What do you write on?

benbradley said:

It runs fine in a command line console on XP, though I have no clue why they included it for that long. It's not there on Win7 or Win8, though, and a lot of my old DOS things that ran on XP aren't running on later versions of windows, even when the "compatibility" thing is set. I still have a good XP machine, but for the others I may need to run virtualbox with an XP or even a MS-DOS installation.

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I've been meaning to download a DOS emulator for my old Windows 7 computer. Maybe DOSbox because it's free, small, and easy. I uses to run several DOS programs using it before I blew a hard drive. I have Word 5.1, and I've been wanting to run it, too, so this should let me try two programs at once.

I use Pages because it syncs my laptop and my desktop, so I can write on both without having to download or upload anything -- the latest version's just appear on my screen.

When I'm having a tough time getting going, I use Write Room. It allows me to take everything back to a black screen and green blinking cursor, and i can just focus on the words on the screen. But then it has to be changed back into something more modern for editing, but I've found just the words and the screen can be effective until I'm rolling.

A combination of Google Docs and Word. Depends on my mood.

Am considering trying out Scrivener, thought. I wonder if there is a program that helps you formulate story ideas - that would be really helpful. ;-)

Focus writer. It's one of those nifty distraction-free programs (I used to use Write Monkey but the fullscreen bothers my vision now). All my editing is done in Word.

Aquarius said:

I wonder if there is a program that helps you formulate story ideas - that would be really helpful. ;-)

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I like to use Simple Mind (Android) when I'm brainstorming. Just look up "Mind Mapping" and you'll see all sorts of apps that do it.

As I might have indicated in earlier posts, I have no strong preference for the program that saves my words. if anything, I've historically had a NEGATIVE preference for large word-processing programs such as Microsoft Word, as on the machines years and decades ago it could take a significant time between just typing a key and seeing the letter show up on the screen, and then there was scrolling or paging through a file. All these actions are an about an order of magnitude faster (meaning they look instant instead of having a slight or more-than-slight delay) on smaller programs such as the Notepad and Wordpad programs that have come with various Windows versions. And yeah, as a coder I often use Notepad++ as well.

But my True Need for writing is an IBM Model M keyboard. It has the 'click keys' of the original IBM PC and AT computers, but it's the first model with the "modern desktop keyboard" key layout that has been standard for the decades since it was introduced. I've mentioned this innumerable times. I'll use one or more of these until I switch over to voice recognition or thought recognition as a computer text input device.

benbradley said:

As I might have indicated in earlier posts, I have no strong preference for the program that saves my words. if anything, I've historically had a NEGATIVE preference for large word-processing programs such as Microsoft Word, as on the machines years and decades ago it could take a significant time between just typing a key and seeing the letter show up on the screen, and then there was scrolling or paging through a file. All these actions are an about an order of magnitude faster (meaning they look instant instead of having a slight or more-than-slight delay) on smaller programs such as the Notepad and Wordpad programs that have come with various Windows versions. And yeah, as a coder I often use Notepad++ as well.

But my True Need for writing is an IBM Model M keyboard. It has the 'click keys' of the original IBM PC and AT computers, but it's the first model with the "modern desktop keyboard" key layout that has been standard for the decades since it was introduced. I've mentioned this innumerable times. I'll use one or more of these until I switch over to voice recognition or thought recognition as a computer text input device.

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I've heard others say this, but I never had any of those problems with slowness, even years and decades ago. I started using a word processor in 1979, and saw no slowness. It was as instantaneous as notepad. I've been using Word since 5.5, and never saw any slowness with it at all. This may be because I always keep my hardware as up to date as my software, but slowness just never happened.

And in the past several years, computers have advanced so far and so fast that nothing I run is slow. Certainly not MS office. The letters appear just as fast as on any program, and it scrolls just as fast.

Not that it would matter. There's a heck of a lot more to a good word processor besides how fast letters appear, or how fast it scrolls. I need my word processor to do a dozen this that can't be done at all on notepad, or wordpad, or even on most other word processors.

I have learned why you love those IBM Model M keyboards, though. I really don't care much about the features, as such, but the way the keys feel make all the difference.

I write on an OpenTextDocument from OfficeLibre. my mom writes on notebooks and we take turns transferring them to a pdf file on the computer.

Quote:
Originally Posted by benbradley
As I might have indicated in earlier posts, I have no strong preference for the program that saves my words. if anything, I've historically had a NEGATIVE preference for large word-processing programs such as Microsoft Word, as on the machines years and decades ago it could take a significant time between just typing a key and seeing the letter show up on the screen, and then there was scrolling or paging through a file. All these actions are an about an order of magnitude faster (meaning they look instant instead of having a slight or more-than-slight delay) on smaller programs such as the Notepad and Wordpad programs that have come with various Windows versions. And yeah, as a coder I often use Notepad++ as well.

