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Word Processors — One Writer's Further Retreat
ch-dickinson writes "In 2003, I posted an essay ('Word Processors: One Writer's Retreat') here about my writing experience — professional and personal — that led to a novel draft in vi(m), and I outlined reasons I chose a simple non-WYSIWYG text editor rather than a more full-featured word processor. A few novels later, in 2010 now, I decided to try a text editor that predates even vi: ed. I'd run across ed about 20 years ago, working at a software company and vaguely recalled navigation of a text file meant mentally mapping such commands as +3 and -2: ed didn't click with me then. But writing a novel draft is mule work, one sentence after another, straight ahead — no navigating the text file. The writer must get the story down and my goal is 1,000 words a day, every day, until I'm done. I have an hour to 90 minutes for this. So when I returned after two decades, I was impressed with how efficiently ed generates plain text files."
Read on for the author's brief account of why he looked a few decades back in the software universe to find the right tool for the job.
Documentation for ed is available on the Internet, but I found it a great help to take Richard Gauthier's USING THE UNIX SYSTEM (1981) with me when I reported for jury duty in Portland, Oregon. His 30-page discussion of "the editor" is thorough and gave me some sense of the power of this pioneer text editor (cut & pastes, for example).
As I said, what drives my mule-like early morning routine is word count. The text editor ed has no internal word count tool (through dropping back to the command line gives, of course, wc). What I had to do was quite simple: I converted byte-counts (which ed does with each write to the file) into word equivalents. So if my style of writing runs 5.6 characters per word, then a word goal of 1,000 words is simply 5,600 bytes. Every day, I set my target byte count and once there, I quit.
In less than three months, I finished a 72,000-word novel draft and give ed credit for not slowing me down. Based on my experience writing novels with plain text editors (vim, geany, and now ed), I understand how few computing resources are needed to take manuscript composition off a typewriter and put it on a personal computer. The advantages of the latter are several, including less retyping, easier revision, and portability among different systems. Whether going from typewriter to personal computer makes for better writing I'll leave to others for comment.
What doesn't make for better writing is confusing text on demand (that daily word count that grows to a manuscript) with desktop publishing. Desktop publishing makes so many word processors into distracting choice-laden software tools. Obviously, there is a place for a manuscript as PDF file compliant with appropriate Acrobat Distiller settings, but that ends, not begins, the process. I like to think I'm not putting the cart before the horse.
So why would I recommend ed for a wordsmith? I'd say it comes down to just enough computing resources to do the job. WYSIWYG word processors have a cost and intuitively I think there's cerebral bus contention between flow of words onto the screen and keeping a handle on where the mouse arrow is (among other things).
But then perhaps I've a "less is more" bias (I have a car with nonpower steering — better road feel; I ride a fixed single-speed bike — ditto). That feeling is the sum of things there (and things left out). When I ride my fixie bike, it seems to know why I ride. Similarly, when I invoke ed, the text editor, it seems to know why I write. An illusion, sure, but also a harmony that goes with being responsible for all of it and staying focussed (without any distracting help balloons!).
One of Charlie Dickinson's novels is available for download at cetus-editons.com.
Documentation for ed is available on the Internet, but I found it a great help to take Richard Gauthier's USING THE UNIX SYSTEM (1981) with me when I reported for jury duty in Portland, Oregon. His 30-page discussion of "the editor" is thorough and gave me some sense of the power of this pioneer text editor (cut & pastes, for example).
As I said, what drives my mule-like early morning routine is word count. The text editor ed has no internal word count tool (through dropping back to the command line gives, of course, wc). What I had to do was quite simple: I converted byte-counts (which ed does with each write to the file) into word equivalents. So if my style of writing runs 5.6 characters per word, then a word goal of 1,000 words is simply 5,600 bytes. Every day, I set my target byte count and once there, I quit.
In less than three months, I finished a 72,000-word novel draft and give ed credit for not slowing me down. Based on my experience writing novels with plain text editors (vim, geany, and now ed), I understand how few computing resources are needed to take manuscript composition off a typewriter and put it on a personal computer. The advantages of the latter are several, including less retyping, easier revision, and portability among different systems. Whether going from typewriter to personal computer makes for better writing I'll leave to others for comment.
What doesn't make for better writing is confusing text on demand (that daily word count that grows to a manuscript) with desktop publishing. Desktop publishing makes so many word processors into distracting choice-laden software tools. Obviously, there is a place for a manuscript as PDF file compliant with appropriate Acrobat Distiller settings, but that ends, not begins, the process. I like to think I'm not putting the cart before the horse.
So why would I recommend ed for a wordsmith? I'd say it comes down to just enough computing resources to do the job. WYSIWYG word processors have a cost and intuitively I think there's cerebral bus contention between flow of words onto the screen and keeping a handle on where the mouse arrow is (among other things).
But then perhaps I've a "less is more" bias (I have a car with nonpower steering — better road feel; I ride a fixed single-speed bike — ditto). That feeling is the sum of things there (and things left out). When I ride my fixie bike, it seems to know why I ride. Similarly, when I invoke ed, the text editor, it seems to know why I write. An illusion, sure, but also a harmony that goes with being responsible for all of it and staying focussed (without any distracting help balloons!).
