely pleasant, in a way that OmniWriter isn't. The experience of OmniWriter is nice, certainly, but it's not any more or less pleasant that WriteRoom. The pleasantness of WriteRoom comes from the obliteration of distractions. I can add nice imagery (which I don't) and a great soundtrack (which I do) on my own.

(To be clear, I don't think anything negative about Omniwriter, but it's not my kind of pleasant.)

I think the gap here is that while WR (and apps of its ilk) may not be particularly 'pleasant' in the sense of sweet-smelling, pretty, etc., pleasantness is not a virtue one really looks for in a tool for work. It's novel but not needful, and I think the fact that it's kind of orthogonal to the many problems of writing means it will have little impact in the long run.

I didn't want to 'hurt' WriteRoom at all with this title, but after all pleasantness is paradigmatic. I am a fanatic user of WriteRoom and after writing a day in Ommwriter I see charms in both apps. The aesthetically pleasing background and interface gave me the feeling of a pleasant alternative to WriteRoom.

Like I said, I'm too close to WriteRoom project myself. I read it as better then crusty old WriteRoom, but see I'm mistaken. I agree Ommwriter is good. I think I better stop reading forums and get back to work, thanks for your note.

Two similar apps that I used before for Windows are Dark Room and Q10:

http://they.misled.us/dark-room http://www.baara.com/q10

Dark Room is a clone of writeroom, while Q10 has a few more features while still keeping minimalism.

Anyone has experience with Ommwriter? It looks like the sound effects would get old quick.

Erm, couldn't you just set your normal editor to fullscreen, play some bargain bin "sounds of the rain forest" CD?

(I would so use the geek version of this, which simulates slow-changing CRT phosphor a la xscreensaver and gives me the solid Selectric/Model M thunk even when I'm not actually using my IBM keyboard)

Mac only? Why not make it a web app? It certainly doesn't need any OS functions (beyond saving files). Also, I think if I really want to focus on writing, I want it to autosave and not bother me with formatting and such. Great idea, but would be usable with some changes.

I agree that it would be better to make this a mutli-OS app or an AIR app for that matter. It actually -does- autosave and if you don't care about the formatting, don't hover over the right side :)

Lovely. Still can't use it on any machine I own though. Also, it didn't help that the video does not mention autosave, but it almost exclusively focused on the right side hover menu. I love the concept though. Might build something like it. My solution to this is using a separate screen for things that need concentration, and a smaller screen for all the potentially distracting things like email and browsing.

I read on their blog that they are working on a Windows port at least.

Also, what if you want to write without an internet connection? The idea that you have to be connected to the web just to write words seems strange to me.

Maybe modify the CSS / look of etherpad so you get a collaborative writeroom?

Somewhere out there someone posted a CSS set for Google Docs (the word processing portion) that achieves a similar effect. Just saw it mentioned; never tried it.

In Google Docs, under menu Edit or some such, there is the option to enter custom CSS.

Great to see this app mentioned here. I use it for writing articles for my blog and it works very well. Previously I've been using writeroom, but I've found this app to work better for me (I can concentrate better).

Rands did a piece on this recently: http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2009/12/24/a_creative_...

If you're looking for a dead-simple internet typewriter, check out http://internettypewriter.com/

Doesn't work with firefox 3.5? It's recommending Safari to me, which I'd rather not use. Think 3.6 beta would work?

I think it uses some built-in datastore that only safari has. I don't know.

http://pyroom.org/ or, vim fullscreen?

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