International Mac Podcast

It seems I start every post with a discussion of my GTD theme, but I do want to say that it has evolved. Instead of being about GTD, the system, it’s more about organizing and removing distraction. It is in that spirit that I bring you a comparison of many apps that any writer may find a use for: the fullscreen text editor. This idea revolves around removing more or less everything but your words from your screen, and having you concentrate on what you type.

The Contestants

There are two main categories of fullscreen writers—those designed specifically for that purpose, and those who have a fullscreen editor built in to a more full-featured word processing or organizing app.

WriteRoom

The most well-known fullscreen writing app is, unless I’m badly mistaken, WriteRoom. WriteRoom fits squarely into the single-purpose category, having only one or two features of note that distinguish it from a fullscreen TextEdit. It’s also very customizable, though the defaults have always been fine for me.

One of its big features is integration—it has the ability to put an “Edit in WriteRoom…” item in the Edit menu of your other applications. This will open your text in WriteRoom, where you can write and/or edit in full-screen, and it is piped back to where your cursor was when you started WriteRoom every time you save. There’s only one caveat: It hasn’t worked since Leopard. Yes, that’s 10.5. The developers do have an alternative in the form of a menubar item in beta, although I found that buggy (where “buggy” means “not working at all”). The solution I use involves using MacVim’s version, which works as WriteRoom’s is supposed to, but allows you to choose from a number of editors, including WriteRoom.

WriteRoom’s interface is also more than fullscreen TextEdit. I mentioned its customizability, and the options range from choosing the colors of the text and background and picking fonts to defining exactly (well, almost exactly) what portion of your screen the text occupies. This includes a nice feature called Typewriter Scrolling that will keep the line you’re typing on in the middle of the screen, unless your document doesn’t stretch that far, though if the text extends below that point it is still visible.

WriteRoom costs $24.95, though many people got it free from the six-day MacHeist Nanobundle giveaway.

WrongRoom

If you’re going to rip off a piece of someone else’s software, this is the way to do it. The developer of WrongRoom tells you that his learn-how-to-program project was entirely a clone of WriteRoom, and encourages you to use that instead. However, if you’re strapped for cash, it’s a viable free option, though missing several layers of polish.

WrongRoom is close to a fullscreen TextEdit. It has one window with a text box, and a button to go full-screen. You can use ??C to toggle between some pre-set color combinations, and ?W to choose from three different widths. Two things that would make it usable in my mind would be the ability to set the font and not having the scrollbar show in white in the dark background—especially when the text doesn’t scroll. Sadly, it is not to be.

JDarkRoom

JDarkRoom is a better alternative to WriteRoom than WrongRoom. Its biggest disadvantage is that it’s made with Java, but in day-to-day usage that doesn’t really get in the way if you just type. If you use Snow Leopard’s text substitutions, those don’t work, so you’re better off with either another option for fullscreen writing or a third-party substitutions utility—I only tested Typinator, but I assume others will work as well. Spell checking is also not included.

JDarkRoom’s main annoyance is its non-standard interface. The settings panel especially is awkward to use, especially since drop-down menus seem to be some very awkward mix of OS X and custom elements. The settings are close to as comprehensive as WriteRoom’s, allowing you to change the colors, font (with limited choices), and positioning of text, with the exception of the typewriter scrolling.

The one feature JDarkRoom has that the others don’t is an export using Markdown, John Gruber’s syntax for easily readable styled web content and system for translating it into HTML. This appears to be limited to Markdown only.

Writer.app

Writer for Mac (not to be confused with the web app of the same name) straddles the two categories. Its main focus is on distraction-free writing, not simply full-screen. If you are so inclined, you can read about its take on distraction-free writing in this post, one of my first on the IMP network.

Web Apps

I lump these into one category because, on the whole, they don’t have many innovative features, and there are too many to mention by name. Some of the most full-screen-y ones are Writer, DarkCopy, SimpleText, which syncs with WriteRoom for iPhone and has an OS X sync client, and Write Or Die, whose minimalism is a side affect of its “persuasive” features (to put it nicely), which you can read about in another of my first reviews.

Scrivener

Breaking fully into the category of more comprehensive apps with fullscreen mode as a feature, Scrivener is best described as an integrated writing and organization package designed for research-based writing projects. I won’t launch into a full report on its capabilities, but its fullscreen mode is relatively robust.

Scrivener allows for many of the same customizations, of color and positioning. The font is inherited from that of the normal view, which can be changed. Unlike most single-purpose apps, it has a bar that appears when your mouse is near the bottom of the screen that allows you to change some of these settings. It also uses the typewriter scrolling present in WriteRoom.

Bean

The best way to describe Bean is TextEdit with a toolbar. That toolbar brings with it a few new features, however, not just easy access to TextEdit functionality. One of these is its fullscreen view, which gets about halfway to WriteRoom.

You can customize the colors, and the amount of horizontal space the text takes up. You can adjust its zoom, but the font is set as it is in a normal word processor. It includes the typewriter scrolling, which cannot be adjusted. You can choose to have the normal controls show in fullscreen view as well, though that defeats the purpose.

Pages

One of the most touted features of Pages ‘09 was its fullscreen mode. Pages takes it a different direction than all the others. When you enter its fullscreen mode, Pages simply shows the normal page view on a black background. A bar similar in behavior to WriteRoom’s is on top for formatting commands and one on the right for the pages of your document. Pages’ fullscreen view is about getting rid of distractions outside itself—the white page on the black background offers less of an isolated feeling than the other apps techniques.

Others

There are probably other options in this category—Word, for example, may or may not have a fullscreen mode, though I don’t have a copy and I’m not willing to load it up on this machine. I encourage you to leave your favorites in the comments, along with why you like it.

The Smackdown

Application	Price	Customizable	Typewriter Scrolling	Integration	Only shows text
WriteRoom	$24.95	Very	Yes	Somewhat	Yes
WrongRoom	Free	Barely	No	No	Not quite
JDarkRoom	Free	Yes	No	No	Yes
Writer.app	Free	Not Really	No	No	No
Scrivener	$39.95	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Bean	Free	Barely	Yes	No	Not quite
Pages	$79 (iWork)	No	No	No	No

Application	Syntax-aware Export	Control Bar	Other Distraction-Preventers
WriteRoom	No	No	None
WrongRoom	No	No	None
JDarkRoom	Markdown	No	Stays frontmost even after switching to another app
Writer.app	No	Normal toolbar	Mutes sound, sets iChat away, disallows app switching, and more
Scrivener	MultiMarkdown	Yes	None
Bean	No	Zooms only, full toolbar optional	None
Pages	No	Yes	None

There are enough alternatives here for you to mix and match your most needed features, and one of these will likely fit your needs. I use WriteRoom because of its integration and because I have it set up exactly how I like it.

Now, shoo. Get writing. You know you should, so pick your poison and fire it up, and then I’ll be go—

Well, you could at least have said goodbye.