One of Charlie Dickinson's novels is available for download at cetus-editons.com.
tl;dr
I guess the next step is writing a novel using a hexeditor?
I get using a simple editor to not get down in layout/font issues, but I don't get using ed over vim (or emacs or any other simple text editor). This story failed to sell me on the concept. Is the idea that because it's hard to navigate in ed, you're not tempted to rewrite during the first pass? Seems a bit weak, you should probably have the mental power to just not do that.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Even though I'm struggling to understand why you went this route (I'm leaning towards you're a hopeless romantic, or worse), let's put that aside for a moment and focus simply on your statement about the mouse cursor. I know of no text editing/authoring/publishing software in existence that requires use of the mouse. Not a single one. You could have easily not even connected a mouse to the computer and proceeded to write with any program out there. The fact that you chose one so old and out of normal use speaks more to it being old and out of normal use, and to your romanticizing or somehow aggrandizing that facet, than the fact that it doesn't have a mouse cursor in your way.
Look, I get it, you want to write without distractions. That's fine. All I'm saying is there is something else going on here behind the scenes...
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Sorry, but going to a more and more primitive editor? Maybe that works for this person. There are authors who like using old-time typewriters. There are authors who like writing things out by hand, then transcribing them. There's authors out there who voice things and have somebody else type them up.
We each have different ways of working. Some of us might come up with our best ideas while working, or while lying in bed. Some of us might find staring at the CLI is less conducive than the GUI for our work.
Who knows? Do what you like, if it's working with plain text, fine. If it's working with a more convention word processor go with it.
Besides most work for word processors probably isn't novel composition, it's probably more letters and articles and whatnot than novels.
Just saying.
real men use
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
What about
then?
When all you're trying to do is get words down on paper, all you really need is a simple, repeat, simple, text editor. Anything beyond that can get in the way, and detract from the creative process.
That's my 25 cents worth, reminding everyone as always that 25 cents won't buy what it once would.
Or, in my case, why I shouldn't write. Whenever I try to type anything into ed, it simply responds:
posing the question it knows I cannot answer.
Not if you're going to see it in print, that is. A writer writes the words. An editor and publisher will have it put into the final form.
I got to review Jef Raskin's book in its manuscript form, and "manuscript" is very close to what it was. One of the early human-computer interface experts, who helped develop the Macintosh, created his book in double-spaced Courier, designed to be proof-read, not published. Drawings were sketched; a real artist created what ended up in the book.
I don't know what he used, and he'd probably find "ed" to be a little ridiculous: it's a line editor, not suited to blocks of text. He probably used something WYSIWYG. But didn't bother with any formatting, and that saved him a lot of time and care.
Its all about personal taste, and I happen to like little red squiggly lines under most of my words.
Hex editors are too bloated. He should use cat instead (not the bloated monstrosity that is GNU cat of course).
that is all
Use the most backward impractical tool available and declare it superior.
cf. fixie bikes and Holga cameras.
I remember reading this post those many years ago and nodding my head in agreement as I read along. In college, I drafted all of my essays in Vim before importing them to OO.o for pdf generation. It's a wonderful tool for the job of cranking out text, but you're right that the ability to read what you've already written is distracting and antithetical to the goal of simply pumping out text, which is the novelist's first charge.
I think you've stumbled onto a very interesting use of ed here, though I daresay you're likely an army of one amongst your peers for your choose of authoring tools. :)
Writing forward with no editing or deletion, while still getting to read what you wrote yesterday. They still make new typewriters and a no-frills manual model goes for like $90.
But unlikes some sourpusses around here, I appreciate the appeal of using weird tools to do common tasks. So if ed is really your thing, ignore the haters.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
If you need to avoid all the manual formatting and want great quality, then you should prefer LaTeX or a suitable *TeX.
Prof(Miss) A Mani CU, ASL, AMS, ISRS, CLC, CMS, IEEE HomePage: http://www.logicamani.in Blog: http://logicamani.blogs
Dont you get all the lack of functionality in Notepad itself. use the edit command in DOS, if you dont want to use the mouse at all. Whats the point of using an editior like VI where even the backspace key does not work as it should?, doesnt it just add more overhead? Isnt it simpler to ise the arrow keys for navigation and backspace for backspace,etc.. I believe gedit does the same for Linux Pls enlighten me..
Personally, I think you just sound like a romantic, not someone who has stumbled upon a magic productivity method. What gets your rocks off is thinking that you are doing something old sk00l. It is pretty dead easy to make MS Word 2040 or whatever version they are on a blank white screen where words appear when you type. Your other old sk00l romanticism is just that, romanticism. A fixie really isn't better than a bike with gears unless you like having your legs sheared off when you go too fast. Gears are actually awesome when you need to go up a steep hill or want to haul ass down a steep hill. Power steering, computer control traction, and all of that goodness is likewise is awesome when something dives in front of your car and you need to make a sharp dodge. Touchy feel decelerations that you can feel the road better and that somehow improves your not hitting shit skills don't stand up the statistical reality that power steering, traction control, and fun stuff like that reduces accidents.