But my True Need for writing is an IBM Model M keyboard. It has the 'click keys' of the original IBM PC and AT computers, but it's the first model with the "modern desktop keyboard" key layout that has been standard for the decades since it was introduced. I've mentioned this innumerable times. I'll use one or more of these until I switch over to voice recognition or thought recognition as a computer text input device.

Jamesaritchie said:

I've heard others say this, but I never had any of those problems with slowness, even years and decades ago. I started using a word processor in 1979, and saw no slowness. It was as instantaneous as notepad. I've been using Word since 5.5, and never saw any slowness with it at all. This may be because I always keep my hardware as up to date as my software, but slowness just never happened.

And in the past several years, computers have advanced so far and so fast that nothing I run is slow. Certainly not MS office. The letters appear just as fast as on any program, and it scrolls just as fast.

Not that it would matter. There's a heck of a lot more to a good word processor besides how fast letters appear, or how fast it scrolls. I need my word processor to do a dozen this that can't be done at all on notepad, or wordpad, or even on most other word processors.

I have learned why you love those IBM Model M keyboards, though. I really don't care much about the features, as such, but the way the keys feel make all the difference.

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Thank you both.

I have disliked my new computer since I got it over a year ago. Quad core, 16 Gig, three monitors, faster than light ... almost - I should have loved it and I didn't. It was okay. I used it. It runs at the speed of light with an ocean of open applications but I read Ben's post, looked at the keyboard, and knew instantly why I didn't like it.

It had (past tense is significant) the el-cheapo Dell mush board. The keys were labeled with decals that are completely worn off 13 keys and damaged on more (I've written an estimated quarter million words on it in the last year and a half), but I never look at it anyway so I can work with a blank keyboard, it's the touch that sucks.

So I went into the basement, looked around and found an old COMPAQ Presario keyboard with a PS2 plug on it - it outlasted the computer it came with which was purchased in the nineties. It still has all the letters legible and it has a much more satisfying 'touch'. Dang! Life is good, noisy but good; the Dell keyboard is in the electronics recycling pile in the garage.

Though it's orders of magnitude better than the Dell, the COMPAQ keyboard isn't as good as my memory of the IBM Model M.

Question: Ben, have you used any of the new Unicomp, Inc. keyboards? See: http://pckeyboard.com/page/category/UKBD

I'm considering ordering one.

James, sometime around 1989 I read a study IBM had MIT do on the subject of computer response time. I no longer have a copy of it, but the results were instructive. IBM commissioned MIT to study the effect of response time on CAD productivity. IBM found that productivity increased linearly as response time decreased until it got to around 3/4 of a second. After that productivity increased geometrically as response time decreased until it was well under a tenth of a second. Not only that, the operators said the day went faster and they went home way less fatigued.

That result was unexpected. MIT went to work to figure out why productivity increased by a factor of 4 to 5 when response time was fast. It turned out that the way people's brains operate, a second is a long time. The operator would enter a command and if it took more than a second, the operator's brain would go on vacation, change subjects, so when the screen responded they had to drag themselves back to the job at hand, reorient, enter the next command. That was very fatiguing and slowed them down.

One of the things I like about my setup here is the three monitors. All I have to do to see reference material is move my eyes to the right, there it is. I don't lose my place in the composition window, stay right in the zone, and keep going. I like that.

I bought my first large monitor when I was designing houses - I did that for the first five years of my retirement - 44 of them were built. It was a great way to keep the brain from turning to oatmeal, but I digress. I learned that more screen real estate is a huge productivity feature for me. Allows me to stay in the zone.

I do find that I need to exit e-mail when BIC time arrives, but that's not a big deal.

Fitch

Yes, yes, yes! Thank you, Ben, James and Fitch for saying it.

I've had dozens of computers. I've used dozens of word processors. I own several gadgets that can process words.

But the thing that matters most is what the techies would call my primary interface - the keyboard under my fingers, the comfy chair under my arse and the quality of the screen in front of my eyes.

I use a laptop as my main writing device, but the thing that brings it alive for me is the Bluetooth keyboard I've added to it. I will use the laptop's own keyboard at a pinch (eg when I'm travelling) but I hate using it for long periods.

A new version of software can generally be learned, but a crap keyboard will always be a crap keyboard.

Once! said:

Yes, yes, yes! Thank you, Ben, James and Fitch for saying it.

