Of course, there’s also Ulysses if you want a full-screen writing tool - although it’s explicitly targeted at creative writing, and is not free.

I just wish that they author of Megazoomer would fix it. I’d pay $50 for it if it worked properly (which it almost does already.)

Running Textmate, Terminal and Safari (without page reloads) fullscreen was just toooo nice. The bugs in the SMBL extension make all sorts of things break, though. :(

Merlin: maybe you can convince the Textmate people to make full-screen zoom a reality. You are, after all, all-powerful and named Merlin.

Well, I have to ask - Is there a windows equivalent?

Brilliant. Thanks so much for posting this. Journos like yours truly love this kind of writing environment - it’s like old-school newsroom software. :)

Jennifer

There are a couple of other Mac-centric (well, Unix-centric, but the two run together these days) ways of getting the same thing.

1) Maximize a Terminal window, type (minus the quotes) “cat > file.txt” at the prompt, and start typing your text. Press Ctrl-D when finished. This is the real virtual typewriter — once you’ve entered a line, there’s no going back to edit it. If you want something slightly more luxurious, try the “pico” editor. Type “man pico” at the command line to see how it works.

2) If you have your login set up where you type both your name & your password (instead of clicking on a user name), enter >console with no password. This puts you into a text-only mode, white text on a black screen, with a login prompt. Enter your user name & password where prompted, and then type “cat” or “pico” as above.

For the other kind of operating system, you could reboot into safe mode and use “edit.”

Refreshingly pure and fun to use. Down with multitasking! I wanna go home…

I found this via Subtraction and it’s a great candidate for a Quicksilver trigger. I have it bound to F7 which allows me to put my Powerbook into writing mode in, uh, 2 seconds. There goes another excuse for delayed writing projects.

I like this app a lot. Very beautiful. Thankfully you can change the colors and default font. It’s fabuloso!

Ahh, perfect for what I need. I’ve been using TextEdit for nearly everything because I work best in plain text. This is much nicer.

You know, I’m still trying to decide whether I hate the fact that it can’t edit a text file in-place.* On the one hand, irritating. I LIKE being able to open the same file in a series of text editors, depending on what I need to do with it at the time. On the other hand, well… it’s clearly trying to fill a niche that nothing else is really filling for the nonce. And maybe that niche is something I want filled. We’ll see, I guess. Anyway, it is kind of cool. And I’m reminded of that Neil Gaiman quote:

“Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it’s always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.”

Given that on day one—at the start of a chapter, in your First There Was Nothing—you’re not going to have much use for the features of a real text editor in the first place, you might as well just own up and face the blank sheet of paper with some amber-on-black panache. And you gotta love the fade-in/fade-out on the scrollbar. STYLIN’.

• I DO know that I hate Ulysses. (The app, I mean.) That bundle file format, where it hides all of your text in a labyrinth of directories, throwing away your nice descriptive filenames and adding in a bunch of confusing and unexplained duplication? You know, the file format that’s no better than any other undocumented binary black hole of a word-processing format? Where you have to individually export all of your files from within the app if you want to edit them with any other tools? Yeah, wasn’t super impressed with that.

Just wait for BlockWriter to mature. It is the brainchild of Khoi Vinh (subtraction.com), being wonderfully implemented by Keith at http://www.literatureandlatte.com.

Very, very nice.

Many thanks for introducing me to Getting Things Done. It is great.

[…] Very late night update:  I was checking out 43 Folders before bed, and happened to see a link to a program called Write Room.  You can find it here, at Hog Bay Software’s site. This program does one thing, and it’s doing it in the picture that opens this post:  Write Room makes all the distractions go away.  No blinking icons, no AIM messages popping up, no notifier that you have one new Gmail message.  It just makes the whole screen black (or another color of your choosing) and lets you get down to writing.  For example, this post has taken me a total of seven minutes, including coding every tag by hand because I seem unable to puzzle out WordPress’ interface. Anyway, if you’re as easily distracted as well, check it out.  This doesn’t count as a daily action, but it might make one easier down the road. (Found via this post at 43 Folders.) […]

Khoi Vinh over at Subtraction has written about a similar app called Blockwriter (several times. I posted about it on Ask Mefi, and a guy called Dan Ferrante is currently coding a Windows version of the idea.