There is nothing wrong with being a romantic who idealizes simplicity, and there certainly is something to be said for keeping thing simple, but your methods are almost certainly useless to someone who doesn't see the romanticism in using old obscure text editors. For those people, if the editor is really distracting, they should just take a few seconds to pair down the interface to MS Word or Open Office (or whatever), rather than run an archaic text editor. If you are a romantic and need to be in a mood to write, find what gets your rocks off and go for it. Neal Stephenson wrote the 4000 or so page series with a freaking fountain pen. Inefficient? Sure, but if acting a little archaic gets your creative juices flowing, go for it.
"When I log into my Xenix system with my 110 baud teletype, both vi and Emacs are just too damn slow. They print useless messages like, ‘C-h for help’ and ‘“foo” File is read only’. So I use the editor that doesn't waste my VALUABLE time.
Ed, man! !man ed"
http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed.msg.html :-)
You can medicate ed with Viagra.
What you really want is TECO FTW!
"Words processors have continued to have more and more tools, making them harder and harder to use."
For the purposes of this guy's word grinding, any word processor in existence would be spectacularly easy to use. Launch, type, save. Maybe print. The fact that he couldn't resist doing the formatting when writing is his problem, not the tool's. He overcomplicated his work flow. "But too often I tackled the day's writing deciding such issues as a font for the day's draft." I mean, come on, dude. Pick one that looks like the typewriter output you yearn for and go write.
"Look at Microsloth Word: it keeps getting more and more like a page layout program, and less and less like a tool to get text in the computer."
Actually it's a perfectly decent tool for getting text in the computer, unless you're VERY easily distracted, and then when you're done typing, it becomes a page layout program. And seriously, "Microsloth"? Is it 2002 again? I thought that tiresome insult-through-spelling thing had died down.
They seem to be intentionally designed to be the wrong tool for anything you may be trying to do.
My editor of choice for many years has been Jed.
Text based, simple to use, even over an ssh session.
http://www.jedsoft.org/jed/
check it out if you are looking for something that doesn't get in the way of the process.
for the simple reason that it support typewriter scrolling -- the line you're working on stays near the center of the screen -- no more peering down at the bottom of the page. Aside from that, any word processor or text editor that gives you full screen mode and and lets you turn off any sort of crappy toolbar/ribbon system is fine for me.
I must admit to having amassed a large collection of manual typewriters and expensive pens over the years in my attempts to find the tool that keeps me writing. So, if ed gets you putting words down, then that makes it the ideal tool for you.
Do word processors not make it too easy for writers to write bloated books?
I take the position that word processors have had a detriment on clarity of writing. It's too easy to not have to keep everything in you head when writing with a word processor.
I used to enjoy Asimov, but it seems his later books (after 1980) just got fat and I stopped reading.
And look at college textbooks. Who reads all those pages?
I've seen plenty of modern apps that offer "distraction free writing". Even most full-featured word processors have a full screen mode that hides the UI. Plus, you get nice extras like proportional fonts, bold, italic, and underline, simple copy and paste, and so on.
Also, modern CPUs are so powerful that even a graphical word processor should leave the processor idling most of the time. Unless your GUI word processor is incredibly bloated and inefficient (*cough* Word *cough*) there isn't really a practical performance or battery life benefit to switching to a command line editor.
But hey, you're writing a novel, so whatever fuels your creative process is fine by me. After all, some authors use antique typewriters, or pen and paper. I've even been known to use a stylus and clay tablet, but only when I'm writing Sumerian viruses.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Next year he should upgrade to Microsoft Edlin. That'll teach him.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Ed, man!
!man ed
http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed.msg.html
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
Personally I prefer markup languages like HTML or LaTeX, which I create with vi or Emacs for the documents I write. You can generally get away with HTML for just about everything these days. You can generate (beautiful) PDFs with LaTeX, but a lot of times people don't want a read-only document. I expect that if you're writing a book the publisher will eventually format it the way they want it anyway, and plain text is ultimately the lowest common denominator!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I get that Office Suite 20xx is bloated, but it is not like there aren't a wide array of Novel specific editors that cater to the exact things novel writers need, and it is not like OSs don't come with VI, EMACS, DOS Edit, Notepad, etc...
Scrivener is almost good enough to make me want a mac.
Rough Draft is what I actually use to write novels, it is simple and outputs in RTF, has very few features, but the ones that it does have are what I want.
IMO a good creative writing software package has to be simple, and it looks like TFA is looking to simplify even further... It is an understandable thing, because distractions are killer for a writer...
IMO he should get an AlphaSmart A portable, purpose built device which does text and only text. Full keyboard, it gets something like 700 hours on 3 AA batteries, it does not have fonts or animated assistants or 1gb install files, and best of all, you don't have to look like a pretentious douche on slashdot to use it.
Remember when you were a kid and you would pretend that the cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels was a telescope? You would look down the tube and see a tiny piece of the world. That's what it's like to compose text using a line editor.
I was once compelled to write a WYSIWYG editor, in the days when all the system provided was a line editor equivalent to ed. I noticed that the work became an order of magnitude faster once I was able to use my editor as a development tool.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
One good thing about using technology that old is there's no chance you could be violating any patents. It certainly makes sense as a symbolic gesture at least.
