Sometimes, I write for print, and I keep a few fiction projects on the go as well for when I have the time and energy to develop them. I write primarily non-fiction, mostly for online consumption in the form of articles (like this one!) and photo essays ( like this one!). When I last compared these two, I identified my criteria as follows: To make it easier to follow along with my impressions, it helps to understand where I’m coming from as a writer and what my priorities are. With everyone sharpening their digital pencils, I figured it was time to dive in and see how their respective changes have improved the experience of using and trusting them with our words. And each of them has come a long way in the intervening years. These continue to be, in my estimation, the finest plain-text writing environments out there. You can get iA Writer 5.5 on the App Store and read more about my writing setup based on iA Writer, Markdown, and file bookmarks here.It’s novel season, which has me thinking about the ways we write and the tools we use to get it done.Ī few years ago, I compared the two front-runners: iA Writer and Ulysses. I’ve been using iA Writer as my only text editor for two years now, and I’m continuously impressed by the thoughtfulness and attention to modern iOS/iPadOS technologies that goes into the app. Thanks to the latter option, I can now see my word and open task count at once while I’m editing a story. Even better: there’s a new ⌘⌥= keyboard shortcut to toggle highlighted text.Īmong a variety of other updates (you can read more about them on the developers’ blog), iA Writer 5.5 also comes with a powerful PDF preview (which supports custom templates, so I can export my drafts as PDFs that look like the MacStories website) and the ability to show multiple stats in the editor at once. When I used Scrivener to write one of my iOS reviews years ago, the ability to highlight text in the editor was one of my favorite options to mark specific passages for review with iA Writer 5.5, I can now highlight text and have a clear visual indication without giving up on the Markdown syntax. Highlighted text will turn yellow, and it’s impossible to miss. Version 5.5 also brings support for highlighting text inside a document by surrounding it with two equal signs – e.g. I’m so used to these two new pointer features in iA Writer 5.5, I wish more iPad apps adopted them. Besides obvious support for clicking toolbar buttons and other elements in the app’s UI, trackpad support includes the ability to swipe horizontally with two fingers to show/dismiss the Library sidebar (which I do all the time now) and – my favorite touch – support for clicking a document’s name in the title bar to rename it. On iPad, the app can now be fully controlled with the trackpad. I’ve been testing this version for quite some time (it’s the update I originally mentioned in my Modular Computer story back in April), and there are some fantastic details worth pointing out. IA Writer, my favorite text editor for all Apple platforms (which I still use as the central piece of my Markdown collaboration workflow via GitHub), has been updated today to version 5.5 both on Mac and iOS/iPadOS.
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