

Show HN: wābisābi — distraction-free writing - ruidlopes

A simple, in-browser, fullscreen text editor (a la WriteRoom and Byword.app) http://wabisabi.cc<p>Feedback welcome!
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loevborg
This is really excellent. I like the concept a lot. Here are some of the
things I really like:

\- This uses a proportional font. Most web-based editors I've seen so far used
monospace, which, frankly, makes them bad for writing prose. The font is
really nice, too. Also, importantly, proper line spacing! \- The F11 feature
is clever. \- The word count on the bottom is unobtrusive and elegant.

My use case is writing long (30.000 words+) documents with few formulae. Right
now I use Vim, which is nice feature-wise, of course, but not perfect for
prose. I write using "markdown" markup, for headings, italics and so forth. I
use pandoc to turn it into LaTeX and xelatex to turn that into a PDF. It works
beautifully, even for academic texts.

What I love about Vim are its key-bindings. It would be fantastic to add this
to wabasabi. I don't whink I'll use another editor which doesn't have this
feature. I'm sure I am in a tiny minority in this respect.

You could also add pandoc integration in the future. It's a great piece of
software. It also has a few extensions to markdown, including footnotes and
bibliographic references. It's extensible as well.

I just wrote this comment using wabisabi, and I like the experience a lot. Are
you going to turn this into a commercial project? If you need help, send me a
mail (in my profile).

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ruidlopes
Thanks for you comment and suggestions!

Regarding key bindings, I'm planning on adding some soon, so that it can be
fully interacted via keyboard (not sure if I'll use vim bindings exclusively —
non-geeks don't know about vim).

On pandoc integration, it's complicated, since the server-side is implemented
in node.js. Anyway, my To-Do has an item on supporting markdown :)

Finally, this won't be commercialized. As long as I have few-to-none costs
supporting the hosting, it'll be free forever (i.e., why the heck people have
to pay for these kind of editors?)

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revorad
I like it but one of these comes out every week and none of them ever stick
around :-)

So I'm reluctant to invest any time in it. You need to stay around and make me
come back.

The F11 thing is clever, but please also add a mouse-clickable button.

The name also probably means something relevant, but it's impossible for me to
remember.

Here's an idea: get listed on the Chrome Web Store. If I install your app from
there, I'll see it every time I start Chrome.

~~~
ruidlopes
Thanks for the feedback! Some answers:

* mouse-clickable button: APIs for handling the fullscreen state of browsers are still nascent (Chrome 15 and Firefox 9-ish?), so it's a matter of months until adding it;

* Chrome Web store: already on the to-do (plus 100% offline usage via HTML5 manifest).

Cheers.

~~~
ruidlopes
____Small update __ __

HTML5 manifest is now activated, feel free to use it offline :)

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sunspeck
I love this breed of editor. Your implementation is pretty sweet, especially
the quick save/email controls.

I'd much rather, though, just see a list of my documents than the too clever
hidden dropdown. Right now it's two clicks and a three-key stroke just to open
a saved document. Not so wabi-sabi.

And the word count is useful, but for "distraction-free writing" I shouldn't
be forced to see it all the time.

~~~
ruidlopes
Thanks for the feedback!

Indeed, the chosen design is a compromise between simplicity and practicality
(I just couldn't imagine having a file/document browser taking up much space).
Nevertheless, I'm thinking on having 0-9 shortcut keys to select documents.

Regarding dimming the word/char count, you're right. Will be fixed on the next
iteration!

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djeckhart
Your control-command-F shortcut conflicts with the native "Enter Full Screen"
shortcut on OS X 10.7; I can't see how to create a new document without
remapping the default key binding.

~~~
ruidlopes
As it's been said, it's exactly the point. The current keyboard mappings are
required to trigger fullscreen, while (non-alpha & non-beta) browsers don't
implement a fullscreen API.

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scottyallen
Very slick. I tend to jump into fullscreen MacVim when I want to write
distraction free, but this is clean enough I could see using it for some
tasks.

~~~
ruidlopes
Thanks, that's exactly the point: not to replace every tool/editor, but to be
the best/simplest for a limited set of tasks :)

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tingletech
I could not figure out how to type anything (I'm using firefox) and now
firefox is stuck in full screen mode and I can't get out of it.

~~~
ruidlopes
When in fullscreen mode, the focus is automatically set on the textarea
element. You should be able to enter text immediately.

To leave fullscreen mode, you press the same shortcut key that enables
fullscreen.

