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I’m going to lay out the design and features of my perfect word processor program, which I’ve dubbed Neo.
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I should start by saying that yes, I’ve used the word processor you’re about to mention. I’ve tried them all. From yWriter and Scrivener, to Hank’s Writer and OpenOffice, to FocusWriter and Page 4. I’ve probably tried writing apps that you’ve never heard of. I’m the guy in the middle of the Venn diagram of: “Early Adopters,” “Beta Testers,” “Professional Writers,” and “Software Hoarders.” I won’t get into why each of these applications suffers from a near-fatal flaw, and I don’t mean to upset those who find that one of these programs works for them. I just want to build something better. And when I talk to writers about what I want to build, I hear from the vast majority of them that they hope I succeed. Because they haven’t found a writing program they love either.
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It's an interesting mix of features. In some ways it seeks to be a 'distraction-free' writing tool but it also includes 'productivity tools' with graphs and outlines. He says many existing tools are bloated but he wants to include things like tracking where you've submitted you "WIPs", and other things not strictly to do with the writing.
It seems very geared to particular tastes, preferences, way of working and type of project. Which is fine although he does say
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I don’t want to build a tool just for my own use.
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I think the dilemma will be between listening to feedback and making it suit a wider range of people, and avoid bloat. (They always say that for most people only use about 10% of Word's features, trouble is for any individual person it's a slightly different 10%.)
I also suspect from the way he talks about managing the WIPs on shelves that it'll take control of the underlying files much as Calibre does with ebook files. As with Calibre, some will like that, some not.
What do you think?