International Mac Podcast

Today I have for you something that is closely related to what I talked about last time. That connects well into the other announcement I have to make, so I’ll leave you at a cliffhanger. (Yes, they’re on my mind because of the 7th Son trilogy by JC Hutchins. You should really listen to all three, and/or go to 7thsonnovel.com for all that and more, including some fan fiction. Plug over.)

Anyway, back to me. You may have noticed that Keaton, the stealer of all my ideas as it appears, has had a theme to his blog posts. Yes, I know there have only been two, but they had a theme. Keaton’s area of expertise is opinion, he has his “Keaton On:” segment, and now I will have my own. The grand title: “Will Gets Things Done.” Yes, I am about to become one of those GTD freaks. Don’t worry, though. I’m the kind that loves to tinker with new workflows, so it won’t be all about how my way is the best way.

Here’s what we’re getting done today: Writing. Yes, I told you it was closely related to my first post. The tool for today: Writer.app.

First off, Writer.app is referred to as such for the same reason Mail.app is called what it is. The name Writer was too vague, so Writer.app is what I will be referring to it as in this post.

The problem this application solves is really the same as last week’s. You really should/would/could write something, but that dang internet is just so tempting. Whatever you do, don’t go to http://www.failblog.org/. No waaait, I said nooooo… too late, you’ll never get anything done ever again. Oh well, I warned you.

Writer.app has a different take than Write Or Die. Where Write Or Die punished you for succumbing to the temptation of teh internets, Writer.app tries to eliminate that temptation. Since that would make the rest of the world very angry, it does the next best thing and tries to put itself between you and your distractions. There are three key facets to that:

• Protection from your computer: The application is very strict with you when it comes to going away from it. It puts up a barrier behind its window, black and with adjustable opacity. It also takes the liberty of disabling your Dock, which doesn’t just control what you see at the bottom (or left, or right) of you screen, it also controls your application switcher (command-tab), which also allows you to switch between windows in the frontmost application with command-tilde, and your Dashboard. As the icing on the cake, it will even hide your menubar for you. How nice. You can get to it, if you need the functionality, by moving your mouse to the top of the screen.
• Protection from your speakers: This one’s pretty simple. It just mutes your sound.
• Protection from the Big, Bad Internet: This is the hokey one. When you first start Writer.app, it asks you if you want to create a new Network Location. This is basically a new container for different internet connection settings, so you can switch between configurations easily. While I wouldn’t recommend allowing any app to do this if you have finicky settings, I would especially discourage you from allowing Writer.app to do it, because it bungled mine. Essentially it forgot to make a new Location before it changed my settings, and so I lost it all. It was only about three clicks to set it right, but it might not be for everyone. Now that that’s over with, what this does is change you to a Location with no internet connections enabled, so you can’t access the net. Simple, but effective. If it works right, that is.

There are handy-dandy buttons for toggling these off on the toolbar, as well. If you’re looking for some eye candy, if you choose to not hide apps, the cover on everything behind the active window slowly shrinks to disappear behind it. It is a bit stutterry, but it’s the best eye candy this thing has

Also on the toolbar is a print button (guess what that does) and an Export button. This will allow you to export to a .txt file, copy it to your clipboard, or attempt to add it to what I assume are other word processors, Tinderbox, Word, and Mellel. This is the only application where I habitually have the toolbar hidden. The little “lozenge button” in the upper right-hand corner of most OS X windows with toolbars, and when pressed it hides all the buttons except itself and your stoplight-close, minimize, maximize.

Here we come to the annoying things about it. I already mentioned the little mishap with the Network Location, and there’s one really big booboo that the developer made. It may be nostalgic to those under 35, but this by default acts pretty much like a typewriter. The annoying noises, made worse by the fact that they’re all the same, the kinda ugly font, and worst of all, the “feature” that makes the delete key not delete your last word, but actually cross it out. Luckily, two out of three can be changed in the preferences. (In another application, I would take the lack of command-comma as a preferences shortcut as a sign of bad coding, but in this one it’s a feature.) I highly suggest checking the box that says, “I’d like to have more modern text editing features, thanks,” and unchecking “Play annoying sound to really make you feel you’re on a typewriter.”

Another aspect of protecting you I didn’t explore is the ability to set an iChat away message that will be set when you launch the app. Your prebuilt choices are Blockwriting, Writing, Away, or Bill, I swear, I’m still locked in the hotel room with the typewriter, please send food. The developer has a sense of humor. You can also add your own message. However, whenever I tried to change it, it always went back to Blockwriting. Is it trying to tell me something?

Underneath some admonitions about how you should be writing, you can change the default distraction level, choosing if you want your iChat status message tampered with and if you want to give yourself more app-switching freedom. You can also, and here’s how you get around the Location bumble, choose your own disabled Network Location name. Presumably if you enter one you’ve already created, it will use those settings.

It also has a handy dandy word count, which just informed me that I have beaten Keaton’s 1000-word monster. I still have a bit more to say, too, so maybe this post will get a stick, then return.

You can allow yourself more formatting freedom by either using the commands in the Edit > Format menu. By the way, what in the world is a Ligature? Sounds like a very prim and proper name. If you want easier access to the tools, choose Edit > Format > Text > Show Ruler. I think it’s buried for a reason. This will give you the same controls as the TextEdit ruler.

In conclusion: This is by no means an all-purpose application. Just as Write Or Die is great when you just have to write and write until your hands are detached………(sorry, I had to tighten something), this is great for when you need to just write, then stop to look for an answer to the next homework question, then write again without distractions. If you need to access resources online, use something else, maybe Bean (maybe hint for next week?).