Warewoolf: A minimalist novel-writing system/rich text editor | Hacker News Reader

Warewoolf: A minimalist novel-writing system/rich text editor

github.com

104 pointsrcarmo52 comments

This looks a lot like FocusWriter which is much more lightweight and doesn't depend on electron, so it is only about 6 MB instead of 60 MB.

https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/

Focuwriter is great. Especially if you just want to write on a blank canvas without distractions. Great for long form, write from the head. My next favourite is Marktext, which I use more for manuals and such in non fullscreen mode. Obsidian for notes and lots of referential info. Qownnotes for snippets related to computing. Logseq for work related notes. If I would still have a Mac, add NValt based on notational velocity.

Required: write a novel

Regular person: opens Word

Hacker: hmmm, first thing I need to do is build a suitable plain text editor

A couple of years ago I ran into a old colleague at the pub who mentioned he’d quit for a while to work on a game idea. I made a joke asking if he was now making a game engine and turned out he was first instead working on a programming language to code the game in and showed me some examples of it…

That's essentially what Knuth did before he started writing The Art of Computer Programming -- build a publishing software, TeX.

Just for the record: Knuth had already published the first three volumes of TAOCP in 1968, 1969, 1973 respectively, and had then brought out the second edition of Vol 1 in 1973, and had already won a Turing award for them in 1974 — it was only in 1977 for the second edition of Volume 2 when the publishers' printing technology had become worse (from hot-metal typesetting to phototypesetting) that he decided to take up the problem, excited at having recently learned of digital typesetters.

That might have been the right call in ‘78. The first word processor ever only went on sale two years prior.

Publishing software capable of more than Word, not a plain text editor capable of less, the opposite ends of the spectrum

>Hacker: hmmm, first thing I need to do is build a suitable plain text editor

I think that's why there is a new one of these every week or so on HN.

a few years ago when i was learning to code, i did this as a form of procrastination instead of writing: https://github.com/smcalilly/highlighter-rails

> Hacker: hmmm, first thing I need to do is build a suitable plain text editor

Yes, sometimes, we are missing features, sometimes wanted products are not available (see Android), sometimes available products are bad...

It's normal (for us). Very reasonable, consequential.

Edit: oh, coincidences. Appeared today: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Sep/15/speed-matters/

> Last year I spent something like 100 hours writing a text editor

...Which reveals a topic of two mindsets. This submission is about a NodeJS + Electron Forge product; I wrote my Word Processor for Android in Java, and I want to re-write it in C... And the reason is, further requirements for quality.

So, the near future opens towards an increase of products: a question will be, whether we will get many more resources with large differences in quality, or more resources of good quality.

vim-pencil and goyo are great options for (n)vim users.

https://github.com/preservim/vim-pencil

https://github.com/junegunn/goyo.vim

I personally found Goyo very buggy, bordering on unusable, last I tried it.

Vim Pencil is however great. An alternative, if you want more control over how things look, is to customize linebreak, breakindent, breakindentopt, etc. yourself per filetype (by setting them in files like e.g. ~/.vim/after/ftplugin/markdown.vim).

Every decent text editor ought to have a, "distraction free mode." And in many cases they do. Goyo fills that niche for vim.

People building software for themselves. I like it, and see even more of it in the future with AI.

You might like Maggie Appleton's conference talk about this - "Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40633029

thanks for sharing this. absolutely on point !

It's like looking at Scrivener's baby pictures.

Funny, I’m working on much the same thing, but many times more complicated. It’s not really ready for public consumption yet though.

This looks like a nice and simple method of writing while still retaining chapters.

> minimalist

> Built In Wi-Fi Manager

But to be honest as I move from my lonely writer's garret to Starbucks for character ideas, being able to wrangle the free Wi-fi is important. It is kind of cool that you can be self sufficient inside the editor, so I'll give partial points for minimalist.

But I agree, not really the thing you expect to see in the top 10 list of "features". Now if I could read my mail from inside the editor .... /s

Does /s apply to the entire comment? A WiFi manager for a text editor is satirical overkill.

Just the last sentence. I can see the WiFi manager, you never need to leave the writing app to connect to the nearest wifi.

Another minimalism obsessed project talking of 'cluttering' up the screen. Because we do all our writing on a smartphone where screen real estate is at a premium. And the supreme irony of using bloatware max Electron to deliver this supposedly 'simple' experience.

Reminds me of WriteRoom for MacOS[0] and its Windows-friendly clone JDarkRoom[1]

[0]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/writeroom/id417967324?mt=12

[1]: http://www.codealchemists.com/jdarkroom/

I am not a writer/novelist by any means, so please forgive my ignorance. Does the act of creative writing tend to lead to mental drift? So much so that minor distractions are so detrimental to the process?

I’ve always wondered if the hollywood stereotype of the reclusive writer typing away on a low tech typewriter is based in reality.

Not a professional, n=1, but I've successfully NaNoWriMo'd a few times and do regular amounts of creative writing for both D&D campaigns and for fun.

Absolutely freaking yes. Lots of mental drift. Swapping over to a new window on my MacBook happens enough that I have an app for shutting down that ability while working on writing. Ditto having a specialized app (Ulysses, then Obsidian) for writing with minimal buttons.

I can do without, but having the ability to close and lock those doors increases my writing speed by a decent chunk. As an engineer, if I can make myself more productive and writing more enjoyable with better tools, I'd rather do that.

That said, I absolutely have a friend who does his writing in Microsoft Word. He's already a bit of an odd duck, though, and is not an engineer.

