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by oloolo 5719 days ago
1. Those programs exist because there is a need to get out of the mess that Word is. 2. Programmers do have amazing apps, writers don't. 3. Fullscreen is not the solution to absence of distraction. I can work perfectly distraction free in Firework without going fullscreen. Cross editing is the main sickness of digital writing.

The key is a predefined writing-optimized typography that justifies the absence of formatting (a massive distraction) and a sub-mode that gets rid of all the visual clutter when necessary. Some think that Focus mode is just a gadget. It's not. The noise that is similar to the signal is the most distracting.

1 comments

Great response. Thanks for taking the time to explain.

How'd you come to the conclusion about writing-optimized typography? Is this something you considered using your background in IA, or user/beta testing, or what?

Thanks. 1. I've been talking about reading typography for a long time and just got curious about what writing typography could be like. 2. Was always jealous of those amazing coding apps. 3. noticed that switching between writing in a small input field in the backend and reading in (a designed) preview mode on the frontend in WordPress improved my writing and just couldn't figure out why. 4. Secretly stalked people who wrote texts on computers at work, in cafés, and when visiting clients (online newspapers). Yeah and then (since I studied Philosophy) there was all this theoretical stuff (Barthes, see below) in the back of my head.