I've had dozens of computers. I've used dozens of word processors. I own several gadgets that can process words.

But the thing that matters most is what the techies would call my primary interface - the keyboard under my fingers, the comfy chair under my arse and the quality of the screen in front of my eyes.

I use a laptop as my main writing device, but the thing that brings it alive for me is the Bluetooth keyboard I've added to it. I will use the laptop's own keyboard at a pinch (eg when I'm travelling) but I hate using it for long periods.

A new version of software can generally be learned, but a crap keyboard will always be a crap keyboard.

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Yeah, the interface matters. Absolutely agree about the keyboard and screen.

My new HP laptop (Christmas Present) has a nice display, 1920 x 1080, an I7 quad, 64bit Win 7 Pro, 16 gig of RAM and a 1.5TB hard drive. But it has an awful keyboard and the touch pad from hell. It must have taken a team working day and night years to make a touch pad that awful, but they did it.

The keyboard double types annoyingly often - it's incompatible with my touch for some reason. When I type I apparently vibrate the touch pad, it moves my cursor to some odd place and the letters start showing up there. Then I have to use the horrid touch pad to fix it. (I've been known to use the occasional bad word when that happens.)

I obviously have too heavy a touch for it but I'm too old to change that. Piano lessons in my youth and a decade and a half on manual typewriters gave me a rather heavy touch.

The touch pad uses one or two finger pressure in place of a mouse button and it just plain doesn't work for me.

I may end up buying a keyboard with built in trackball to use with it. Maybe I can figure out how to turn off the touch pad with a mouse plugged in. If so, I can try to use the keyboard. Not a lot of hope for it though.

The mouse interface is important too.

I use a Kensington Expert Mouse on this tower. It's a strangely named trackball. Big heavy ball that worked great for CAD. I got used to it and kept it. With all the monitor real estate (it's a total of 5,760 pixels wide) a mouse is almost unworkable. It has a nonlinear movement algorithm that makes it perfect for a wide monitor setup. Nice precision positioning, very fast scrolling for large movements. I love that thing.

------

The screen I'm using on this tower is 2560 x 1440. It's 25" wide by 15" tall. The wing monitors are 1600 x 1200, which isn't optimal. It's much better to have the wing monitors the same height as the center monitor. The display is beautiful, crisp, fast, and wide. I love wide.

Did I mention it's wide?

The wing monitors were both new in 2001 and growing dim. There is a new monitor out that's 3440 x 1440. It's 34" diagonal measure. I've seen one. It was fantastic. I'm saving for one of those. That would become the main monitor, the current center monitor will go on the right. I'd have an additional 240 pixels total width, but all the same height - which is huge.

Fitch

Fitch

This may be a total red herring, but I have an intense suspicion about laptop keyboards. There seems to be something inherently dodgy about typing directly on top of a computer's moving parts.

They do say that there are two people in this world - those who have had a hard disk crash and those who are about to. In the past couple of years I've had to replace two laptop hard drives on different machines. In each case, I have had my suspicions that part of the problem was the downward pressure on the laptop case during typing.

These days I view the built-in keyboard and mouse trackpad thing as being for occasional or mobile use only. For heavy duty typing, I would always use an external keyboard and mouse.

Then again I do have heavy fingers and the two destroyed hard drives could be down to the best boy in the world playing minecraft on them... ;-)

Once! said:

Fitch

This may be a total red herring, but I have an intense suspicion about laptop keyboards. There seems to be something inherently dodgy about typing directly on top of a computer's moving parts.

They do say that there are two people in this world - those who have had a hard disk crash and those who are about to. In the past couple of years I've had to replace two laptop hard drives on different machines. In each case, I have had my suspicions that part of the problem was the downward pressure on the laptop case during typing.

These days I view the built-in keyboard and mouse trackpad thing as being for occasional or mobile use only. For heavy duty typing, I would always use an external keyboard and mouse.

Then again I do have heavy fingers and the two destroyed hard drives could be down to the best boy in the world playing minecraft on them... ;-)

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You could be right.

People with pile driving fingers trained on manual typewriters, like mine, could indeed vibrate a hard drive, maybe enough to cause damage if everything was just 'wrong' at a particular moment.

Vibrations are mechanical waves subject to superposition, the same phenomena that causes giant waves and giant holes in the ocean. I'll retrieve the keyboard, formerly used here, from the recycle pile in the garage and hang onto it to take with me if I'm going to be doing much writing on the laptop. It's a lot smaller and lighter than this one.

I have mice all over the place. But I'm thinking of getting a wireless trackball to take along with the laptop.

