If there’s a category of iOS apps I’m always interested in checking out, that would be text editors. I write for a living, and while a better app won’t make me a better writer, a text editor that works for me can make me type and research more efficiently. Text editors are tools, and I’m always curious to see whether the market is offering new ones to get the job done with faster, smarter techniques. As Gabe said, fiddling often gets a bad rap, but my fiddling with text editors has actually allowed me to find apps that facilitate the only process that matters: typing words on a screen.

In the past year, I have taken a look at several text editors. I compared my favorite ones – picking Writing Kit as my go-to editor and research app – but I also kept WriteUp on my iPad’s Home screen, as the app received some interesting updates including iCloud support and swipe text selection. For the past two months, though, I have found myself coming back to another text editor that I had been previously recommended by various Internet pals: Nebulous Notes. And in spite of my publicly stated praise for Writing Kit, I have been getting lots of writing done with it – so much that I haven’t used any other app for my posts and notes. (more…)

WriteUp is one of my favorite text editors. Since I published my comparison of text editors for iOS — with a focus on the iPad –the app has been vastly improved thanks to a major 3.0 update that added iCloud sync, a split browser, and possibility to “pin” notes and folders and mark them as favorite. While other text editors like Writing Kit may have better researching tools, or serious automation features like the macros of Nebulous Notes, I still like the streamlined UI of WriteUp to easily navigate across my Dropbox folders (the app can open any folder or sub-folder in your Dropbox) and create notes that require copy & paste from a webpage.

When version 3.0 was released, I wrote:

With strong sharing options, support for Versions (another feature most iOS text editors are lacking), images, custom CSS previews, and all the other features of version 2.0, WriteUp 3.0 has still some rough edges, but shows an incredibly promising, and possibly even more powerful text editing future.

With version 3.2, released earlier this week, WriteUp aims at making its text editing more “powerful” by addressing a popular concern of users of iPad text editing apps: text selection. Inspired by the Hooper Selection concept video that made the rounds back in May, WriteUp 3.2 allows you to move the cursor on screen by swiping with two fingers on the virtual keyboard. You can also swipe with three fingers to select text.

While slightly different from the concept video (apparently, several developers have struggled to find ways to activate the text cursor or iOS text selection with gestures performed directly on the content area), WriteUp’s implementation is still solid and, in my opinion, one of the best so far (a number of iPad apps followed up in recent weeks with similar takes on cursor navigation and text selection, all of them implementing two-finger swipes in different ways).

The fact that WriteUp’s swipe selection happens on the keyboard doesn’t, however, trigger keystrokes, and it can be used both vertically and horizontally. In my workflow, this is particularly useful to navigate Markdown list-based documents I create in Nebulous Notes (thanks to macros) and make changes without having to manually (and slowly) select everything. Most of all, I like how WriteUp’s swipe selection doesn’t get in the way with a custom UI and additional virtual trackpads (like other apps do).

WriteUp 3.2 also adds new features like research bookmarks and history suggestions, and new fonts. It’s a good update, and I recommend it. Get the app here.

Earlier this year, I promised myself that I would get more work done using the iPad. The plan was an ambitious one: after three years of writing, researching, and online communication done exclusively using my MacBook (and, perhaps to an extent, my iPhone) switching to the iPad as my main work machine did indeed seem like a daunting task at first. Yet the more I thought about it, the more I realized the long-term benefits of giving the iPad a fair chance as a full-time writing tool would outnumber the perks of using a device I am accustomed to. With a mature ecosystem of apps that sees great new software coming out every week and a Retina display on the horizon, starting to use the iPad as my main computer was an investment.

The experiment has been a success so far. I use my iPad a lot more, I enjoy it, and, more importantly, the device is helping me work smarter because it lets me focus more on what I do for a living: writing.

If anything, the only negative note is that the iPad has given too much choice when it comes to picking a single writing tool. See, on the Mac, when I need a text editor, I usually fire up Text Edit (rigorously set in plain text mode) and forget about it. But there is no Text Edit for iPad. And all those text editors on the App Store look so tempting.

What follows is an overview of the four text editors (for writing, not coding) that I have preferred using in the past three months. Like TJ Luoma, I have bought many of them. Almost too many, to the point where I needed to stop fiddling already, and get the writing done. Because while I’m one for supporting developers and buying apps and paying for the tools I use, there is a line between “trying software” and “using software to work better”, and I had crossed that line with my curiosity for text editors. So I took all of them, tested them, and deleted the ones I didn’t like. I kept the ones with Markdown formatting and Dropbox sync. I didn’t include recent additions to the ecosystem like iA Writer (for iPhone) and Byword, as I need to test them more accurately. Eventually, I picked four apps.

Some smart folks have already written about the note-taking apps/text editors they like and use. Mine doesn’t want to be a comprehensive comparison that takes into account all the possible options from the App Store. It will likely lack the app you like, and yes, it’s also very likely that it’s not here for a reason. In this article, I am just comparing four apps that, taken singularly, allow me to write for the site; these four apps can stand on their own. However, they have their differences, which is why I am, ultimately, going to choose one and stick with it. The apps are universal, and while I am primarily looking at their iPad versions, almost all of the features I mention are also available on the iPhone.

I have no doubt new iOS text editors will come out, activating my curiosity trigger again. Until then, these are the four text editors I was most impressed with. (more…)

A lot of hard work has gone into the latest release of nvALT, including better Multi-markdown 3 support (MMD3 has to be installed locally of course), a shortcut (⇧⌘L) for inserting links, Simplenote tag sync (which the author notes may choke on large note collections), the ability to pin the preview window when moving across apps (^⌘P then click the pin at the bottom of the window), and Textmate-like auto-pairing that will complete brackets for you as you type. (Pretty nice eh?)

Also available are browser extensions for Safari and Chrome that can get webpages and text into nvALT. The extensions allow you to interact with webpages and links to dumps its textual contents or selection into the text editor — nvALT can run text through Instapaper’s mobilizer to clean up the results as text splashes into view. Personally I’m not so big about dumping webpages into nvALT, but the extensions are available to download from elastic threads.

In nvALT’s future, Terpstra promises better Lion support for fullscreen mode (shown in my screenshot but I’m using a SIMBL hack which you can find here),  bouncy scrolling, and more.

You can download nvALT 2.1 and read about all of its features here!

In the previous months, lots of apps have creeped onto the iPad’s App Store that focus on doing one thing really well: writing text and saving your files out to Dropbox. These applications are essentially the same, differing in nuance features such as visual file management and editor customization. Though these applications are rather simple, some of them aren’t exactly wallet friendly — five dollars is a lot to ask for a simple text editor. So the question remains, “Which Dropbox editor is the best for me?” In the pursuit of text friendly shenanigans, we’ve rounded up five Dropbox editors and tossed them into the ring to duke it out for the MacStories crown.

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