Filed under: iPhone, App Store
writer posts
Filed under: Software, Reviews
Writer's tools: WriteRoom wreally wrocks
As you've probably gathered by now, I'm on a search for the perfect writing tool. I did a short blurb about Ulysses 2.0 a few weeks ago, I read Megan Lavey's Friday Favorite review of Scrivener with interest, and I'll have a detailed review of Storyist v2 soon -- if I can get over the writer's block I seem to have picked up with regards to that post. There are two main schools of thought when it comes to writing tools. The first type is the do-everything tool, complete with project management and storyboarding, bulletin boards to pin notes on, even places to write up biographies of your characters. Storyist is a perfect example of one of these tools. The second genre, of which Ulysses and WriteRoom are members, is the minimalist school. These type of writing tools pare the user interface down to a minimum and are designed to give authors an environment in which to concentrate on putting words on paper. The analogy is sitting in front of a typewriter and writing.
WriteRoom [US$24.95] was last covered by TUAW back in 2007, and it is has been interesting to see the evolution of this product and its siblings over the past two years. It's currently in version 2.3.7, and there's a free trial download available on the website.
Filed under: How-tos, Odds and ends
Version control for writers
Rachel Greenham has written a very good tutorial called 'Subversion for Writers.' If you aren't a coder, you probably aren't familiar with the popular version control system, Subversion. It allows you to work collaboratively with folks on the same files (in most cases code) without fear of overwriting the work of others. Subversion tracks all the changes made to those files, and who did them, and allows you to rollback changes or branch off into different directions with having to worry about mucking up the entire project.Rachel, being a geeky writer, immediately saw the potential of using Subversion for writers. Her tutorial walks you through what Subversion is, how to install it on your Mac (if you're running Leopard it is already installed), some apps you can use to make interacting with Subversion easier, and how to track your changes. To be clear, this method is not for everyone. If you aren't comfortable with the Terminal you should steer clear of this, and if you don't revise the same document over and over again you'll have no need for it. That being said, it is a very clever idea.
[via the Hog Bay Software Forums]

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