TypWrittr – Inspirational, Minimalistic, Distraction-free Text editor | Hacker News Reader

TypWrittr – Inspirational, Minimalistic, Distraction-free Text editor

typwrittr.com

13 pointsO_W_Grant47 comments

Distraction-free and minimalistic, with background photography? I mean... not even the text area has a solid background, as it blends with the photography! It's noisy as hell, quite the opposite of what you are selling.

I'm sorry for the criticism, and I do support the initiative, but please try to align your product with your conceptual premises. Validate it, empirically. You claim it to be distraction-free? Try to get some metrics and subjective reviews, test with users. Also, you can stand on the shoulder of giants. There's literature about attention, even about typing.

backgrounds do not distract, at least me, but they do help to dive deeply into story, you just have to find one. And in case you really want to have a blank white paper with black ink - just set it via preferences.

I'm sorry, but the background (behind the text) is essentially noise. It will impact your reading which will, of course, impact typing.

And about the "at least me" argument... I'm all for personal inspiration and taste in personal projects, and applaud you for following what you like. But you're trying to provide distraction-free writing for others, so you have to consider their characteristics, you have to consider what science knows about attention, reading and typing - not your taste.

I've noticed that you replied elsewhere that your typographic choice was also motivated by personal taste. Both noisy backgrounds and typography will deeply impact how your product performs in providing distraction-free writing. I think you can balance your personal touch with improvements in the fundamental dimensions of your product.

that is why there's a variety of customization options present - feel free to customize it as you wish. Also, there are two "blank" inspirational presets already build in, much inspired by blank black old terminals.

Why not stick to your tagline and make it blank/minimal by default and allow people to add silly backgrounds like trees if they really want it?

because there are tonns of 'minimal/blank' projects exists already, why create another one? )

Your own title says it's yet another "minimalistic" one. Maybe you should answer your own question then.

if there's one word in common, it doesn't mean projects will all be the same.

To be honest I never really understood this need for minimalistic text editors. I can understand if all you know is MS Word, but when I need distraction free editing, I just launch Vim, open a file in my dropbox, and switch to full screen, done. No need for 10,000 projects like this (FocusWriter, WriteMonkey, WriteRoom, and whatever else).

(and as everyone else already mentioned, don't start by asking people their email).

I second this. Plus, I ssh into my own server, tmux att and launch vim there. It is available wherever with Internet connection for me.

well, not every one knows vim ) besides, you cannot work on vim via internet )

> you cannot work on vim via internet

Can you please expand on this? I'd say you're wrong, but I'm not quite sure I really understand what you mean.

What I mean is that vim is a program that runs on your pc. Of course you can ssh to it from anywhere if you wish, but it seems to be over complicated just to write a text from any point of the world.

What makes writing text locally any better?

i do not know, for me having a tool available from almost any device via internet is better than having one only at my pc.

There seem to be plenty of (vim-ish)-in-the-browser solutions:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3109847/is-there-any-onli...

That's from 4 years ago, and the latest answer from over a year ago; I wouldn't be surprised if the situation were better now.

Do you often find yourself writing on somebody else's machine?

I don't know about you but I find that I do 99.99% of my work on one of my machines (where I have control over what's installed and what is not).

So the issue for me is not if I can access the editor from remote, but if I can access/sync the data. (which dropbox solves for me).

I found my favourite writing environment (IWE?) to be Vim + Goyo [1] + line-wrapping with j/k keys mapped to gj/gk [2]

[1]: https://github.com/junegunn/goyo.vim

[2]: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Move_cursor_by_display_lines_when_...

+1 for Goyo.

As a side note, I don't like line-wrapping too much, I prefer auto formatting (:set tw=80 and then type away, vim will handle the line breaks)

Oh sweets, needs sign-in.. ctrl-w

Agreed - nothing more annoying than a product that wants my credentials before I can even try it out, see a screenshot, or anything else that might make me want it. le sigh

Not only that but it also requires email activation. At least some sites that ask to register allow you to login without activating for a little bit.

noted, will surely add some screenshots!

add an guest account, something we can experiment with? :)

it's sweet for chromebooks...

added a gallery with screenshots =)

A fresh spin in online book writing. typWrittr is designed to be as minimalistic as possible, but features high customizability, cloud storage and "Inspirational presets". Feels like you've been teleported into story with your good old typewriter.

You should try to add an open demo, and only request an email sign up when the user try to save or export the file (or a prompt after X minutes of use). I am not sure people are ready to sign up just to try a text editor.

A couple of questions:

1. Was it a conscious choice to only offer up monospaced fonts?

2. I can't find a way to close the "cabinet" after I open it to access my list of notes: is this a bug, or am I missing something obvious?

3. Any change you have the source code up somewhere?

Thanks btw, looks nice!

1. yes, monospaced fonts reminds me ones on typewriters. 2. just press the same button that opens cabinet. 3. in public repo - no (

Are the mono font's hard-coded? i.e. font-family: "custom font" vs. font-family: "monospace"

they are preloaded on demand. Cannot reply more, but I get your point. No, fonts are used only that are defined by me, but I your idea of using system-defined monospace font sound as 'feature to add' to me =)

right, but does it use the default monospace fonts set by the user or do you set your own?

For example, my default monospace font is Source Code Pro - will it use my font or your own (if any)

Interesting. I would actually consider something like this for my current writing project, provided there is:

1. Some means of account recovery. I didn't notice a forgot password link.

2. Way to bulk import and export files. I will have my own primary storage.

3. Save the font, color, background and border settings as my own presets

4. Change the background without changing (3). A graphical writing prompt for each different scene is useful, but having to change the rest of the formatting each time is an inconvenience.

5. Make it HTTPS

I was thinking aren't all text-editors are minimalistic and distraction free. I use KWrite and Emacs. Emacs is awesome for text-editing. There is nothing in my Emacs expect an empty space to write.

They sure are in some way or another. But 'distraction-free', as a term for editor (and, as well, editor for writers) means ability to go full-screen, so nothing can distract you (like news in another tab). But having a blank paper wasn't what I wanted, I wanted distraction-free editor with nice picture on background, like space nebula when I write scifi novel about space travelling and galactic battles. TypWrittr is a synergy of it.

Is it intentional that "cloud" is omitted from the submission title? Because I bet many would've never clicked on it otherwise. I mean, a text editor that you need to sign in into? How crazy. I'll stick with Emacs.

It's a limit of 80 chars per title (

Ulysses. Why anything else?

It is:

- minimalist

- has cloud storage

- configurable

- pleasant to work in

Boom!

ulysses is not free and it's an app, and it seems it's an app for mac only.

It's true, that it's Mac only.

But, I came to realise, that free isn't without cost. So, I'd invest in a good tool, if I need to work with it a lot.

strlen("Minimalistic") > strlen("Minimalist")

Also, http://www.typwrittr.com/screenshots/scr2.png "And I am exited to share it with you"

minimalistic sounds better a bit.. to me. Screenshots are fixed now, thanks!

Great product. Any chance to implement saving files to dropbox?

thanks, Paulo, I will consider it as a feature request, and I will research if it is possible.

@O_W_Grant : where are these backgrounds coming from ?

exited to share?? excited to share!

fixed that, thank you!

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