FocusWriter

rcentros · 01-20-2021, 08:26 PM

I've discovered a "distraction-free" tool some folks might like — FocusWriter. Once you get it set up the way you like it's very nice.

I'm just going to paste what I wrote for the attached screenshot here...

Quote:

FocusWriter

This is FocusWriter. It’s “marketed” as a distraction-free writing tool. I kind of like it.

But you have to understand something about it. When you first install it and try to use it, you get a tiny Times New Roman font. You’ll probably be frustrated because there’s nothing in the Menu that allows you to change that.

But they have provided a way. There are eight built-in themes. You can’t edit those, but you can duplicate them -- and then edit the duplicate. And that’s where you change the font. (There’s other changes you can make there as well.) I like big, easy to see, Courier fonts. This is Courier Prime at 14... whatever.

The Menu and status bar stays tucked away at the top and bottom. By default you only see them when you move the mouse over them. (That can also be changed.) It defaults to saving in .ODT format (OpenOffice, LibreOffice) but you can change the default to .DOCX, .TXT, and .RTF.

I chose text and the default way FocusWriter saves text caused an issue. By default FocusWriter saves something called a BOM (byte order mark) as the first character in text files. Has something to do with Unicode. Problem was, it destroyed the first line in Fountain files (so no Title was printing to PDF). No word processor or text editor I used (except Jstar, JOE) saw that character. Fortunately, once I found out what the issue was, I found that FocusWriter provides a switch to turn that off.

I enjoy writing “on the clouds” and think that this may be a permanent part of my writing.

https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/

Available for Linux (32-bit and 64-bit) and for 64-bit Windows.

gmw · 01-21-2021, 07:43 AM

I find that mountain peaking through the clouds rather distracting.

What I need to aid my focus is for someone else to do my software development work (but still pay me

).

pazos · 01-21-2021, 01:56 PM

I love that program. It has the best theme manager in the whole industry. And one of the best spell checkers! Works great with LibreOffice documents and plain XML. Also with "rich text".

I find the ability to use typewriter sounds very pleasant, but others might find it annoying.

skb · 01-21-2021, 03:03 PM

I have Focused (Mac app by CodeBots) which uses Markdown. It's very easy to use. Although, honestly, I usually just whack things straight into Scrivener.

rcentros · 01-21-2021, 04:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pazos

I find the ability to use typewriter sounds very pleasant, but others might find it annoying.

I hadn't tried the typewriter sounds until I read your post. Kind of fun. I don't know if I would use them on a regular basis, though. (My wife just saw me trying it out and she likes the typewriter sound a lot.)

rcentros · 01-21-2021, 04:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gmw

I find that mountain peaking through the clouds rather distracting.

Yeah, now that you mention it... You can basically use whatever background image you want. The theme manager is pretty nice. (Though, you could also get distracted playing around with the theme manager for hours.)

GlenBarrington · 01-22-2021, 09:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rcentros

Yeah, now that you mention it... You can basically use whatever background image you want. The theme manager is pretty nice. (Though, you could also get distracted playing around with the theme manager for hours.)

That sounds great! Anything to avoid actual writing, that stuff is hard and sometimes boring! Scrivener is good for that too! I can spend hours trying to create strange and clever names for characters.

latepaul · 01-22-2021, 09:38 AM

I really like focuswriter. I've got a custom theme saved which is just a black background, a particular font size and sized to used the whole width of my monitor.

If you want to go really old school check out WordGrinder.

Quote:

WordGrinder is a word processor for processing words. It is not WYSIWYG. It is not point and click. It is not a desktop publisher. It is not a text editor. It does not do fonts and it barely does styles. What it does do is words. It's designed for writing text. It gets out of your way and lets you type.

The author wrote it to have something to write novels on

rcentros · 01-22-2021, 08:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by skb

I have Focused (Mac app by CodeBots) which uses Markdown. It's very easy to use. Although, honestly, I usually just whack things straight into Scrivener.

Since I'm not a Mac user so I can't try Focused. When you say it "uses" Markdown, I guess it's somehow built-in?

I found that there is a version of FocusWriter for the Mac, for some reason it's not advertised it on the same page. (?)

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/34766/focuswriter

rcentros · 01-22-2021, 08:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

That sounds great! Anything to avoid actual writing, that stuff is hard and sometimes boring! Scrivener is good for that too! I can spend hours trying to create strange and clever names for characters.

I've been doing quite of writing the last couple months, but I still find time to play around with new text editors. That and eReaders — funny, just realized I haven't been reading much the last couple months. That seems to be my pattern read or write. Not often both at the same time.

rcentros · 01-22-2021, 08:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by latepaul

I really like focuswriter. I've got a custom theme saved which is just a black background, a particular font size and sized to used the whole width of my monitor.

If you want to go really old school check out WordGrinder.

Most of my writing starts out in Jstar (also a black screen) but I don't like long lines so I've set up my up my terminal (Guake) to full vertical height but horizontally centered. I've also set several scripts to open files in the right directory and add (or read) the correct extensions. It's quick and easy. Ctrl+l opens up Guake, "jt filename" opens up a file with the .txt extension in my main document directory. It's fast and the shell script is very simple and no mouse needed...

