
ZenPen - nosecreek
http://www.zenpen.io/index.html#4+IEgvDUnOT83FSFknyFqNS8gNQ8AA==#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
======
dhaivatpandya
JS runs on the links abundantly. You are not sanitizing your inputs, and this
is why contenteditables are bad (click on the "this is not a bad idea at all"
to see an alert box).

[http://www.zenpen.io/index.html#4+IEgojgYAA=#FY0xDoMwDEVncgo...](http://www.zenpen.io/index.html#4+IEgojgYAA=#FY0xDoMwDEVncgorQ6EDRWJBKiGn4AIGrMaqZawmQ3v7hq+3vOV955q6YDFkQ4VTd+H9vXgU+pSuTdzePeTyE1q8sFKfiF+pPGGc7Dv7uCbOUNGzAMKGB/BBCFhN5HHTLdschqsdw2DRXXd/)

~~~
tholman
Heya, creator checking in. Surprised this popped up on HN so soon after
release (or at all). Although this is exactly the type of feedback I'm after.

I've started looking into scanning, and stripping js/malevolence from the
content ... just haven't got around to implementing anything just yet.

That said, the project is only 2 days old, if anyone is interested in
contributing its all open source: <https://github.com/tholman/zenpen>

~~~
dhaivatpandya
Unfortunately, this problem that you are trying to solve has been tried
numerous times and resulted in failure.

There's just too many inconsistencies in the way browsers allow loading of
Javascript. Something that looks to a scanner as malevolent can actually turn
up in the browser as something that ends up running.

So, unless you're somehow able to sandbox everything and able to stop causing
the Javascript to poke out, it is incredibly difficult to scan for JS issues
such as this one, especially when you're handling user-created HTML.

In fact, this is exactly the sort of problem why I created a Markdown no-
nonsense editor instead (<http://www.nimblenot.es/>).

~~~
tholman
Ooh, These are good insights! (nimblenotes is great too!) Perhaps it would be
possible for me to save the ZenPen output as markdown (compressed) and then
re-assemble it into html on load... ideally avoiding sneaky man-edited html
all together.

~~~
masukomi
my first thought was "Cool! Damn, not markdown." Security issues aside I think
you'd addressed the use case for the "common man" well. I (and I think many of
the geeks here) would prefer a markdown variant though. No selecting and
clicking to bold things, no reaching for the mouse, etc. That being said, a
the ability to bold and italicize without leaving the keyboard are pretty
standard text editor features at this point that ZenPen would do well to
incorporate and the functionality would be reusable in a markdown variant too.

~~~
nosecreek
It looks like Ctrl+b and Ctrl+i work for bolding and italicizing.

------
gbog
Nice!

A question to the creators if they are listening. What is this medium.com you
say have inspired you? I followed the link but it asks permission to access to
the list of my followers on twitter even before I can have the slightest idea
of what it is. I checked the read more thing, but after an empty tagline it
starts telling the story of guys I don't know, and I have no time reading
their stories.

~~~
tholman
Hey! Thanks for the kind words. Medium is a neat blogging platform with a
focus on good quality content, although it is currently in its early stages
and invite only.

The main concept in medium thats inspired me here, is their wysiwyg style
editor (<https://medium.com/about/df8eac9f4a5e>) over markdown... although
mine is a tad more minimal, I'd be lying if I didn't say they had a big
influence on ZenPen.

~~~
jeswin
Thanks so much for the link, for some reason I couldn't find this link. I
don't write write access on Medium; was wondering how their editor worked.

I am working on an open-source app inspired by medium. Hopefully this should
be done in a week's time. Here is work in progress:
<http://i.imgur.com/ZYWRc8k.png>

I'll also borrow your/medium's idea of showing the toolbar when text is
selected.

------
beefman
Compare to

<http://www.jottit.com/>

(a project of the late Aaron Swartz)

~~~
sfard
And <http://throwww.com>

(a project by me)

~~~
Mizza
And <http://gun.io/w/>

(a project by me)

and <http://litewrite.net/>

(a project by @jancborchardt)

Hackers are picky! :)

~~~
taneliv
I tried them all (including in other threads below) and litewrite was the only
one that supported image drag and drop from the desktop! Wicked.

You can even resize! Awesome. And store your writings in owncloud. Ladies and
gentlemen, this is how it should be done.

One minor nitpick: it would be perfect, if the text flowed properly around
images. Currently images behave as thought they were each a single character.
Also, not sure if it is multiplayer (like google docs), but I don't need that.

Thanks for the link!

~~~
jancborchardt
Wohoo, glad you like it! Image drag&drop and more goodness implemented by the
awesome @jorin-vogel.

It would be cool if you can submit the text flow issue (and any more
suggestions you have) at <http://github.com/litewrite/litewrite/issues>
Thanks!

Edit: Currently it doesn't support multiplayer, but we want to have public
sharing in soon. Come contribute if you like. :)

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madiator
Does this allow hyperlinking? I guess not, and if so the front page is
misleading since it gives the impression that one can put hyerlinked text. But
seriously hyperlinking is not required..

~~~
beefman
Click the link icon in the upper left

~~~
tholman
I think he's referring to adding links when you're writing, much like you
would bold, and italics. As it happens, its the first ticked I'd created in
github - <https://github.com/tholman/zenpen/issues/1>

~~~
madiator
Yes, thats right. Thanks

~~~
tholman
Sorry if it seems misleading. The shared page here isn't actually the front
page, but rather something little I show when the user clicks the little
question mark on the bottom right... so the links where hacked in manually.

In retrospect, this wasn't the best idea, since the links also break the
"quotation" functionality on the page. Lesson learned ;)

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Bramble
I like it, but I'm curious how long the links stay active for? As for feature
requests, maybe make this an option (like pastebin does, with link
expiration)?

