elementary apps for writing

A few months ago, I installed the elementary OS (a Linux based distribution) on an old 2011 Mac. On the one hand, I had to fiddle with things some, as one does with Linux. But on the whole, the experience has been very positive. Computing can be fun.

The desktop environment (think Gnome or KDE or Mac or Windows) of elementary is called Pantheon. It has a very nice look to it, light and fast. It’s not Mac, but it’s Mac-like, meaning that it seeks mostly to get out of your way. Unlike many distros, elementary has its own AppCenter, where applications written for the environment are offered for sale, for modest sums. Or sometimes for free.

Recently, I bought three of them that together make up a nice tool set, handy for the creation and elaboration of documents. That’s my primary interest in them.

The first was Minder, a mindmap program written by Trevor Williams. It was responsive and colorful. Pantheon, and elementary generally, leans toward the minimalist, easily learned workflow. Mindmaps are where I often start thinking about a topic, a visual outliner that helps me get started, and see the relationship between ideas.

Outliner, also by Trevor Williams, was at first a very basic outliner, offering expand/collapse, cut and paste for rearranging, but built in word count.

I reached out to the developer to ask for a few more things. And to my surprise and pleasure, Williams quickly responded. He added in a richer array of text editing commands (move by word, selection with shift-arrow, move whole header up or down with Ctrl-Up/Down), then added some of his own navigational commands.

Outliner has two modes: working with rows (its word for titles or headers), or editing the content of the row. In the first mode, pressing A moves the cursor up a level in the branch. N moves forward to the Next row at that level; P moves back (Previous) in the same way. Right and left arrow reveal and collapse branches. With just these commands, it’s possible to very quickly zoom around even complex documents without ever taking your fingers from the keyboard. It’s a wonderful writing environment.

Quilter, by Lains, is a markdown editor, with the now familiar two pane style: file list on the left, document on the right. The left panel can be toggled on or off. One can also Preview the file, export it to html.

While all of these programs still have a few bugs in them, and none of them offer as many functions as some alternatives, it’s not hard to imagine:

Creating a first draft with Minder.

Exporting it to Outliner.

Exporting that to markdown, and doing a final edit in Quilter.

All of this reminds me of the small, do-one-thing-well approach of linux utilities. Light and fast.

At any rate, for those writers looking for small, quick tools to generate text, I can recommend the apps I describe here. And it’s just a moral responsibility to help support the talented developers who provide such tools.

Uncle Bobby's Wedding

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James LaRue - myliblog

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