Ed was never pioneering in any sense—if you're going to be romantic about the past, at least be right. It's essentially a minimalist clone of qed made by and for, as usual, Unix guys who couldn't run the real deal on their low-end PDPs. qed/qedx, for the record, had all sorts of bells and whistles, including at one point regexes.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
This guy should have checked out Scrivener. It's not focusing on layout and stuff like that, but useful features that keeps a larger work (novel or other things) together. Keeping track of your loose ends with a storyboard feature and much more. There are more tools like this too.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
As i am not a masochist, if i wanted to go minimalist I would choose Joe. Back in my MSDOS days i used to use Galaxy ( i couldn't afford anything else, until i bought FrameWork II.. and it worked just fine for me )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Real men use 'cat > story.txt', starting from the beginning each time.
Send the command prompt output to a line printer. Ed is nice when you have everying on paper.
I don't know what OS the author of the original post is using, but if he's using a Mac, he should look into WriteRoom.
http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom
It's like writing on the word processor from the Apple II days, it clear all the modern OS widgets out of the way so you're not constantly distracted, and you can edit in any combination of background/text colors you want.
I prefer bold blue text on a black background. None of the formatting is saved in the document, it's only done in presentation by the app and you get modern features like word count and what not.
I can't recommend it high enough.
But hey, I'm an oldster around here, what do I know?
Reeses
This article is more about how the process of hammering out chips of stone in a tablet focuses the mind on the words than it is on technology. Asimov, King, Heinlein, and DeCamp all wrote about establishing a writers discipline and what it takes to get the job done. This article isn't about efficiency or technology per se. Discipline is about output over a period of time and what it takes to 'make' yourself produce. What this author is talking about is how he disciplines himself to create output. Notice that he mentions his daily time limit. Apparently, a lot of writers have to force themselves into certain constraints to get the job done.
Whatever works for him. Some people still write out their novels in long hand on lined paper.
How I'd love to see this guy's clutterfree text editor, especially if it's running in a window surrounded by blinking reminders to upgrade Skype, update Java, download the new version of Nokia PC Suite, check whether there are new updates for all Apple applications installed; then the antivirus requires immediate attention because the subscription is due, there's 20 unread Twitter status updates, and everytime a new friend comes online MSN Messenger throws a big party on its side of the screen... Oh yeah, that would be worth writing a big story about productivity.
Cats are too unpredictable to be good editors. The last time I let a cat use my keyboard to edit something I wrote, I ended up with page after page of "vnmerhi gbchqeruiph vvj buiphbjnnk wfqÙQSC g[no tyn"
Fetishizing (sp?) the "simplicity" of your tools is every bit as much an act of narcissism as bragging about the ten million bells and whistles on your new HAL-compliant AI Write-Buddy TM that automatically scans TVTropes.org after each sentence to make sure your cliche factor is under 3.5 millilyttons per chapter. (Exact limit can be set via the user, of course, via a series of 16 nested dialog boxes).
Dude. Write. Or don't write. Just don't write about the tool you use for writing; it's about as dull as possible.
I've used manual typewriters, TRS-80s, WordStar 1.0, Appleworks, Microsoft Word, a zillion other things, and I have seen almost no difference in my writing speed, which is a pretty steady 500 to 1000 words per hour, depending on what I'm writing. (Fiction, usually, >1000... it's easy, the limit is my finger speed. Game writing, towards the lower end, because I have to check rules, do some math, look up references to see the proper formatting of a skill or a feat or a monster, etc.).
They worked very well for 100 years. If your editor complains that it's too hard to get the words into a computer file, then introduce her to OCR.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Perhaps. However, real people know how any *nix "editor" one-upmanship ends:
C-x M-c M-butterfly.
'Nuff said.
is any environment that lets you run eclipse or open office etc. also has firefox 1 click away and hence slashdot or facehook or whatever your particular weakness is.
Boot to a pure shell and theres atleast some temporal insulation from the howling winds of distraction.
Some days I write up to 10,000 words, and it just takes me a 1/2 day. I even get paid for most of it. But there is no freakin way I would ever go back to using anything older then Word 2011 to do the deed. Anyone who considers MS Word a distraction needs to seriously take some meds, or try one-pointed Vajrayana training, or something :)
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
I'll try to explain why the article makes SOME sense (I disagree with using ed or vi, but the concept is sound). When I use Word for my articles, my thought path is interrupted by my spelling, by word wrap, by auto-correct, etc. These things ruin the creative flow when you are doing a mental dump of the story. You don't want to stop for fixing a word. Think of it as context switching - a good writer has no context switching during the first pass process. I can't explain why, but it is not a logical thing, the writer just channels his work into words. The second pass, you MUST use a good word processor like Office Word, or whatnot and you end up touching, rebuilding paragraphs, and rewriting some parts, which brings the novel to a stage where you are happy to show it to an editor and get it published.
I use Word 2010, but I put it in green monospace font on black (monochrome) and then go fullscreen with ALL autocorrect and suggest turned off. I also have to shut down all IM clients, and other processes that might give my mind a "context switch".