~~~
tholman
Currently they last forever, since all the contents is stored in the url hash.
I guess there is a possibility that will change, since it does have its length
limitations.

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tempestn
I'm assuming the URL is supposed to automatically update to 'save' my changes,
but it's not happening in my Firefox 18.0.1. Hmm, nor in IE9, although I
notice the default text is completely different. Is there a save button I'm
somehow not seeing?

Also in IE9 I get this JS error: SCRIPT438: Object doesn't support property or
method 'atob' editor.js, line 161 character 3, which prevents any of the
controls from functioning.

------
binarydreams
We actually made something similar sometime back -
<http://solitarydesigns.net/write/>

Also planning on adding features like Save+Share, etc. soon (just not getting
enough time).

It's also open sourced on github - <https://github.com/kushsolitary/Write>

~~~
sfard
I also made <http://throwww.com> a while back. It started as something similar
to this but evolved into a simple blogging platform as people wanted more
feature...

------
ivanvanderbyl
Ha amazing, I started a side project to solve the exact same problem a few
months ago. Grats on actually shipping!

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pedalpete
I didn't realize what this was at first. It's an edit in place javascript for
a rather nice inline text editing.

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MichaelGG
You may want to make the minibar less intrusive, like Office. Right now, as I
select lines as I read them, I end up formatting when I did not intend to.
Office solves this by making the formatting bar appear up and to the left of
the selection, and is transparent until you move into it.

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korussian
This is fantastic! I teach classes and need a quick way to jot something onto
the screen. The one piece that's really missing for me, or 2 pieces really, is
the ability to make big headers and bulleted lists. If you could process
Markdown in real-time (on Enter), that would be super!

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rntksi
A few comments about the text editor:

1\. The first line, once selected, show the (b/i/") box too high up to be able
to click. Need to let the pop-up-on-hilight change orientation based on
position on browser.

2\. Once clicked, the " makes the paragraph a quoted block. But there's no
feature to unquote.

~~~
nosecreek
2\. Click the " button again and it will unquote.

------
dlf
I like this a lot and might even use it myself. That said, the link generated
is much too long for sharing, esp on Twitter, but probably anywhere. I'm
guessing its a known issue though.

~~~
tholman
Yeah you're spot on. I'm trying to think of a way to solve this... but really
trying to avoid having a back end/storing anything at all, though I'm not sure
what else to do, if not through url's

If the url is less than 2000 characters, goo.gl (google's url shortner) will
work, and that makes it much more sharable... but for bigger writings, I'm at
a loss.

An export function would help here, but in the end, sharing from ZenPen.io
would be preferable.

Open to any suggestions :)

~~~
the1
if you want to store content in url, you'll hit limits sooner or later, unless
writings are highly regular and can be compressed well.

------
wusatiuk
it would be cool to get the following featured integrated:

\+ headlines (H1, H2, H3,...) \+ wordcount at the bottom, i don´t understand /
get the wordcount feature working yet. \+ shorter urls \+ hyperlinks

~~~
tholman
You almost completely described the github issues/features list :) -
<https://github.com/tholman/zenpen/issues?state=open>

------
jonb
Love this.

And the word count target is the best thing I've seen all day. Lovely.

~~~
twodayslate
What exactly does the word count target actually do? I couldn't get it to do
anything.

I liked the experience of this web app. It was very clean.

~~~
tholman
You set an amount of words you wish to reach, and a small progress bar appears
on the right hand side, which slowly grows as you write more words... Although
I'm just finding out now that it sometimes gets obscured by people's scroll
bars, and is a little hidden.

My UX certainly needs a bit more thought here.

~~~
twodayslate
Oh. I see it now. That is really cool. Thanks!

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Colliwinks
Tool icons on the left need text (or at least a hover-over). Currently it's a
complete mystery what they do, and users don't like clicking on mystery
commands.

------
kowdermeister
Work on the URL-s. Consider that I write a page on iPad, and just want to copy
the link to my laptop. /r53etZ would be better then a 1 mile long URL.

------
solusglobus
Awesome! I put it in my Dropbox public folder. I can access it from anywhere
and start writing.

~~~
guynamedloren
I'm confused... why would you need dropbox for this? What exactly did you put
in your dropbox folder?

------
emilioolivares
This is very awesome! I actually wrote a couple of paragraphs upon first try,
congrats!

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dinkumthinkum
This is neat. I'm interested to see where you go with this. Good job. :)

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duaneb
Emacs keybindings appear to be messed up: C-a, C-e, C-k, C-y.

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lbebber
I thought the "day/night" icon was a sideways smile face.

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tariqr
Great app. Kudos to you for open sourcing it! :)

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jijji
What the world needs, another text editor. Thanks for your contribution to the
betterment of computer science.

~~~
ayanb
This sort of a snarky comment is absolutely uncalled for, especially when you
are using a throwaway account. The real interactions that the OP is going
through right now is valuable education.

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feint
as opposed to pen.io's PenZen? Seriously

~~~
incision
>Founder of Pen.io.

Well, that explains it.

Why are you talking about your own creation in that detached sense?

~~~
feint
Cos someone else built the current PenZen for the company as a side project,
but we host it

