Hugh Howey's designing a word processor

[latepaul]

I’m going to lay out the design and features of my perfect word processor program, which I’ve dubbed Neo.

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.

See more here

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

I don’t want to build a tool just for my own use.

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?

[fjtorres]

He can afford it.

[kennyc]

I think the world's got enough word processors.

[GlenBarrington]

I say, give it a shot, Mr. Howey, there is always room for a significantly better product, even in a crowded field. To the rest of us, I say, don't hold your breath, he is fighting some serious odds.

[Cinisajoy]

Will it catch homonym errors?

[HarryT]

This is of more relevance to authors than readers, so moved to the Writers' Corner forum.

[gmw]

Some interesting thoughts in his description, but the devil is in the detail. I have a lot of trouble working out whether he's describing what I would like to use or not. (After all, I really like Scrivener but decided not to use it - which demonstrates that there is room for an alternative.) I like the suggestion that he plans to keep formatting options to a minimum, but I do hope it provides some proper style management - because that is probably the biggest lack in Scrivener, and it's the thing that so many people always get wrong in Word/LO/OO etc.

[GERGE]

I prefer Mellel when I don't need to collaborate. There is nothing better than Mellel. Of course, if I am creating a real document to be printed, LaTeX.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by GERGE

I prefer Mellel when I don't need to collaborate. There is nothing better than Mellel. Of course, if I am creating a real document to be printed, LaTeX.

Even though "author" covers all manner of sins, from the description I would say that the proposed product is intended for authors of narrative fiction (or similarly styled) work. I am assuming (since LaTeX is important to you) that you are working with technical documents, and these often have more complex formatting requirements. So I doubt if you are the target audience for the product.

[Penforhire]

I imagine there is always room for another program. I'll be curious to see how it compares to what is already on the market. However, I am not hopeful it will be some obvious leap over what we have now.

One of his statements is, "The best writing application I ever used was an old version of Pages, back before Apple ruined the program." He goes on to describe distraction free writing. An awful lot of current programs include a low-distraction full-screen mode.

He goes on to mention his program "...doesn’t nag you for perfection in your rough draft. Misspelled words will not be underlined." Is finding the software switch to turn off spell check and/or grammar check all that hard in other programs?

A lot of the rest feels like what proper templates give us in other programs. When he gets to describing various features, the devil is in the execution. It is not trivial to provide users with powerful flexible features yet still have an intuitive interface.

The Darlings tab is the closest he comes to describing a versioning or snapshot tool. He does at least mention cloud save and sync but that is a very generic statement. Which services (Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive, MS OneDrive, etcetera) and what are his ideas on resolving sync issues (a big issue with lots of programs)?

I may sound like I'm spitting on his attempt but I would look at his software if it ever comes to market. Like he says, nobody's software is perfect today.

[crich70]

Like he says, nobody's software is perfect today

I don't think there has ever or ever will be a perfect piece of software. Different systems need different coding and no two people like exactly the same program either.

[BookCat]

The name caught me out, I automatically assumed it was the AlphaSmart Neo, of which I have two. They're great distraction free workhorses. On the computer I use a combination of FocusWriter and Scrivener.

Not sure there's more to be said regarding word processors. It's all out there; there's every kind of wp you could need.

[gmw]

Not every kind you could need. I like a lot about Scrivener, but I don't use it. It's missing some things I want in a WP. However, I have collected notes about how I would design a word-processor partly inspired by what Scrivener does (though as a project it sits well behind several others, like finding time for my writing projects, so it's chances of getting much work on it don't look good). It seems that dreaming up a better WP is a common pass time.

[Lima Bean]

It's practice that helps me to write a better novel, not the word processor. I'd rather spend my time writing the next book than learning a new word processing program. For the time being, I'm sticking with Word.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Lima Bean

It's practice that helps me to write a better novel, not the word processor. I'd rather spend my time writing the next book than learning a new word processing program. For the time being, I'm sticking with Word.