My point then, is that you CAN use a modern word processor, if you strip it down to the bare functionality. Using vi or ed would make editing difficult in a way that you wouldn't touch any prior words, nor would you see any spelling correct. This is what the author is getting at, I just disagree with the method he used.
One is that you can get most of the advantage (the thick chain and lower maintenance) with an internal geared hub. The gears are, as the name implies, actually in the hub. Costs a bit more than outer gears but not much. They are extremely reliable because they are precision machined and completely sealed. Commuter bikes often feature them (I have a commuter). Not suitable for racing since they have higher resistance, but they do a good job for commuting, hence their use in commuters. You can also get models that use a belt, instead of chain, for even lower maintenance.
The second is that the hipster cool bikes aren't cheap. You discover that a brand new "fixed gear" (often actually not, just a single speed) bike with the bull horns handle bars and so on can easy run you $500-600. Turns out you can get a commuter for that price, and a nice one at that. I got a Jamis Commuter 3 for about $650.
Hipsters ride fixed gear (or single speed, since actual fixed gear bikes are harder to ride) because they think it makes them ironically cool, not for any good reason. Retro is hip.
A true believer wouldn't be using a computer at all -- or using the Internet -- or posting to Slashdot.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Line based editing? That's just got too many distractions for a real writer.
It is a badge of pride for hipsters to have things that are "retro" and "ironically hard to use." It is all about appearances, functionality has nothing to do with it. They claim it does, but they are lying. A great example is with the bikes. If you look around at what they ride, and I get to do this since I work on a campus and bike to work, you discover that very few actually have a fixed gear bike that one might own for functional reasons. That is to say an old, cheap bike that is truly fixed gear. That has a functional reason to own in that it costs very little to get, and very little to maintain. Almost all of them ride new bikes, which are quite expensive. You search for them, like say a Surly Steamroller which is popular, and you find it is over $700. You can get a nice commuter for less than that (a Jamis Commuter 3 is about $650) which of course features far more hardware and thus ought to cost more (the Commuter 3 has an 8 speed hub, generator light, brakes, rack for a bag, and so on). Also you'll notice that a good number aren't actually fixed gear, they have brakes. They are just single speed bikes.
The choice is purely one of being "cool". Same reason they often feature bull horn handle bars. That is also hipster cool these days. They are of no use to street riding, and in fact are less practical than a number of other handlebar designs. It is just an appearances thing.
You are right, that this sounds just the same. "Oh I've gotten back to the roots of writing, I use a really simple tool, and that means I am more in touch with being a writer and that I write better." No it just means you make more errors that your editor has to fix you hipster douche. New word processors don't change what you write, they just make things easier. The creative process is still the same. Of course if you are a hipster that lacks any creativity... :D.
Get yourself a CP/M machine and write your novels on that 64kB at a time. Like a Kaypro II or maybe an Osborne 1 would probably be your best bet. Although a C128 or AppleII with Z80 card would would be usable as well.
A Xerox 820 II with 8" disk drives would also be fun, but they are a little pricey on ebay in working condition, especially if it had the 8086 expansion board for CP/M-86 or MS-DOS.
Then to send it up to your PC you can use the serial port, which was often used for printers on CP/M, so you might be able to just hit "print" to transmit to your PC.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
As someone who is working on their fourth book, I've come to do all of my initial composition in a plain text editor. After I've finished my first draft (straight ahead, just like the OP says), I take it into OpenOffice and use my publisher's official formatting style sheets. Yes, they fully support the files that oo.org makes. Personally, I don't do 1,000 words a day every day. I do 1,500 to 2,000 per day, four days a week. That lets me miss days without feeling the weight of deadline pressure.
But yeah, I use plain text to get the words on the page.
I think his point is that ed is less distraction (though I've never used, so I don't really know for sure). If all you can do is write your sentences, or invoke terse commands that you don't use, then you might be more focused. Sort of like using a machine with no internet connection, for example, if one lacks mental discipline. So what if it's a crutch; if it helps, use it.
I was faced with precisely this problem a few years ago. I ended up wroting a tool called WordGrinder: it's a console-mode word processor that supports just enough style to be useful (italics, underline, etc) and a clutter-free display. If you run it in a full screen terminal, you can configure it so that the only thing visible on the screen are your words.
It's not a text editor; it's a word processor, which means it's oriented around prose, so it understands paragraphs, wrapping, it renders italics and underline in an appropriate manner (termcap emphasis and underline respectively), it's got word count, paragraph count, etc, it's got some basic features like table-of-contents navigation (allowing to skip around very big documents quickly), subdocuments, scratchpad documents, and so on. The interface is menu-driven but you can rebind any menu item to any hotkey, which means you can configure it pretty much as you like. And it supports Unicode, so you're not limited to writing in English.
I've written about 70k words on it, and it works very well. As far as I know it is the only application in its particular niche for Unices; I get a small but steady stream of downloads. It'll even run on Windows but looks pretty sucky (I've been working on a better GDI renderer for Windows, but, well, the Windows GDI API is pretty sucky too and it's harder than it looks).
LOL! I also noted & remembered using edlin in early-to-mid level versions of DOS circa 2.0-3.3 era iirc. EDIT came along after that, wasn't all THAT bad either, but edlin was atrocious, on the level of vi *NIX unwieldy.