I have a 21 month old grandson who regards iPads and laptops as his personal playground. So do our great grandchildren but they are in Washington, Texas and California.

Fitch

Alphsmart Dana AT work load on SD card take home load into Scrivener.
Proofing in Word

Somebody upthread mentioned having multiple monitors. I would be completely lost without mine. Ever since I added the second I've been completely unable to work on one. I'm an outliner more than a pantser and even if I'm not working direct from outline I like to have it open for thoughts and notes that come to me. It's been very useful--the only drawback being my video card only has two ports so I can't plug in the third monitor I have. I picked up an old newspaper layout monitor when I left my student paper. Going away present--we'd switched to an iMac in the office. It's like 27" and is a wonderful piece of hardware. Without it my eyes would be dead after a long BIC time.

The laptop keyboard is interesting. I have the same jumping around/vibration problem with every one I've ever used, including this one (MacBook Pro from 2013). It's annoying. I don't have pile-driver typewriter fingers but I'm used to an older keyboard that holds up well when I get going. A keyboard for me needs media controls and a degree of durability. That is all.

My brother is a gamer and used to play an online reaction game called FlashFlashRevolution where you press keys to very fast music. His hands would be a blur. It took such a toll on his laptop surface that there was damage to the hardware. So there's definitely some truth to that possibility.

After ranting about my laptop, it seems fair to update with some good news. I may have found a way to write on my laptop and keep my sanity. That would be significant.

I spent some time playing with the touch pad. Finally found the touch pad settings buried in control panel. I turned off the parameter 'tap'. I left the parameter 'click' selected. I discovered there is a narrow rectangular area on the left and right ends of the touch pad that will act as mouse buttons.

That one change has civilized the thing to the point where it might actually be usable - major relief for both myself and my wife (who gave it to me for Christmas). With 'tap' turned off:

To my post-cataract surgery eyes, WriteWay, WORD, and Scrivener are all crisp, clear, and eminently usable on the laptop screen. I can use Scrivener with the Binder, Composition, and Inspector displayed. WriteWay with the outline, composition, and character window (very handy) displayed. Word works beautifully and is readable even in document comparison mode (probably due in no small part to my eye doctor's world class skills).

The COMPAQ keyboard, which is a mechanical over center action like the IBM Model M, continues to delight as well.

Fitch

Word
OneNote
Scapple

I outline and write my first drafts longhand, and when it comes time to type them up I use LibreOffice (Linux).

Oh, and I use Evernote for research.

Chase said:

In 1989, both WordPerfect and MS Word were available in Northern Montana College's writing lab.

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And here I thought all the words up there on the Hi-Line were permanently frozen solid.

Chase said:

Conventional wisdom was WordPerfect was a writer's tool, and MS Word was a business tool. Today, I still write with WordPerfect and only use a seven-year-old version of MS Word for business transmittals.

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WordPerfect for DOS will also handle huge documents even on a low-memory machine, because it only loads the part it needs right now. (I vaguely recall the technical limit is something ridiculous like 2GB, which was probably the system filesize limit, and 8GB otherwise.) WPWin is limited only by Windows' swapfile space.

Conversely, Word is limited to 32MB plus graphics, for a max of 512MB. At which point it's a crapshoot whether it'll eat the file or not.

I used WP5.1 DOS for ages and ages. It just writes, it doesn't get in my way. Then I tripped over RoughDraft, a relatively-simple word processor with a multidocument search function that's absolutely ruined me.

Let me temper all my comments by saying I think it's all personal preference. Shakespeare wrote better than any of us, and did so with a goose feather quill. Dickens managed pretty well with a fountain pen, and Hemingway became famous with a manual typewriter.

Put a computer and keyboard together any way you like, and some will be able to write well on it, and some couldn't write a good grocery list with it.

It's not about the software, or the hardware, it's about the wetware.

Scrivener is excellent tool.
I used to got few glitches before, thanks God to automatic backups, all lost stuff got recovered.
BUT this time i lost 2000 words that begin my new story, and hell with it, I go back to OneNote. It has no word count i adore but it doesn't go black page on me out of nowhere.
... i just needed to vent somewhere about Scrivener being a little B with me. *makes sad face and cries to sleep*

Does anybody know how to get a first-line indent in notepad++? I've been trying to figure it out. I think it would make my life easier.

I use word or googledocs. Sometimes, I'll write in a notebook but my hand cramps up very quickly so I prefer to type.

I've heard good things about Scrivener and Google Docs. I outline w/ pen&paper and write in Word.

Scrivener at home and Google docs when I'm out and about