the friday blog

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.

To put it simply, all I wanted was a simple wordprocessor that would allow me to write and not get in the way of that writing.  Of course, if it used a simple file format that didn’t tie me to any particular operating system or software provider, all the better.

Looking back at it, most of what I have written over the last 15 years (and certainly the best of what I’ve written over that period), has been written by pen on paper or on an electric typewriter.

I know that there’s a certain psychology at work here.  The words come the most freely when using a cheap ink pen and a lined A4 pad; there’s nothing to get in the way, you see.  On the other hand, with a typewriter the words come out slowly but ordered, under control and, one hopes, conforming to the rules of grammar.

Sooner or later though, the words have to go onto a computer and most of mine have done so via AbiWord.

It does what most of us require from a word processor, it runs fast and, best of all, is free.

And then I discovered Q10

Q10 is a minimal Windows word processor much like the other lightweight wordprocessors that I had tried in the past.

Applications such as WriteRoom, JDarkRoom, Writer and WordGrinder.

None of them really rang all the bells for me.

What about the cloud?

Also, I didn’t like the idea of using a word processor that stored its data on the net/in the cloud.

I’m not being paranoid but, what happens if I one day want to write a novel about a sexual relationship between a middle aged man and his underage step daughter.

Or worse, about a terrorist group that was planning to fly airplanes into tall buildings?

Luckily for Nabakov, he knocked out his masterpiece on a typewriter and interested parties couldn’t hack into his manuscript.

I wonder what sort of novelist he would have been had he had to swap his Geneva hotel room for a cell in the local sex offender’s prison; spending his days trying not to get caught in the showers by Big Vic and the Boys?

I know that our freedom needs to be protected the the anti-terrorism laws that aim to stop us getting blown up or burnt to death but I think I’d be a little bit uncomfortable keeping my notes and work in progress in the cloud, should I be writing

I’m sure that one day we’ll all be relying on the cloud for our applications and data storage. It’s just, for me, that it’s not quite ready; and I do have concerns about the privacy issues.

Tell me that Google doesn’t read our Gmail; try to convince me Area 51 doesn’t exist. Hey, you might even want to try and persuade me that Neil Armstrong didn’t have to kick away cigarette butts and empty coke cans when he was the first man on the moon!

But all cool people run Linux (or use a Mac)?

Of course, you’ve got to be a bit kinky not to be running Linux or OSX on your own machine.

I have got a few machines that run a cut down version of XP but these are temporary replacement machines for clients, so that those clients can continue to work if I have to take their machines away to do some work on them.

I also run XP and Windows 7 in virtual machines (using VirtualBox on a Debian machine) but these are there really only to test websites using various versions of Internet Exploder.

But, you know what, Q10 runs fine under Wine.

Using Q10

It looks cool. There, I’ve said it. It just bloody looks good – inviting, almost. It’s almost the perfect writer’s screen – no distractions. It takes over your whole screen – no distractions, no menu – nothing Of course, you can alt-tab to get back to your desktop to check your mail/facebook etc. but, I find that I am doing this less and less. Ideally, I would like to install Q10 on a machine with a minimal desktop – perhaps just a file manager and some sort of backup system.

I’m not too keen on the scrollbar that pops up after you’ve filled a screen, perhaps there’s a way to get rid of it but, if there is, I haven’t found it yet (and yes, I have looked at editing the .EXE with a text editor – no joy!) Weirdly, this only happens on my Linux box – under a Windows virtual machine the scrollbar doesn’t appear. At the bottom of the screen are two statistics panels. I find that these don’t intrude and, anyway, they can be turned off.

Pressing Crtl-P loads the config screen. Not very much to configure really, and that’s probably a good thing. Of course, you need to bear in mind that VirtualBox also uses right Ctrl-P to pause the virtual machine – for most people, though, this won’t be an issue. For creative writing, I don’t think that it really matters if you can’t justify and format your text so that it is print-ready – in fact, once again, that’s probably a good thing.

I don’t think that Hemingway ever bothered about getting his text perfectly justified when he was writing “Up in Michigan.”

Now, I’m not saying that using Q10 will make you write as well as Hemingway but, I do see some slight improvements over my, admittedly poor, output.

There’s also no option to print your texts. A missing feature? Perhaps, but not in my eyes.

Print when you are finished (or ready to edit), and not before.

If you’re like me and need to put some simple formatting commands into your text, do so – HTML or simple BB code would work (or you could invent your own codes).

Q10 won’t understand them but, when you import your text (hopefully completed) into a wordprocessor to print out, you can always use your codes as a reminder to implement the formatting then.

Pressing F1 brings up a help screen. But really it doesn’t take too long to get used to the keystrokes. You’ll not be needing a lot of help with this simple program. I suppose that, apart from the minimalistic view, I also like my writing being created and stored as plain text.

As long as you are backing up your manuscripts, you will feel comfortable that you will be able to recover and work on your writing no matter what happens.

Where to get it

Q10 can be found at the author’s site… www.baara.com/q10

Q10 is freeware.

The installation under any flavour of Microsoft Windows is trivial.

However, Windows users might just want to read the next section to find out about the customisation options.

How to install it (Linux users)

I’ve installed it under Ubuntu, Debian (Lenny – very barebones – just base and then minimal Gnome as described somewhere on www.kmeckstein.com), Puppy and my current desktop system… Mint (obviously a Ubuntu derivative.)

It’s worked flawlessly under all systems.

For me, it worked fine if I let it install in the default directory (C:/Program files/Q10 – under the .wine directory) but I thought it would be better installing it directly in my writing directory.

It’s a single .EXE file (it does create an .ini file the first time you use it. As I didn’t want to use it in any language other than English, I deleted all the .lang files.

I didn’t want the spellchecker so I installed the version that didn’t have one.

It’s possible to have multiple copies of Q10 in the same directory (all with different names, of course.)

Each copy creates its own .ini file. This might be useful if you are working on several projects at the same time (and want different configurations for each.)

On my screen, it looks good with the default colours but I did prefer the font set to 15px.

Summary

Overall, I can see Q10 massively improving my writing experience.

The lack of distractions will keep me focussed and the portability of the output (you can’t beat plain text) means that the files I have to backup will be small and will be readable on pretty much every device I own.

It works fine under Linux (the scrollbar aside) and is a dream under Windows.

Why not give it a try.  Q10 is freeware and can be found at the author’s site… www.baara.com/q10

All the best

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