#!/bin/bash
clear
cd ~/Documents/scripts
jstar $1.txt

A little video linked to demonstrate this...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Vph...ew?usp=sharing

pazos · 01-23-2021, 08:09 AM

Focuswriter used to have a version available for the mac. It seems missing the last year. I'm not sure if that happens because Graeme has no mac computer to build it.

There's also a sister app called Ghostwriter (not from the same author, but sharing the same aesthetics and part of the theme manager) that's focused on markdown.

It also lacks a version for mac. Both apps work fine on macOS as long as you built them from source and, since they're qt apps, you don't need XCode to build them, just brew and qt from brew.

rcentros · 01-23-2021, 04:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pazos

Focuswriter used to have a version available for the mac. It seems missing the last year. I'm not sure if that happens because Graeme has no mac computer to build it.

I see. It looks like the newest version is still available, but not supported. Maybe someone else has compiled it from the source.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pazos

There's also a sister app called Ghostwriter (not from the same author, but sharing the same aesthetics and part of the theme manager) that's focused on markdown.

I downloaded and installed the flatpak version of it. Nearly 500 MBs of KDE Platform. (Looks like I should have gone the repository route, but it might have done the same.) I'll test it out. I was wondering if I could get it to support Fountain syntax (kind of the same thing as markdown).

Quote:

Originally Posted by pazos

It also lacks a version for mac. Both apps work fine on macOS as long as you built them from source and, since they're qt apps, you don't need XCode to build them, just brew and qt from brew.

I see. I was offered .dmg downloads from other sites, so I'm guessing others have done the compiling for you.

Thanks for all the all the information. Obviously my "discovery" of FocusWriter was not that unique. Looks like it's been a well-known option for a while.

Quoth · 01-24-2021, 08:27 AM

I used Notepad++ on Windows. Now I use KATE on Linux and Jota on Android.
No distractions.
A tabbed interface such as Notepad++ or KATE is good for multiple related documents such as plot, timeline, characters, places, events and the bit you are writing.

On Linux Mint 18.x with Mate desktop I had to install Oxygen Icon set in my desktop Theme (TraditionalOK with WinME window decoration) for KATE's GUI to work completely. I think that's fixed on current KATE release.

JSWolf · 01-24-2021, 08:44 AM

FocusWriter is not distraction free. get a notification and you could be distracted. Need to look something up and you could be distracted. You are working on a computer where there can be plenty of distractions.

Sorry, but the only way for it to be distraction free is to be a the only running program on a dedicated device.

01-21-2021, 07:43 AM	#2
gmw cacoethes scribendi Posts: 5,809 Karma: 137770742 Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kobo Aura One & H2Ov2, Sony PRS-650	I find that mountain peaking through the clouds rather distracting. What I need to aid my focus is for someone else to do my software development work (but still pay me ).

01-21-2021, 01:56 PM	#3
pazos cosiñeiro Posts: 1,271 Karma: 2200049 Join Date: Apr 2014 Device: BQ Cervantes 4	I love that program. It has the best theme manager in the whole industry. And one of the best spell checkers! Works great with LibreOffice documents and plain XML. Also with "rich text". I find the ability to use typewriter sounds very pleasant, but others might find it annoying.

01-21-2021, 03:03 PM	#4
skb Evangelist Posts: 401 Karma: 1597305 Join Date: Mar 2010 Device: Ipod G4, MacOS 10.12, Calibre, Pocketbook Touch HD 3	I have Focused (Mac app by CodeBots) which uses Markdown. It's very easy to use. Although, honestly, I usually just whack things straight into Scrivener.

01-23-2021, 08:09 AM	#12
pazos cosiñeiro Posts: 1,271 Karma: 2200049 Join Date: Apr 2014 Device: BQ Cervantes 4	Focuswriter used to have a version available for the mac. It seems missing the last year. I'm not sure if that happens because Graeme has no mac computer to build it. There's also a sister app called Ghostwriter (not from the same author, but sharing the same aesthetics and part of the theme manager) that's focused on markdown. It also lacks a version for mac. Both apps work fine on macOS as long as you built them from source and, since they're qt apps, you don't need XCode to build them, just brew and qt from brew.

01-24-2021, 08:27 AM	#14
Quoth the rook, bossing Never. Posts: 11,161 Karma: 85874891 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Ireland Device: All 4 Kinds: epub eink, Kindle, android eink, NxtPaper11	I used Notepad++ on Windows. Now I use KATE on Linux and Jota on Android. No distractions. A tabbed interface such as Notepad++ or KATE is good for multiple related documents such as plot, timeline, characters, places, events and the bit you are writing. On Linux Mint 18.x with Mate desktop I had to install Oxygen Icon set in my desktop Theme (TraditionalOK with WinME window decoration) for KATE's GUI to work completely. I think that's fixed on current KATE release.

01-24-2021, 08:44 AM	#15
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 73,983 Karma: 128903378 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	FocusWriter is not distraction free. get a notification and you could be distracted. Need to look something up and you could be distracted. You are working on a computer where there can be plenty of distractions. Sorry, but the only way for it to be distraction free is to be a the only running program on a dedicated device.