It does for me, to the point where I made myself a tool to write without any ability to edit: just a stream of text I use for generating ideas in a stream of consciousness fashion. You can check it out for here: https://write.sonnet.io (It’s private and it works offline too)

Wonderful. Makes me want to write a book just so I can use it :D

Thanks, I know a few writers who use it in fact! In a couple of hours I have a Say Hi call (https://sonnet.io/posts/hi) with one who messaged me to say that they used it to get out of writer’s block. :)

I think I'm a bit too attached to it (emotionally, if that makes any sense) so I procrastinate on sharing testimonials/different ways in which people use it.

Neal Stephenson who is quite handy with computers and programming, famously uses pen and paper. Only late in the process does he convert the manuscript to digital. I think he might be using Emacs for that. I think in his case, a big part might be to remove the temptation of procrastination and getting sucked into browsing the internet, tinkering with software, etc.

I think the Hollywood cliche is simply based on the fact that type writers were all there was until about 40-50 years ago. And of course not many writers would have immediately adopted word processors when they came into fashion in the eighties and nineties. I remember an elderly math professor in university who still handed in hand written papers to the department secretary. Apparently she was quite handy with latex. That was in the early 2000s.

But there is some truth to the notion that reaching flow state is hard work.

There's some amusing notes on flow state in Stephenson's REAMDE where he has a character by the nick name of Skeletor who is an extremely prolific fantasy writer. This character is a bit of a jerk because he lets his guests wait until he comes out of flow state, which he conveniently gets into just before they arrive. The reason for his nick name is that he discovered thread mills and transformed from being mortally obese to having a carefully monitored ridiculously low fat percentage. Basically reaching flow state for him means he writes while running at full speed on a thread mill using a keyboard and screen setup that is floating in front of him on some sort of high tech contraption with fans cooling him.

s/thread mills/tread mills/g

I do a lot of writing. The best recipe for me when I really need to focus is to not use my macbook at all, but a dedicated laptop with no wifi or anything. (Bought a cheap lenovo X1 second hand for this purpose). Pen and paper is also wonderful.

Not for me. I've authored a few books, and have another one underway. Once I get going on my writing I can easily do a few hours without a break. Anecdotally, I seem to enjoy the process of writing much more than the average, so maybe that's the difference.

It's not my place to tell others how to manage their mental state to get stuff done. I have enough issues of my own to understand that we all face challenges. But distraction free is certainly not a universal requirement. I wrote most of my PhD dissertation in a the University library cafe, and I get a lot done on trains and planes. A bit of distraction actually works better for me.

Another n=1, but it depends. Outside interruptions when I'm on a tear are horrible. I don't often distract myself with a full-featured computer. In fact I often spin off into "research" or fiddling with fonts as a way to let my background brain do its work. I do a fair amount of editing on my phone (!) when on transit or generally goofing off.

What does the parse “on a tear” mean I’ve never heard it before

From "tearing paper", a continuous ripping action, giving rise to the english idiom "he went on a tear" .. as in "started partying and didn't stop" or "started coding and didn't stop".

It's quite interesting looking in to it. The verb "tear" has had a meaning of vigorous haste/rushing since the 16th century so the "on a tear" idiom from the 19th century likely comes from the notion of haste rather than pulling apart material.

I believe "on a tear" was mostly used to communicate a sudden violent action rather than continuity e.g. "stock goes on a tear" not because of a steady continuous rise but because it undergoes a sudden violent change of state from flat-lining to vertical. You might be a "tearabout" or a "tearaway" if impetuous, reckless or hard to control.

I can imagine idioms like "tearing up the track" are pleasing in two meanings of the word e.g. that a horse might "tear down the track" in both haste but also in how torn up the track is from their hooves. Same with a speeding car in the days of dirt roads.

However, in modern use, especially about "productive" behaviours, I think it has lost some of the violence and gained more of the continuity sense supported by the pleasing visual imagery of e.g. scissors gliding through wrapping paper.

You're correct.

As a native English speaker I was aware of the older meaning, however as someone that often "quickly explains english" to ESL folk and|or non-Commonwealth English backgrounds I went with "tearing paper" as a starting point as it felt more likely to be familiar.

This is consistent with your last paragraph re: modern usage.

I've got a much thumbed multi volume OED edition on my shelves .. it's boggling how many words have half page or more entries with multiple meanings and historical backstory.

Yeah, I look up etymology because I love how there are millennia of human culture condensed in a word as it migrates and evolves across classes, cultures and languages. Will it be Norse, Germanic, Latin or maybe Dravidic? Will it have been loaned from x to y to z and then back to x with new meanings?

I had hoped it might have come from reading rapidly in the days of uncut pages where you have to eagerly tear each new page to read it. But no, lol.

I've written five or six novels. Unpublished .

I write on paper first. Then I type on Apple Pages on my iPad using an external keyboard. Then I edit using the Pencil annotating the pdf with double line spacing. Then edit again on ipad.

I recently discovered obsidian, which I plan to use for my next novel

According to Jan Guillou, one of the best selling authors in Sweden - yes. He still types on an old-fashioned typewriter. Granted he is about 80 and grew up with them, but I can see that the constraints you have to live with are just to accept, and that can give focus.

I believe GRRM uses WordStar, which is getting pretty close to "low tech typewriter".

The question was about writers, though.

I've messed around with Bibisco, and that's a way more advanced writing tool. I think the purpose of this is simply "I want to write", vs being worried about structure and development at a higher-level detail.

see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41542788

Watch the film Barton Fink.

Seeing how minimalistic and bare this editor is, it could’ve been named BareWoolf.

That would be a fork without wifi manager. ;)

I use Obsidian for this

Reminds me ommwriter.

I for one prefer Scrivener.

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