My friend Bill sent me a link this morning to Writeroom:
WriteRoom is designed for distraction free writing. If you are looking for a programmer's text editor or tool to help you manage large writing projects then there are better choices. If you need syntax highlighting and command line integration try TextMate. If you need to manage large writing projects try Scrivener. If you just need to block out distractions and write then I think WriteRoom is a great choice.
I'd heard some people mention this before, but is anyone using it or having students use it? I'd be curious to hear what people think of the concept. Sadly, I don't think any program like this could really prevent distractions while writing, since the net is still only a click away.
blocking out distractions
Such a claim strikes me as little more than gimmickry. Even in the days of my smith-corona portable electric there were plenty of ways to distract myself from getting work done. I think that when someone gets used to whatever word processing program they use, the "distractions" are just so much background noise in that they don't really distract. So what if I correct a typo on the fly because of a red squiggly? I turn off most of the green grammar squigglies if I don't want to deal with them as I work. Seems a gimmick in search of an audience.
bradley || bleckblog.org
definitely gimmickry
It's definitely gimmickry because, if I am not mistaken, Mac OSX has vi built in through the command line. Vi is a great command line text editor that would serve the same purpose without having to download and eventually pay for something that's already possible. Vi has no complex menu system because everything works through keyboard commands. Just one line of distraction at the bottom of the screen which provides a little information on what you are doing (and it's pretty simple information). So I'd call it "gimmickry" because they are hoping to sell Mac OSX users something that they don't need. LOL
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Charlie | cyberdash