APK
P.S.=> See subject-line: This author may be set "back in time" & do things ala my subject-line above, lol, & his usage of an ANCIENT text editor program, but... well, personally, I like more modern versions of software's personally, things get better with more abilities, & thus becoming more powerful too as well as aesthetically pleasing + easy to use.
Microsoft Word 2010 is what I like currently & for the past whoever knows how many versions since Microsoft Word 2.0 for Windows came out in 16/32/64 bit to today presently (basically from the time after Word kicked WordPerfect 7 for DOS thru WordPerfect for Windows butt to the door here, I'd guess from somewhere around 1994 or so, to now, iirc)... apk
I don't get the point of this writer. Is it too much of him to type 1,000 words in just about any word processing program out there? Is he too distracted by the GUI? Purdy colors? Amazingly advanced techniques such as Bold, Italics and Underline? Fine, he finds efficiency for his purpose in an application from 30 years ago, but what really is his purpose other than typing and reaching 1,000 words each day?
All glory to Arstotzka!
I started with ed 30 years or so ago and graduated to vi shortly after (via "learn"). But knowing ed means I know how to write sed scripts, which I still use.
Real men boot with init=/bin/cat and leave the rest as an exercise for the reader.
I use EditPad Lite:
http://www.editpadlite.com/
I then use Perl scripts to convert text markup to RTF for publisher documents.
I do this so I have minimal interface getting in the way of the work process. It's almost as good as handwriting (using an m600 with Florida Blue ink) but it's easier to revise this way.
Futurist Traditionalism
I do all my text editing using Adobe Illustrator... I like things complicated!
Tomorrow is another day...
I believe this is the reason things like focuswriter exist. I am not a writer, but I can certainly understand removing distractions.
I can not imagine something more stupid. I mean what's the point? You can live without a modern word processors? Sure you can. Why stop at ed? Why not use a typewriter? Or, use a pad and a pencil? What the fuck was this idiot trying to do and what did he discover/prove? Was he more productive using ed? There's no proof of that.
Syntax? Spelling? This is a WRITER, not a secretary. He wants to put what he has in his mind in some medium that can then be further processed later. By an editor/proof reader. He doens't need to highlight things.
What he explored was how much do we REALLY need? IF he can write, then does he need to re-edit what he wrote? I do, but then I can't write. My thoughts are all over the place and I need to go back in a sentence to reword it. Or do I? Is the reason I can't write because I keep re-editing what I wrote until it has lost all passion?
The fastest cars on the earth are also some of the simplest, or were for a long time. If you got ABS on a motor cycle, you CAN NOT brake as hard as if you didn't have it. The tolerance that ABS brings means a skilled driver can brake harder without. If you are NOT skilled, then ABS is better.
So is he skilled or not?
And finally, on error-checking. While useful, in some editors it has become so advanced it tries to correct you even when what your wrote is correct but it just doesn't understand it. Imagine some of the best writers if they were constrained by what their spell checker would allow them to do.
But what this really is about, proffesional writer claims he works better without all the bells and whistle. Unknown nobody claims this is not true. I take the writers word for it that he writers faster without over yours. Hope this doesn't offend you. Damn spell check, should have been DOES.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I do all my fun creative writing on my 12.1" powerbook. Well at least I did until it finally died and I'm not putting any more money into a 6 year old laptop to fix it. Personally, I loved the keyboard on that series of laptop, much better than the newer macbook pros.
I was testing novel writing software as my preference (Jer's novel writer) had not been updated in several years. So I tested out Scrindiver and StoryMill and both ran like dogs on the older powerbook. Recently Jer's been making updates to the software and it is what I'm using once again.
It doesn't do anything fancy, but does have a nice database tool to easily keep track of characters, items, places, and other pieces of research. Other than that it's a simple text editor. No fancy having to create "Chapters" then "scenes" or other more complex layouts. It does just enough formatting for manuscripts and then stays the hell out of my way and lets me write.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
ed is the standard UNIX text editor!!!
Posters here are missing a big point about the process of creative writing: when you write, two parts of your mind are at work: the creator and the critic. The creator comes up with the material. The critic edits the material, worries about punctuation, spelling, over-all structure, the fact that the phone bill is overdue, your spouse's opinion of your work, street noise, paragraph formatting, etc.
The critic's main role is to say "NO". "You can't say that". "You spelled that wrong". "That word is hyphenated badly". "You should close quotation marks after the period." (I just noticed that) etc.
The problem with wysiwyg word processors like MS Word and their kin is that they show you nice formatted paragraphs (encouraging you to worry about hyphenation), underline misspelled words (making you go back and fix them), even criticize you grammar. By its very nature, a word processor engages the inner critic.
I have learned that the best way to write is to 1: make a mess; 2: clean it up (see "Writing your dissertation in fifteen minutes a day"). It's best to just write, let the words come out in a mess, maybe complain about the fact that the words aren't coming out, anything to get the pipeline going. Only at the end of the session, when you're done writing, should you go back over the text, fixing things up. Fixing up text is easy, once the text exists. However, creating the text is hard, if you're always stopping to fix it up.
