4 ms·

"Windows 8/10 only at the mo, sorry." Well... why? I get, like, macOS requiring a Mac for Xcode to ship an .app bundle. But wha'bout that Linux?

roryisok 9y ago
Excellent question. Poe was created because back in 2012 when I upgraded to Windows 8, there were no distraction free / focus writing apps in the store, and none of the existing ones (like the stupendous writemonkey) had a fullscreen mode that would play nice with Windows 8's app switching. This wasn't any fault of the developers of those apps - MS gave switching priority to 'metro' apps, so anything that was win32/64 was a second-citizen (of course this changed with 10, but at the time they were committed). I was learning how to write store apps, I wanted a writing app on my surface. I saw an opening, and I took it. Everything I've done since has been built upon that first app. Fast forward five years and I have lots of users who like the app (40k or something), but all my code is JS, built upon the Windows UWP/JS stack. It's what I know best. I really do want to build an app for Linux, and for macOS. I have bad days where I'm totally put off, because there are some fantastic writing apps out there already that do so much more than Poe can (FocusWriter, for example, does everything Poe does and is already cross-platform, and has features that I can only dream of). But on good days, I feel like maybe having a choice of apps is a good thing, and maybe there are things about Poe that people like over other apps, and maybe the good people of linux and macOS might actually use it. On those good days, I continue my work on porting to Electron as a cross-platform MVP. I know some people won't like that, but I am time limited, as I pointed out in another comment. This is the only way I'll have time to do it short of quitting my full-time job, abandoning my in-progress novels and selling my family on ebay.
woodrowbarlow 9y ago
i assume it's because of UWP and the monetization and visibility opportunities offered by the microsoft app store.

roryisok 9y ago

Excellent question. Poe was created because back in 2012 when I upgraded to Windows 8, there were no distraction free / focus writing apps in the store, and none of the existing ones (like the stupendous writemonkey) had a fullscreen mode that would play nice with Windows 8's app switching. This wasn't any fault of the developers of those apps - MS gave switching priority to 'metro' apps, so anything that was win32/64 was a second-citizen (of course this changed with 10, but at the time they were committed). I was learning how to write store apps, I wanted a writing app on my surface. I saw an opening, and I took it. Everything I've done since has been built upon that first app. Fast forward five years and I have lots of users who like the app (40k or something), but all my code is JS, built upon the Windows UWP/JS stack. It's what I know best. I really do want to build an app for Linux, and for macOS. I have bad days where I'm totally put off, because there are some fantastic writing apps out there already that do so much more than Poe can (FocusWriter, for example, does everything Poe does and is already cross-platform, and has features that I can only dream of). But on good days, I feel like maybe having a choice of apps is a good thing, and maybe there are things about Poe that people like over other apps, and maybe the good people of linux and macOS might actually use it. On those good days, I continue my work on porting to Electron as a cross-platform MVP. I know some people won't like that, but I am time limited, as I pointed out in another comment. This is the only way I'll have time to do it short of quitting my full-time job, abandoning my in-progress novels and selling my family on ebay.

woodrowbarlow 9y ago

i assume it's because of UWP and the monetization and visibility opportunities offered by the microsoft app store.