

Show HN: Aquietplace, a small writing tool - _joev
http://joevennix.com/aquietplace/

======
nunull
I generally like distraction free writing environments, but i doubt that it's
really a good idea to have such without the ability to open / manage multiple
"files". If you have to type everything into one textbox, without the
possibility to switch context, you are IMO likely to be distracted by what you
wrote earlier.

Nonetheless, nice tool!

~~~
_joev
_wakes up 10 hours later to find this on HN homepage_

Sorry, originally I had some functionality so that changing URL hash gives you
a new file. At some point I switched this to using location.pathname and broke
it. Let me add it back :)

~~~
_joev
Okay, feature implemented :) To work on a new file just change the URL hash

[http://joevennix.com/aquietplace#newfile](http://joevennix.com/aquietplace#newfile)

~~~
nunull
Nice, i really like the idea of just using URLs for that but not having any
specific GUI. Great!

------
gbersac
I don't mean to be rude, but what is the utility for this ?

There is plenty of text editor out there, many of them are very good. What is
the added value of this tool ?

~~~
zapu
It's not the first one I've seen, but the general idea is that it lets you
write in a completely distraction free environment (when you full-screen it).

~~~
wanda
WriteRoom
([http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom](http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom))

DarkRoom ([http://jjafuller.com/dark-room](http://jjafuller.com/dark-room))

iA Writer

Write! ([http://wri.tt](http://wri.tt))

To name but a few of these distraction-free writers.

Write! is cool but Windows only. iA Writer isn't free but Dropbox integration
and mobile version justify the price for me.

------
pmontra
I tried it with Opera Android and I get a cursor in a white page. I can type
but nothing else. Is this a desktop only editor? I sometimes use this tablet
to type or annotate Google docs files so there is definitely some space for
mobile editors.

------
gprasanth
I love the black background in full screen feature a lot. I have actually
wanted to write this (trivial)tool myself. I do not like others (around me) to
read my blog posts or emails before I finish writing them. And this is perfect
for getting the initial draft to work with. I usually am distracted by what
I'd already written before I finish writing what I wanted to write. This tool
helps me not do the root of all evil.

Now the black background in full screen thing seems like a bug to some of you.
I think it was unintended too (given the name - aquietplace). But it's
definitely a useful feature.

~~~
ytjohn
How do you change the background?

~~~
_joev
You can't, there was a bug in my code when run on firefox fullscreen.

Formatting options would be nice, for now you can copy some text from an
external HTML document and it will preserve the formatting. You can then edit
this text.

------
_joev
Thanks for the votes :) The code is here if anyone wants to modify it (this
site is hosted on github pages):

[https://github.com/joevennix/aquietplace](https://github.com/joevennix/aquietplace)

------
alkimie2
It was not obvious to me how to save my work, other than as a webpage.

~~~
_joev
Yeah right now there is only saving as the browser allows (print to PDF is
another way). I'll add support for saving as a .txt on cmd-S through HTML5
download API in a bit.

~~~
_joev
Added a cmd-S to save to txt.

------
fishnchips
I swear by plaintext text editors for pretty much any kind of (non-coding)
writing work but nothing beats TextEdit (OS X built-in) in plaintext mode with
a good fixed-size font.

------
herghost
Nice, but full screen mode won't accept input on OS X 10.10.3 using Safari
8.0.5.

I can input in the browser and it shows fine. If I full screen it the text
remains but it ignores input.

~~~
_joev
It's a Safari bug unfortunately.

[https://medium.com/adventures-in-consumer-
technology/allow-k...](https://medium.com/adventures-in-consumer-
technology/allow-keyboard-input-968a142b5b9b)

Seems like the best recourse is to disable the feature in Safari. Bummer.

------
falcolas
In full screen mode, the entire screen goes black. It still accepts input, but
I can't actually see what is being typed.

This is on Mac OSX 10.10.3, using Firefox 37.0.2.

~~~
_joev
I cannot for the life of me figure out how to fix this. Maybe someone here
knows. I define the fullscreen bg color:

    
    
        bg:fullscreen, bg:-webkit-full-screen, bg:-moz-full-screen {
          background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);
        }
    

But it does not get respected

~~~
_joev
Fixed it with *{background: white;}, strangely enough.

------
foolinaround
If it could save automatically to a note in evernote/dropbox/whatever with a
name automatically created from date of creation, it would be great.

------
ricardobeat
Doesn't do anything in Safari, it's just a textarea. Is it supposed to give
you a unique URL per document?

------
benrmatthews
Nice. I was unable to type in full screen mode, using Chrome.

~~~
trumpete
You will have to click the middle again (the textbox) to refocus

