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Hands on with Elements 2.0 for iOS

Mark Crump — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:21:14 +0000

Norman McLean was haunted by waters. I’m haunted by iOS text editors. I usually switch between Pages, PlainText and Elements. Elements, recently updated to version 2, stands a chance at having the biggest impact on my writing workflow.

Plays better with others

Elements introduces a ton of exporting/publishing features with the latest update. Now you can send your files as e-mails (inline or as an attachment), publish directly to Tumblr and Facebook, and send to Evernote or iTunes. My personal site is hosted on Tumblr and I use Evernote a lot, so I love those features in particular, but all of those listed alleviate the pain of getting files off your iPad.

New publishing options in Elements.

My only problem with exporting/sharing/publishing is that the new selections are limited, and buried under confusing menu choices. Choosing Export lets you send the file to Dropbox, Evernote, and iTunes, but only as an HTML or PDF file. I think Elements would be great in a classroom where the full-screen, no frills interface is perfect for capturing lecture notes, and Evernote is a great repository for class notes and materials. But being limited to exporting only HTML or PDF files is a hassle. The workaround to sending text to your Evernote account is to use Element’s inline e-mail feature to send the note to your Evernote address.Sending files to other services needs to be consolidated. Instead of choosing export, PDF, and then Evernote within Elements, it would work better if I chose export, Evernote, and then the format (and create a text note needs to be there).

Element continues to support Markdown, however, making it an excellent general editor for blog posts. Also, the app developer is looking into support of Markdown formatting when you export a PDF file. If this feature is implemented, it may become best way to create a file with footnotes.

Final thoughts

Right now, I’m using Pages as my editor of choice for iOS and OS X because of the ease of using the same file on both platforms and because iCloud will allow me to seamlessly (I hope) sync files in the background. Am I going to change to Elements thanks to this major update? Pages is still likely to be my go-to tool for general use, but for Tumblr posts and Evernote entries, Elements gets the nod. This is also still a basic plain text editing tool. There are zero formatting features. No bold or italics, no paragraph styles. For my needs, this is fine. If you need to bold files without using Markdown, this is not the tool for you. Still, Elements looks like the easiest way to get text into a format I’m going to want to quickly get at on my desktop thanks to its new sharing features, which at least merits a spot on my primary home page.

Forced Dropbox usage for basic file systems remains a downside. I’d much prefer if the app stored files in its own sandbox first, and then integrated with Dropbox as an option. I’ll have to suck it up with Dropbox, though, at least until Elements incorporates the upcoming iCloud document syncing feature. Elements looks like the easiest way to get text into a format I’m going to want to quickly get at on my desktop. I expect iCloud to have a huge impact on iOS text editors on the whole, so I can’t wait to see what developers do with it when it arrives this fall.

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iPad Writing Apps: PlainText vs. Writer

Alex Layne — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 14:00:56 +0000

Among the minimalist writing apps for iPad, two have come out on top: Hog Bay Software’s PlainText and Information Architects’ simply named Writer (an app which Om clearly enjoys). Both do basically the same thing: create plaintext files that sync to Dropbox. Their approaches to the writing itself are very different, however.

Price

Writer will cost you $5.00, while PlainText is free. If cost is important, then you should definitely go with PlainText. But if you’re not concerned about dropping a little cash, read on.

Dropbox Sync

As mentioned above, both apps use Dropbox sync, so you don’t have to go through the horror of copying files over with iTunes. I do like PlainText’s implementation better, though. It gives you more options to tell it when to sync, and tells you whether Dropbox is down or not. It also gives you the option to rename the folder it syncs to on your Dropbox, but you have to unlink your Dropbox account first. Writer, on the other hand, offers only the option to link to Dropbox. Folder names can’t be changed, and there’s no behavior customization available.

PlainText offers a number of ways to tweak your Dropbox sync settings.

Text Expansion

With PlainText, you can also use TextExpander, a third-party app that lets you define short abbreviations to expand into longer snippets, i.e., expanding “TTYL” as “talk to you later.” Writer doesn’t offer any text expansion support.

Writing Environments

Writer and PlainText's main screens, side-by-side.

As far as the writing environments go, Writer provides a more focused experience. It uses a large monospace font called Nitti Light, which was created by Bold Monday specifically for the iPad, and is easy to read. Writer also has a “focus mode” that fades out everything except the current three lines. This does make it easier to focus on your writing, but you can’t scroll in this mode. You have to manually hit the cursor button on the software keyboard in order to move around the document, which is annoying.

PlainText also has a full-screen mode, but this mode only hides the sidebar and does little to make it easier to concentrate. PlainText also wastes a lot space on both sides of your document in landscape view, even in the full-screen editing mode.

Software Keyboards

Writer has the edge when it comes to the virtual keyboard. The default iOS keyboard has been extended with an extra bar above it that holds some common functions and punctuation:

In PlainText, it takes longer to get to punctuation since you have to flip back and forth between symbols and letters.

Sidebars

One of the more noticeable differences is that PlainText has a sidebar to access folders and documents, but Writer doesn’t. PlainText’s sidebar makes it easier to navigate around chapters or sections without having to press a button a bunch of times (anyone who uses Mail in portrait mode knows what I’m talking about). This makes it much easier to take notes, and indeed I’ve found myself using PlainText more than Writer for taking notes during my college courses.

Word Count

Both apps give you the word count of a document, though Writer displays the number of words in the top bar of the screen, and PlainText shows it as a contextual menu with select and paste:

PlainText adds word count to the contextual menu.

Writer also has offers an extra feature: reading time. It calculates the time it would take the average person to read the entire text in the top bar, and adds marks on the side of the display showing you the reading time up to where the cursor is.

Conclusion

Honestly, I think both apps are great. PlainText has better organization and Dropbox integration, but Writer has a more focused environment and better typography.

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Are Web Apps Becoming Over-Reliant on One Another?

Simon Mackie — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 16:00:58 +0000

More and more, web apps are becoming interconnected with one another. In general, of course, this is a very good thing, but it nonetheless introduces dependencies between these apps. And as more apps come to rely on one another to provide critical services in our day-to-day work lives, the greater the consequences to both our data and our productivity if and when these apps fail.

PlainText: A Nifty iOS Text Editor With Dropbox Sync

Simon Mackie — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 21:00:56 +0000

PlainText is a free text editor for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad from Hog Bay Software, the creators of WriteRoom and TaskPaper. It has a clean, uncluttered UI and built-in Dropbox support so it can sync files with your computer.

The interface is nicely designed and intuitive. Reading, writing and editing text files in both landscape and portrait orientation is fast and easy. Folders are supported, and once your Dropbox account is linked to the app, files are automatically synced.

TextExpander, an app that can store frequently used snippets of text, is also supported, which should make typing a little easier.

I haven’t tried PlainText on an iPad, but it looks like it will work very nicely with a larger screen:

PlainText is a great app for anyone who needs to read, write and edit plain text files while on the go. However, it doesn’t support search, which means that for notes I’ll be sticking with SimpleNote, and if you need to do anything more complicated than edit text files you’ll need to look elsewhere.

PlainText is available from the iTunes App Store. It’s free and ad-supported (an ad-free version, available via a $4.99 in-app purchase, is awaiting approval). For the sync feature, you’ll need a Dropbox account; a 2-GB account is free, and you can create one from within the app.

Let us know what you think of PlainText in the comments.

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