That's why ed is a wise choice. It disables the inner critic. It has no spelling checker, no grammar checking, doesn't format as you type. It's wonderful.
Alejo
I fired up Gedit and hit F11 (just like you sometimes accidentally do on Firefox). The result was a fullscreen text editor. It's actually quite nice...
You might have a look at u—, a new distraction-free writing environment:
http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/1169153343/only-you
"I ride a fixed single-speed bike"
That's settled, you're a douche.
is when you pass an electronic manuscript around for review. You can read the comments and make changes right there. Unfortunately, that forces into doc format because everybody in the world can handle that.
It shouldn't be too much of a problem as long as you don't try to do fancy formatting. In fact, you shouldn't even use italics, bold, underline etc. Rather you should follow the conventions used for typewritten mansucripts. Why? Because some editors don't like them, and they're not really necessary. The conventions like _italics or underline this way_ and *bold this way* are good enough and work when excerpts are send through text only email. These amount to commonly understood semantic markup.
Restructured text (RST) is really quite an interesting way to bridge the gap between plain text and a formatted manuscript. It pretty much handles all the typographical things an author should worry about (which is not much) and can generate html, postscript or pdf with a few simple tools. RST would be be close to ideal, except then you have to go back to doc files when you send the manuscript out for review.
What the world really needs is format expressly designed for the needs of authors and editors. That would provide for revision tracking, commenting, and outlining but in a worst case scenario would allow the text to be reconstructed with a text editor.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
After reading a similar article in 2006 I started writing in vim. Today after two masters and some post graduate I'm still viming. I write and edit faster, with fewer distraction and more control. I still use a word processor but only at the final stage for formatting; most classes require Microsoft files. I know at least five high volume (two award winning) writers working for major newspapers that use GUI text editors for the same reasons; a number of papers require their staff to use NewsEdit Pro or Adobe InCopy both very similar to text editors. Before judging in ignorance I would encourage all to give it a go. Write for one week in the text editor of your choice and judge for yourself. I for one will give ed a try, if it works great if not then I've lost nothing.
The Pinnacle of Word Processing Programs, everything else has been a down hill slide.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Q
He could try Electric Pencil on a TRS-80, then go wild with WordStar on an 8086 IBM PC with cassette port.
But that may be too high tech for him.
http://www.trs-80.org/electric-pencil/
http://www.wordstar.org/wsdos/pages/downloads.htm
From the writer's site:
"Beginning October 1, 2010, the inaugural title of the press will be available here as a free serial"
and
"Printed copies of The Wire Donkey are available from booksellers everywhere, including the following that take orders online: Powells, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Books-A-Million."
Wasn't there a Linux distro that would boot right into a text editor?
You don't need to buy Macaw, you can do the same with opensource utilities: cat keyboard | strings
The WP2 was a great little system, like a beefed up Model 100. I would actually recommend a Model 600, which gave you 8x40 character display and a larger keyboard in a clamshell formfactor. It also runs on 4 AAs for around 10-12 hours.
What's funny is a skilled hobbyist could build one of these on the cheap. Text LCDs are cheap, powerful microcontrollers with 32k or more RAM are cheap (about $1.50 for a 32-bit ARM).
Although funny thing is I never saw a tech hobbyist build the ideal word processor for a writer on the go. Even though it is a straight forward project in my opinion.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Alias some letter or char to echo >> file, and you've got something even simpler than ed. What's the damned point?
Except you end up paying way way waaaaaaay too much money for it. I think the only neat trick is that you put formatting tags on stuff and hide them. (But it's not that fancy, it's just XML.) All the real formatting and layout is done to the text file later using InDesign or whatever.
Those not wanting to blow their money for this type of work can probably get by ok using something like Notepad++ and Scribus.
I get a reminder of Kaypro every day when I drop my daughter off at school - get a very good view of the self-storage facility that used to be the Kaypro plant when leaving the drop-off point.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
I have a 21-speed (7-speed, really, because the front derailleur's stuck in 2; since I never shifted much in the front anyways, I never bothered getting that fixed)
I can accelerate off the line a lot faster, making it preferable in stop-and-go traffic.
Indeed, a geared bike might be more appropriate for what I do by that standard, as I head down bike/walking trails for most of my most-used route.
a lot less maintenance and replacement of fidgety bits
Yeah, I've gotten a lot of aggravation from busted derailleurs; I can agree on this one. Then again, I've also had a lot of grief come from flat tires, a problem you can't avoid. [Flat tires and improperly adjusted pressure brakes are straightforward to deal with, but still aggravating when they crop up.]
-
I've never got close to 40 or 60 mph though, though my next bike will probably be somewhat faster.