I really want to try this out but is totally broken on my out-of-the-box MacBook. Guess I’ll just have to wait for a new version :-(

I like the how this application is simple but geeky at the same time. Another dual nature of it I like is it will take all on screen distractions away from me but anyone looking over my shoulder like a client will probably think I’m a lot more techie than I am because it looks like I will be working in a commandline environment like the “hackers” in the movies. LOL! I love how I don’t have to autosaving feature. It took me a minute to discover where the files were. I’d like to see the ability to switch between different document via a keyboard shortcut. Maybe their is a way but I just woke up and still have some morning cob webs. (I’ve yet to see a “cob” in the wild however)

Thanks for everyones interest.

I really want to try this out but is totally broken on my out-of-the-box MacBook. Guess I’ll just have to wait for a new version

I haven’t seen this reported before, please report it in the Hog Bay Software user forums with a big more detail. I’m fairly certain that it is working on some MacBooks or I think I would have heard of this problem earlier. Thanks for your help.

I’d like to see the ability to switch between different document via a keyboard shortcut.

You can do this with “Cmd-`”. That combo should work in any app to switch between the apps windows.

being able to write from right to left, removes some of the distractions of paying too much attention to what it is that you are writing, and lets me focus on the thoughts. OK there are not a lot of thoughts, but the few that I have, I treat with more kindness now.

[…] Ich muss gerade eine Menge Texte verfassen. In meinem Versuch, Ablenkung beim Arbeiten so weit wie möglich abzuschalten kommt mir WriteRoom supergelegen. Dieser Texteditor hat nur ein einziges großes Feature. Er nimmt den kompletten Bildschirm ein und blendet so alle aufmerksamkeitshaschenden Dinge wie Icons, Chats oder Browser aus. Voller Fokus auf den Text. Ideal zum konzentrierten Schreiben. (HT: 43folders) […]

Interestingly, I wrote something in 15 minutes that I’ll use later while testing WriteRoom. It’s a nice way to get started. But, for me at least, it starts to feel to thin for extensive drafting. That might happen as I use it more. On the other hand there are text editors that can provide a similar distractionless environment. WriteRoom probably isn’t aimed at this “market”, but you can get the same effect on a Mac using gvim.app or some kind of Emacs. I can cover the entire screen with a gvim window and have tons more features without any more distractions. Plus, I have the speed of my familiar text editor’s shortcuts…

It’ll be interesting to see where WriteRoom stands as a citizen of my Applications folder after a few months. Track bike, generally not good for extended journeys, but brutally simple for a fast dash! Regardless, in the last 20 minutes, it’s added something to the way I write.

Oops! The font is really small in the posting form. I relied on memory for editing a quick post and paid the price: I was funny rather than smart…

Patrick,

If you have multiple writerooms open, CMD-` works fine to switch between them.

I use MacJournal (also costs $) and love it’s full screen mode which is very similar (but a bit better) to Writeroom. That being said, then when I am finished with my writing I can click one buttor (or type one command) and it is published to my blog. As Merlins says, “Disco”

I like to use VI and shell into my text files from wherever over SSH.

Run it full screen as the only application running -> no interuptions.

I get into VI sessions so deeply that I get frustrated when switching back to GUI text editors… I automatically attempt to use the VI commands to move around the file!

In fact I wish there was a GUI text editor that had an option to use VI commands… very decadent I know.

http://www.eng.hawaii.edu/Tutor/vi.html

http://www.bo.infn.it/alice/alice-doc/mll-doc/linux/vi-ex/node23.html - muliple buffers / scrapbooks

Much too nerdy…

Windows XP users might be interested to know that “left-shift, left-alt, print screen” allows you to switch into a high-contrast mode (also accessible and configurable via the control panel) that gives you various light-on-dark options that work across almost everything. I just discovered this today, and it really makes the computer more comfortable to use. Obviously there’s more to WriteRoom than just the display colors, but I thought this was relevant.

Me, I just use Ulysses (mac only, previously mentioned). It’s got all the the stuff one needs for a contented orientated binge of creatvity and i look at things this way, instead of blocking everything: how about just quiting all the programs that could distract you, disconnect the internet a while and start doing stuff for as long as you feel like it.

I find it a sad state of being that there is a market for an app that forces all distraction out when it would be easier to just make oneself unavailable to them by disconnecting as long as it takes. it’s a matter of practice. Like any GTD activity.

Re: Tom Cooke’s comment

For those who like inverted/reversed/dark backgrounds, use the somewhat obscure keystroke on OS X that inverts the screen: control-option-command-8

Merlin

Where should I ask you for your thoughts on using “Getting Things Done” for capacity building for neighborhood groups that are rebuilding New Orleans?

[…] [via 43folders] […]

There’s a new Windows version of this program over at http://they.misled.us/archives/501