Posts Tagged → text

iA Writer Improvements

For reasons unknown, I took about a year off from using iA Writer and recently rediscovered it.

They’ve made a lot of improvements. For example, you can import text into your document, and iA Writer will track that as imported text. This works well if you use a large language model (LLM) to help with your writing.

The ability to highlight structure and grammar is better than ever, and the library features are much improved. Historically, I felt that was the weakest point of this application. Another feature that caught me flat-footed was inter-document navigation. Just surround the document name with two square brackets and command-click to jump between them. Everything links these days.

I’ve always felt the iA Writer team has respected the application’s primary purpose: to give you a focused writing environment. However, the evolution of the application, with a few additional features, dramatically improves its utility without losing sight of that.

BBEdit 15 is Here

The folks at Bare Bones Software just announced a big upgrade to their ubiquitous text editor, BBEdit. It’s got too many features to mention, but here are a few that jumped at me:

  • A new AI-driven document type called ChatGPT Worksheets, which lets you interact with ChatGPT as you put your words on the page.
  • Minimap, a palette gives you a nice overview of the document you’re working on, making it easy to see its structure.
  • Expandable Cheat Sheets to reference bits of text that you use often or don’t remember how to type.
  • A new UI for Text Factories, a long-standing and unique feature of BBEdit.

You can read more about the new features and get upgrade pricing if you have an older version of the app.

I’ve seen BBEdit grow for the last few decades and it’s nice to see it’s still going strong in 2024.

Text Navigation with the Keyboard (MacSparky Labs)

You really don’t need your mouse when working with text. The trick is to just get a few, simple keyboard shortcuts under your fingers. Here’s how…This is a post for MacSparky Labs Level 3 (Early Access) Members only. <a href=”https://www.macsparky.com/join/”>Care to join?</a> Or perhaps <a href=”https://www.macsparky.com/?memberful_endpoint=auth”>do you need to sign in?</a>

Notational Velocity’s Relevance

I’m getting lots of e-mail questioning the necessity of Notational Velocity and Simplenote. I still have a big place in my heart for both apps. Here’s why.

The Case for Notational Velocity and Simplenote

Notational Velocity started out as the best way to sync text to iOS. That was the big selling point and the reason a lot of us jumped on it a year or two ago when they hooked up with Simplenote. It was truly one of those “your chocolate in my peanut butter” moments for mobile writers. However, that reason is not as important now as it was. Back then, the Notational Velocity / SimpleNote Tango was the only game in town for syncing text to iOS devices. Not anymore. Now that Dropbox has become the ubiquitous language of syncing to iOS, many text editors sport the ability to easily sync text to Dropbox making it available anywhere from any platform. I get e-mails from readers all the time explaining how they get by just fine without Simplenote. On some levels, this makes sense. While Simplenote is pretty awesome, it doesn’t have the feature list of other iOS based text editors like PlainText, with its gorgeous layout, or Nebulous Notes, nerdgasm inducing macros.

So syncing got easier and Simplenote a bit less essential. For me, however, what continues to make Notational Velocity and Simplenote awesome is the search. All of these text snippets are in one place, easily searchable, and always available.

How I use Notational Velocity

So I use Notational Velocity in three contexts:

  1. my go-anywhere text bank;
  2. my ghetto database, and;
  3. as my hopper of working text.

The Text Bank

I’ve got lots of bits of re-usable text. Maybe it’s the html code for the Mac Power Users logo or maybe it is the perfect jury instruction for fraud. Either way, it is stuff I will use again and want to access from anywhere. Notational Velocity is perfect for this with its quick search.

Ghetto Database

Whether it is a work project or vacation plans, I love having a note dedicated to it with key information like contacts, reservation numbers, communication logs, and essential details. It is always in sync, available on all my devices, and oh-so-malleable with text. Also, when talking to someone and you can immediately get access to these details, it scares the hell out of them.

Working Text

Finally, I use it for bits of text that need love and attention. This includes pieces out of Scrivener projects, half-baked posts, pieces of legal briefs, and just about any other text I’m working on.

So I see a lot of relevance to using Simplenote and Notational Velocity, giving me access to 700 snippets of pure gold and several more full of amusing drivel, like my favorite latin sayings. Later this week I’ll post on how I name these notes to bring order from chaos but for now I’ll leave you with this thought: Lex clavatoris designati rescindenda est. (The designated hitter rule has got to go.)