the friday blog

As a writer, albeit a writer who has to squeeze in his writing in between web design and website update duties, I tend to be quite passionate about the technology that I use to assist myself in my creative efforts.

I’ve already mentioned (in Q10 – a minimalistic word processor) that my personal writing process tends to involve writing the original draft longhand, then transcribing the draft using a distraction free text editor (I’m currently using PyRoom – it does all that I need) during which, the word count tends to double. Finally, I import that text into a proper word processor (such as Open Office Writer) for the final printable draft.

I seem to have started off here, at The Friday Blog, nattering on about minimalistic word processors and how the desktop layer of my computer (Gnome in my case) is more important to me than the underlying operating system.

However, I meant The Friday Blog to be a discussion area for using technology to help with the creative process; in my case, writing.

Often I find myself doing my day job, designing websites and updating my various blogs, when I discover a few minutes to spare to update a story that I’m working on.

Now, although I have a dedicated “writing machine” it is often easier to stay on my main machine and write on that.

When I started The Friday Blog I wanted to have an outlet for my varied ponderings that didn’t seem to fit in anywhere else.

In fact, initially the blog was going to be called Ponderings for Ponderers.

I prefer The Friday Blog as a name though, as it does encourge me to publish on a regular basis.

Anyway, I write about my life as an expat living in rural Brittany, France over at  www.BretonDiary.com and I waffle on, in my amateurish way, about IT at www.kmeckstein.com.

I detail my mushrooming forays at www.MushroomDiary.com and I also review other people’s Life in France blogs at www.aTasteOfGarlic.com.

The Friday Blog is more of a place where I can investigate the creative process and, perhaps more importantly, the layers of technology that sit (sometimes uncomfortably) between me and the desired aim – a few words, good and true.

I touched briefly upon OS independence when I wrote a little bit about the Q10 minimalistic word processor a few weeks ago and PyRoom, another minimalistic word processor, last week.

Or, if I didn’t, then I certainly should have done.

The point that I’m trying to make is that as both of those applications save their data as straight unmodified text files; those file are obviously readable on pretty much any system out there, from computers to word processors, tablet devices to  mobile phones – hell, I think that even my Microwave displays text files.

Wow, first I find one good writer’s editor and then I trip over another.

Last week I wrote a little bit about Q10, a minimalistic word processor for Windows users that can also be used on Linux machines using Wine emulation.

This week I would like to talk a little bit about the word processor that has taken my fancy and replaced Q10 on the desktop of my main machine.

And, with no further ado, I’d like to say….

Welcome to PyRoom

PyRoom, is functionally very similar to Q10in that it provides the minimum of screen clutter an just lets you get on with the job of writing.

Over the last 10 years, I must have googled linux console wordprocessor at least a dozen times.  You’d think there would be loads about – after all, I first installed Linux in 1994 – that’s 16 years ago – surely someone would have written or ported something by now?

I’ve played around with DOS versions of WordPerfect and Microsoft Word under DosBox and I’ve tried to streamline AbiWord, Writer and TextMaker to suit my needs.  Nothing but nothing made the grade.