For those of you who haven’t heard already. My macBook decided to die on me… Okay, the hard drive was faulty and finally gave out. I have some kick-butt friends who were willing to let me borrow desktops. I wound up borrowing a sortof cruddy desktop (2.0 GHz Processor single core, 192 MB ram), but I was allowed to basically do whatever I wanted to it. It had Windows XP installed, but it was flooded with spyware. My Windows install CD was scratched and unreadable, so I resorted to installing Linux.

So I figured it’d be time to share some of the writing toys I’ve been playing with until I get my macBook back into my loving arms.

First off, I’m sorry to say it, but a lot of Novel Writing software is for Windows and Mac only. Sure some of them can be run under WINE, but as I said earlier, I’m stuck on something with 192 MB ram and 2.0 GHz processing. So the ram is the major limitation for me to run WINE (I tried it, and it was lagging).

So, what are we looking at today? Full screen editors! There were a few rules I was looking at for the ones I was going to post about. Rule 1, it must install and run on my machine. Rule 2, there are no other rules beside rules 1 and 2.

Now then, I’ve heard some great things about several full screen editors, but only 3 installed and ran successfully. I really wanted to try out PyRoom, but it would not run.

So, the three I will be looking at today are RubyRoom, TextRoom, and a4e. RubyRoom and TextRoom are specifically clones of WriteRoom, okay, maybe not WriteRoom, but if you trace back to the origin, the start of the whole WhateverRoom was WriteRoom. a4e is simply a text-editor fullscreen to ease the pain and suffering of others (the creator said it was made to go on with the fad or something).

This post is being writing on TextRoom, so I guess will look at that first.

TextRoom - Qt4 full screen writing software.

TextRoom is pretty cool. The bottom bar is probably one of the kinder ones out there. By kinder, I mean it’s more decorative and provides a word count, the file your editing, and the current time. The time part I find important for college students who lack it.

Out of the three, I think it provides the most eye candy. It uses Qt4 which has slick dialog boxes. It also provides the most features. The downside is that it also has a longer load time compared to the others. The other issue I have is that you can only save to a their file format (which is an HTML document with a different extension). I guess that’s okay, but I’d prefer options for plain text as well.

What I like about TextRoom is also the option for full-screen or non-full-screen. I know most people say you can get distracted if the option is there, which breaks the point, but if I remember something I need to do at that moment, it’s nice to be able to break out and e-mail someone, then go right back in without the need to relaunch the application.

The keyboard shortcuts on TextRoom are similar to most other programs, which make it easier to switch. TextRoom also features auto-save, an option to prevent back-spacing, and word count goals (with timing if desired).

RubyRoom - A Ruby full screen writing program

Similar to TextRoom is RubyRoom. RubyRoom boasts some of the same features, but it launches a lot faster and the interface isn’t as slick. RubyRoom also limits itself to plain text-files.

RubyRoom is a bit nicer for those who don’t want the eye-candy. The only issue I have with it so far is that the scrollbar takes you out of the environment it created.

The last one that I was able to install was a4e. a4e is pretty neat. It darkens out the whole screen, but it isn’t as intuitive as the others. The dialog boxes aren’t as pretty, and the interface isn’t as pretty. It does boast fast speeds though. What I don’t like is how you can’t exit full screen mode. This is okay for some people, but I find it a must. Mainly because in college, sometimes I have to alternate between programs quickly, and I prefer to just minimize them or put them in a window instead of exiting all together.

a4e - LeafPad based full screen writer.

a4e does have some perk though. It does support plain text files, and it also has the writer in mind. It auto-indents the first line of every prargraph and has some spacing to aid in readability. There’s also no clunky scroll bar.

You might ask why I didn’t mention JDarkRoom. I tried JDarkRoom before and I didn’t like it. I don’t know why, but JDarkRoom was a turn off compared to several other things like RubyRoom and TextRoom.

Out of the ones I’ve played with so far, RubyRoom and TextRoom are my favorites. Until I get my laptop back, that’s what I’ll be playing with.

I was finally able to install PyRoom.  It’s nice, but I like RubyRoom and TextRoom better.  The scrolling on PyRoom is much better than RubyRoom or TextRoom, but I must admit that I’m the type of person who’d like to exit full-screen, but still work on the same document.

As you have probably noticed, I like the whole green on black scheme. All of the programs mentioned have custom color schemes available.