5 ms·

Show HN: First Draft (beta) – distraction-free writing for first drafts

11 points by wildermuthn 12y ago

wildermuthn 12y ago
I built this for myself, for two different reasons: 1) I wanted to learn Common Lisp. CL does indeed rock. 2) I wanted a way to finish my first drafts, usually for short stories, but also for novels.
- munchor 12y ago
  Ctr+A and then Backspace doesn't seem to be working. Ctrl+ArrowKeys and Ctrl+Backspace doesn't work they way it usually works either.
  - wildermuthn 12y ago
    Thanks! Ctrl-A, along with many of the other typical editing shortcuts, have been disabled in order to keep me from editing. All you can do is backspace one letter at a time, for minor annoyances like spelling and such. The idea is that I'd like to dump the words out with as little editing as possible. If I can do that, I'll have a better chance of actually finishing the first draft.
aghillo 12y ago
Actually, I really like the simplicity of this - will give it a try! It would (of course) be nice to save locally thought.
- wildermuthn 12y ago
  That'd be a nice feature. If there's interest in First Draft, I have a desktop version based on nodewebkit that I can release. Right now, it can export your file to Google Docs, and from there you can save locally.
  - babo 12y ago
    That would be awesome! I tried the online version, feels good as a writing tool, like an old fashioned typewriter.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
stoolpigeon 12y ago
I like the idea quite a bit. Though I would like to be able to look back at what I've done more easily, even if I can't edit it. If I'm writing something longer I may need to go back periodically to refresh my memory (yes, even as I am writing). It messed with my flow to have to go up and use the menu button thing at the top.
- wildermuthn 12y ago
  I like the idea of being able to scroll up but not being able to edit. Thanks for the feedback. For now, I've added a cmd-L or ctrl-L shortcut to open up the last page view.
babo 12y ago
My screen is vertically oriented, having only a dozen lines visible is a huge waste. I understand your purist design decisions but that feels bad for me. Another note, line endings and text handling is somehow broken in the final google docs.
selectout 12y ago
Just wrote my first blog post using this and it was actually a nice refreshing experience. Much easier to write I found. My one gripe is when I export to Google Docs for further editing, it has some weird formatting. The words don't get wrapped, and adding new lines of text pushes everything down a new line, not sure how to get rid of that.
- wildermuthn 12y ago
  That is odd. Working on it.
  - rhythmvs 12y ago
    Probably because you inject   (no breaking spaces) instead of regular word spaces — so lines can’t be wrapped. Also, the editor does not accept accented letters (Ä Ö Ü ä ö ü etc.), no Greek (Δεν Έλληνες), in short no Unicode, and not even full ASCII (common punctuation marks like — –). It seems the app is listening to keys and basically re-implementing the whole typing input — which means you’d be in for some very heavy very low-level stuff (support for all of the 128k Unicode codepoints)… I guess you’d had to do such a workaround to wrap the lines yourself, and move them up steps-wise, one line at a time (instead of the native scrolling behaviour). Though I really like the typewriter effect, one could ask if that isn’t at a very big expense (both in implementation effort and multi-language support). The idea of the app (and it’s adequate name) is nice, though: stripping down even the most basic editing features (cursor moves) effectively forces one to focus on the writing at hand. Love it.
    - wildermuthn 12y ago
      Google Docs works now — you pinpointed the problem exactly. It was a huge pain to recreate a textarea, but worthwhile in that I could finely tune the editing experience. I started out with a textarea, but as I tried to disable certain parts, it just became very apparent that I couldn't hack it to death. Better to start over and fake it. It was very interesting learning about the logic behind word-wrap!
- 12y ago

11 points by wildermuthn 12y ago

I built this for myself, for two different reasons: 1) I wanted to learn Common Lisp. CL does indeed rock. 2) I wanted a way to finish my first drafts, usually for short stories, but also for novels.

munchor 12y ago
Ctr+A and then Backspace doesn't seem to be working. Ctrl+ArrowKeys and Ctrl+Backspace doesn't work they way it usually works either.
- wildermuthn 12y ago
  Thanks! Ctrl-A, along with many of the other typical editing shortcuts, have been disabled in order to keep me from editing. All you can do is backspace one letter at a time, for minor annoyances like spelling and such. The idea is that I'd like to dump the words out with as little editing as possible. If I can do that, I'll have a better chance of actually finishing the first draft.

aghillo 12y ago

Actually, I really like the simplicity of this - will give it a try! It would (of course) be nice to save locally thought.

wildermuthn 12y ago
That'd be a nice feature. If there's interest in First Draft, I have a desktop version based on nodewebkit that I can release. Right now, it can export your file to Google Docs, and from there you can save locally.
- babo 12y ago
  That would be awesome! I tried the online version, feels good as a writing tool, like an old fashioned typewriter.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

stoolpigeon 12y ago

I like the idea quite a bit. Though I would like to be able to look back at what I've done more easily, even if I can't edit it. If I'm writing something longer I may need to go back periodically to refresh my memory (yes, even as I am writing). It messed with my flow to have to go up and use the menu button thing at the top.

wildermuthn 12y ago
I like the idea of being able to scroll up but not being able to edit. Thanks for the feedback. For now, I've added a cmd-L or ctrl-L shortcut to open up the last page view.

babo 12y ago

My screen is vertically oriented, having only a dozen lines visible is a huge waste. I understand your purist design decisions but that feels bad for me. Another note, line endings and text handling is somehow broken in the final google docs.

selectout 12y ago

Just wrote my first blog post using this and it was actually a nice refreshing experience. Much easier to write I found. My one gripe is when I export to Google Docs for further editing, it has some weird formatting. The words don't get wrapped, and adding new lines of text pushes everything down a new line, not sure how to get rid of that.

wildermuthn 12y ago
That is odd. Working on it.
- rhythmvs 12y ago
  Probably because you inject   (no breaking spaces) instead of regular word spaces — so lines can’t be wrapped. Also, the editor does not accept accented letters (Ä Ö Ü ä ö ü etc.), no Greek (Δεν Έλληνες), in short no Unicode, and not even full ASCII (common punctuation marks like — –). It seems the app is listening to keys and basically re-implementing the whole typing input — which means you’d be in for some very heavy very low-level stuff (support for all of the 128k Unicode codepoints)… I guess you’d had to do such a workaround to wrap the lines yourself, and move them up steps-wise, one line at a time (instead of the native scrolling behaviour). Though I really like the typewriter effect, one could ask if that isn’t at a very big expense (both in implementation effort and multi-language support). The idea of the app (and it’s adequate name) is nice, though: stripping down even the most basic editing features (cursor moves) effectively forces one to focus on the writing at hand. Love it.
  - wildermuthn 12y ago
    Google Docs works now — you pinpointed the problem exactly. It was a huge pain to recreate a textarea, but worthwhile in that I could finely tune the editing experience. I started out with a textarea, but as I tried to disable certain parts, it just became very apparent that I couldn't hack it to death. Better to start over and fake it. It was very interesting learning about the logic behind word-wrap!
12y ago