offline trustworthy solutions for Windows
And most of all I don't have to worry about losing control over the text.
The only benefit I see (if it is possible) is collaboration, but on a work-related environment why use a text instead of Google Docs (which I don't use either, but I see the benefit of audit trail)
I've found that this doesn't consistently work across applications (win 10), does anyone else here experience the same and/or have an idea why this is the case?
I thought it was something an application had to implement, but apparently it is a Windows function that applications have to enable. Definitely wish it was an OS-wide shortcut.
The source code to ed(1) is substantially harder to memorize, and the mobile experience is sub-par. ed(1) may seem to have strong user metrics, but they’re artificially inflated by users who don’t know how to close it and thus have kept the same session open since the early 1970s, making it difficult to inform them of other options.
Based on upvotes, at least 16. Once the current funding round is over we’ll have more time for user acquisition but right now we just want to deliver a solid MVP.
I'm going to need to upgrade it to an electron app so users can create and add plugins ... also some sort of signup/login system so they can receive useful update emails and monthly newsletters
Ok, I've taken "world's simplest" out of the title, since it's baity and obviously editorialized (which breaks the rules at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and leads to maybe not the optimally interesting discussion.
Not at all. It’s called a data URI, and most people will never have any reason to think about them. They’re mostly useful for inlining very small icons in CSS files as hexdumps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme
Did you link to it? We don’t support being linked to, which admittedly is a concern for SEO down the road.
It works in Chrome, and Firefox claims to support data URIs when directly navigated to by the user. Are you on Edge? If it lets you override the warning you should be fine.
There’s no substitute for a thorough audit of course, but if you’re worried you’ve been MITM’ed the MD5 is:
Agreed. When I consider the complexity of a piece of software, I always take into account the conceptual weight of all the stack behind it, down to ubiquitous basic constructs like primitive types, conditional operators, etc (but simple binary size can be an easier indicator).
Otherwise it's like saying that an application is simpler because its launch command name is shorter.
Hold ctrl (on Windows) or cmd (on Mac) when clicking the bookmark.
It’s actually tricky to open a data URI in a new window using JS, in a bookmarklet or elsewhere. Browsers block it because it can be a vector for phishing attacks.
It’s a text editor. It can edit text just fine. If you need to do esoteric stuff like opening/saving you might as well install Visual Studio or something.
You can open and save. Just use the browser's save function, to save a local HTML file. (At least on my computer, this saves the text you put in, at least if you select the "complete" option when saving.) You can then recall that file just as easily.
Of course, it will only save as HTML and recall the same HTML file you saved in this way, and doesn't support plain text files. But, nevertheless, you can open and save.
Interesting idea, but realised that I can't use undo/redo after pressing Tab (at least on FireFox); it immediately made the experience awkward and more complicated.
As I'm sitting here with my pencil, paper, and eraser ( some pencils come with erasers! ), I wonder what could be easier than this kind of text editor.
Exactly. I can't imagine why anyone would use a web site for drafting text, especially "temporary" drafts, which are probably more in need of privacy than the subsequent text that we publish / send out! What I do is have OneNote open all the time. It's blocked by the firewall from contacting the web and all notebooks are local. As an upside: if the temporary text turns into something substantial, you can use OneNote's organizing features to organize it, too. AKOO: Always Keep OneNote Open :-)
You are right of course, I was just aiming for the simplest possible editor. Would you agree that having support for backspace still just barely counts as editing?
Good question. It will only be a matter of time until you need a browser and an internet connection to blink your eye or take a breath. Google will be up your every orifice. I bet they'll find a way to make a profit from that.
Maybe they can convince and buy pro.be domain from the Belgian registry (who have marked it as "not available"). That way you could have a subdomain for every conceivable phenomenon, surface and orifice.
Given the amount of unused space in the toolbar I believe you can safely add some handy features without making it worse in any sense so even more people would appreciate it. I'd add regex search&replace (with support to add/replace newline and tab symbols) and codepage conversion (including support for decrypting wrong codepage text and encoding/decoding the selected text as a URL replacing non-latin symbols with their codes and vice versa).
Follow-up a year later: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6366724