Yeah, I probably should add fenders, but even in proper gearing, going down steep hills is still a bitch.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
"Hipster Girl"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geUqQg1WN8Q (static-image)
http://www.6lyrics.com/hipster_girl-lyrics-mc_lars_horris.aspx
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
A lot of my nonfiction writing is indeed slower, because I have to do both the work of the academic assignment and the technical task of typing.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Well you probably did not try Writemokey
http://writemonkey.com/features.php
Others are posting on this, but I thought I'd post as someone who teaches creative, academic, and professional writing--and who has training in the pedagogical theory and assorted gobbledygook (ie theories I don't like). Yes, eliminating distractions as you draft is very helpful. And some people find it helpful to switch the tool or the context when drafting. Probably the best way to draft is to force yourself to write, with whatever tool, in 15-20 minute sprints, with no correction, pausing to think, or whatever. For more on this, you can read Writing with Power by the unfortunately named Peter Elbow. And, yes, a text editor is one way to avoid distractions, but so is a little discipline. Others opt for a legal pad. I myself use a legal pad with blue or black ink. Or I use MS Word or a "light" option for the Mac called Bean. When I'm writing stuff that feels good, I type in black. When it feels like it might not work, I type in blue. So blue is my code for "relax." I never use a text editor, but I can see why you would, if you're the sort of obsessive person who also thinks that a text editor merits a review with instructions for use, or if you're the sort of person who will choose a text editor so poor for you purpose that you have to talk about byte counts. But let's face it, writing those reviews, fiddling around with bite counts, looking for the perfect text editor that will blank our your screen and has a single-keystroke function to load content from lifehacker or the latest theories on sleep technology, well, that's all just a technique for PROCRASTINATION. My favorite advice on that is from an anecdote about Faulkner. He was once asked by a woman how he got inspired to write. He replied that he only wrote when he was inspired, and he was inspired every morning at eight.
I don't write like that. When I've taken on a large writing project -- an outdoor program safety manual -- I found myself jumping around like crazy. I'd work on one section for a while, and something I'd write would remind me of something else in an entirely different section. So I'd open another file, and at least scribble down the idea.
Ed is fine if you are an author that writes a list of chapter headings, then 10-12 points for each chapter, then you start at the front and write to the end.
From my perspective, a text processor (no formatting controls) needs to have, at minimum:
* outlining
* folding
* multiple file capability.
*****
As a sidelight, while unix/linux has lots of good text processors, (I like geany and vim) I'm *still* looking for a good formatting system.
* Don't tell me about TeX. If you want to do your own template in TeX you've got quite a learning curve.
* I gave up on Abiword and Open Office both because of irregular crashes that lost all work. Neither has documentation that is worth a damn. Neither has good support for styles.
So I still use Adobe FrameMaker 5.56 Beta when I have to make more than a few pages pretty.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
Gotta give those reCAPTCHA guys something to do, right? ^_~
I've noticed that many people often seem almost personally offended by others explicitly choosing to not use some popular modern technology...
Most people don't understand Luddite-type choices. We (Americans at least) live in a culture with an emphasis on automative (er...sic) technology to "make life easier". And while the argument is often made that the omnipresent devices and inventions that make our lives easier are time-saving technologies that allow us to trade work for more free time to spend on family-and-friends/leisure activities, I feel that they mostly just allow us to live in a kind of 'automatic pilot'. By this I mean that "the hard way", which often takes longer and requires more of our attention or labor, forces us into making deliberate and conscious decisions about the hows and whys of our activities. I value this 'deliberateness' because it makes me live in the present moment, fully aware.
For example, I have been riding a bicycle (also fixed...but that's neither here nor there) 9 miles to school daily, and around town with trips of similar distance for a couple of years now, and yet still have friends that know it's my personal choice try to pick me up and give me rides. Sometimes when the bike transporation comes up in conversation I feel like I have to tell people that I DO own a car, I just choose to ride the bike, and not solely or even primarily for monetary reasons. What it comes down to for me is that my lifestyle and feel form my personal world/community context have been fundamentally transformed by this discipline. When I ride I am much more aware of the area I'm traversing, the people I'm passing, the energy it takes to get me from here to there. (which has really changed my relationship to food.) And when I do drive, it's not an automatic activity that I take for granted. Instead I'm aware of the costs, environmentally, monetarily, and otherwise, that I almost never thought about when I drove as my primary means of transportation.
This is just one example, but if you try something similar - taking the hard way instead of the easier technology-assisted way - I believe this aspect of 'deliberateness' will become very apparent.
(and yeah, I understand a bicycle is a piece of technology.)
In the discussion following Dickinson's essay "Word Processors: One Writer's Retreat", reader coult already knew that ed would come next.
I've used jdarkroom It is a very simple text editor which puts the focus on the writing. ymmv.
It'll soon be available for ICL 1900 series mainframes running George 3.
Could be useful for this guy?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
My ex wrote a novel that was published by Viking a few years ago and got a fair amount of critical acclaim.
When she first started working on it, in '99, I gave her my old laptop with Debian and Gedit. She did 50 or so pages, and then decided to move to Word to print it out. All the line-breaks were messed up, and she never forgave me. I did eventually set her up with a nice netbook and Openoffice, but it was too late, and now we're divorced.
She went from Gedit, which she hated to Word, which she hated, to OpenOffice, which she admires for its ability to reproduce all the defects in Word. On a good day, it's a tool, and like any tool, if you use it regularly, at some point you're going to hurt yourself with it.
If anything is a distraction, it's not the editor, cursor, or background color, it's wifi. Get a laptop with a Broadcom chipset, and you'll be incredibly productive.
I still get half the royalties from the book, so buy it and help me pay for my child support.