
A simple distraction-free, no gimmick writing tool - skadimoolam
https://skadimoolam.github.io/Simple-Writing-Tool/
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vinceguidry
I've tried perhaps a dozen of these writing tools, as I'm looking for one for
my Android tablet. I've yet to find one where I can write more than a page
worth of stuff without being forced to crane my neck to stare at the very
bottom of the tablet for the entire rest of the time I'm writing.

Sublime allows me to scroll past the end, and I didn't realize just how
important that feature is until I had to trudge through the endless morass of
apps that don't. Predictably, this app doesn't either. I wonder how much
actual writing these writing app devs actually do.

I'm not asking for an option for the cursor to stay in the middle or two
thirds of the way down the screen, though that would be really really really
nice. But scroll-past-end is essential.

~~~
skadimoolam
Will surely look into this feature.

Answering your question of "I wonder how much actual writing these writing app
devs actually do?". I am not sure about other developers but I love to write
and I write about 1000 words everyday. From my point of view this is the tool
I would love to have found earlier. This was the need for me to build this
tool in the first place.

I really appreciate you sharing your opinion will surely look into what's
possible.

Thanks

~~~
vinceguidry
There's money in this space. I've spent maybe $30 just looking for the right
app, only to come up empty.

~~~
skadimoolam
Sure, I agree with you, I too have spend a few dollars here and there trying
to find the perfect writing utility.

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faeyanpiraat
The perfect combination for me for a writing tool would be a combination of
notepad++ and evernote. I've tried tons of tools, but none of them are
completely satisfactory.

Np++:

Pro: extremely flexible editing, moving lines around, structuring thougths
with tabs and keeping the indentation level when pressing enter.

Con: Having tons of tabs of notes like "new23", "new25" makes it difficult to
keep track of stuff.

Evernote:

Pro: convenient naming of snippets, tags, auto saving everything, cloud sync
between devices (optional: embeddig images, or files).

Con: horrible editing experience (compared to np++ which I'm accustomed to)

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gustavmarwin
Does this bring anything that is not part of
[https://standardnotes.org](https://standardnotes.org)?

I'm in no way affiliated with this project but that's what I use to write and
I absolutely love it, but I'm always open to trying other tools should it make
sense.

~~~
skadimoolam
Thanks for sharing this tool.

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roryisok
Nice tool. I would add a dark theme to it, people love a dark theme. I'm the
developer of Poe, a distraction free writing app for windows, and a dark theme
is the default. I regularly get email from users telling me how much they
adore the colour scheme.

~~~
kleiba
It's good to have options. I personally cannot stand dark color schemes, my
eyes cannot handle it somehow, it's very difficult for me to read light on
dark for more than a couple of seconds.

~~~
roryisok
And a lot of people are exactly the opposite and can't stand black text on
white background. Options are good. of course the challenge is knowing where
to draw the line between having lots of features and being a simple app.

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mxuribe
Certainly the UI is unobtrusive - which is a good thing. But what seems
missing is how to go back to view files that were saved...unless I'm missing
something. Also, aren't there other tools for distraction-free writing, such
as Windows' notepad, or the open source nano (on *nix), or something along
those lines? Again, kudos for the base UI, but i think it might need a tad
little more as far as next steps (e.g. retrieving already saved text files,
etc.).

~~~
skadimoolam
It's great to hear your opinion. I built this tool for my own purpose. I
wanted to practice writing long essays that's all this tool does. But I will
surely look into permanent saving options and sharing of these notes.

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projectramo
Cool, it doesn't persist after you close the browser, which is fine. Anyone
can copy/paste.

But one killer feature would be to sync it with Google Docs. Or make it a
feature of Drive.

~~~
skadimoolam
Thanks for the suggestion, will look into saving the content on Google Drive
or other storage options.

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shime
I like the UI.

Couple of ideas to think about:

* remove save/restore and save on every keystroke

* create new URL for each new document, restore when visited

* save content in localStorage only, if it's not meant for sharing

~~~
usermac
LocalStorage is a very small space(can't recall the numbers right now) I've
come to learn. And it varies between browsers.

~~~
KeyboardFire
Plain text is small, and the smallest limit appears to be on the order of 2MB,
which is enough to fit several NaNoWriMo novels. (And that's if you're storing
them uncompressed.)

(source:
[https://stackoverflow.com/q/2989284/1223693](https://stackoverflow.com/q/2989284/1223693),
[https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/offline/quota-
resear...](https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/offline/quota-research/))

------
yuxt
Here is another one that I've been using for years
[https://draftin.com/](https://draftin.com/)

~~~
skadimoolam
This ones great, thanks for sharing.

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gnicholas
What are the privacy policies of websites like these? I use a word counter
website when writing responses that are supposed to be a certain length and
have wondered about the business model. I only ever paste in text that isn’t
confidential since I don’t really know.

I see this site has a word counter, so if it has a good privacy policy I’d be
inclined to use it instead!

~~~
skadimoolam
I am sorry for not explaining the site's privacy policy.

I can assure that I collect no data about any user, there are no cookies what
so ever. About the word counter, it uses 10 lines of JavaScript to look for
the number of spaces in your text and that's all the logic that power this
tool. When you save the content, it never leaves your browser.

Hope this clears you doubt.

~~~
gnicholas
Great — you've become my new word counter website! I'll give it a try for
drafting also.

~~~
faeyanpiraat
Why dont you simply use notepad++ and count the spaces?

~~~
roryisok
It's not that easy. Line breaks, huphens, double spaces, punctuation etc all
make it tricky

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davnn
I'm somewhat amazed by the amount of votes writing apps like this get here on
HN. That is the second time I see such an "app" on the front page.

It's a nice little project, don't get me wrong.. I just don't see the use case
to be honest.

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wowamit
I do not get what is purpose of this? Write and what? Is the purpose to share?
Or the purpose primarily is to “capture” the thought? If it is the latter, I
think getting on web and accessing a URL is a good path to distraction.

~~~
skadimoolam
I built this tool for my own purpose. I wanted to practice writing long essays
that's all this tool does. But I will surely look into permanent saving
options and sharing of these notes.

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ritlq
I have been using Left
[https://hundredrabbits.itch.io/left](https://hundredrabbits.itch.io/left)

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mattcbaker
This is cool, I appreciate the minimal aesthetic. Having the ability to
persist and retrieve would be a value-add for me.

~~~
skadimoolam
Thanks for your feedback, will look into saving to Google Drive or other
storage options.

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timwaagh
i am not sure what it is supposed to do. is it just a textbox or does it do
something i'm not seeing?

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revolucien
In my opinion one of the best writing tool / distraction free is
[http://telegra.ph/](http://telegra.ph/)

It looks like your tool but the text formatting is Medium-like and you can
share it really easily and anonymously by clicking on publish.

~~~
KeyboardFire
A similar tool, but even simpler: [https://txt.fyi/](https://txt.fyi/)

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erikb
How about using a text editor?

~~~
skadimoolam
Sublime Text in Distraction free mode is the best, but I wanted something
online.

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erikb
ssh into a VM and use vim? ;-)

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nottorp
Hmm. The other 120 open browser tabs aren't a distraction?

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skadimoolam
Good point, but I not a 120 tabs person.

