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Show HN: wābisābi — distraction-free writing

12 points| ruidlopes | 14 years ago | reply

A simple, in-browser, fullscreen text editor (a la WriteRoom and Byword.app) http://wabisabi.cc

Feedback welcome!

15 comments

order
[+] loevborg|14 years ago|reply
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).

[+] ruidlopes|14 years ago|reply
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?)

[+] revorad|14 years ago|reply
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|14 years ago|reply
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.

[+] sunspeck|14 years ago|reply
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|14 years ago|reply
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!

[+] djeckhart|14 years ago|reply
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|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] xnxn|14 years ago|reply
That seems to be the point; you can only edit documents fullscreen. It prompts you to press F11 in Chrome.
[+] scottyallen|14 years ago|reply
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|14 years ago|reply
Thanks, that's exactly the point: not to replace every tool/editor, but to be the best/simplest for a limited set of tasks :)
[+] tingletech|14 years ago|reply
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|14 years ago|reply
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.