I wish Office 365 would hire someone like the author. Online Word never renders the same as it would in the Desktop software...and this matters. I deal with only modestly complex documents when I write grants but I do need to stay within page length limits for sections, I need some layout stability...so I inevitably fire up my Windows VM to run the application.
Before anyone suggests LateX, I know, I know, but when you write collaboratively, you don't always get to choose the platform.
I wrote a similar tool to this many years ago that used JATS as an internal document model, using contentEditable, and I can relate to the pain you refer to. Getting the semantics right in cases where you split or join text that has varying types of nested context was hard.
I like what you did here in terms of the cursor that points one way or the other: it tells you if you're in "normal" mode, or for example, in a bold region. I don't think I've seen that before so, if you made it up, that itself is a cool invention.
This looks slick but I think you need a better way to market it.
The 2D canvas part is the norm for anyone who wants performance. Working with the DOM becomes painfully slow and resource intensive the moment you add syntax highlighting, spell checking, and other visual chrome, to large documents.
This is why Monaco (the editor widget behind VSCode) is a canvas. Why terminal emulators built with web technologies use canvas. And so on.
So I wouldnāt say the canvas part of the heading is a differentiator.
Not bad! But it got slow after I pasted the text of a random blog post 20 times or so. I don't think this will work for writing a book. But for short to medium length notes, it will do fine.
We should chat (check bio)! For almost a decade now Iāve been working on a writing tool that might benefit from it. I build occasional forks with procgen on top it. That being said better bidi handling is something Iām most interested in.
Enso.sonnet.io - what Iām talking about.
(On untested.sonnet.io youāll find notes about the experiments / toys related)
Ok the custom rich text latex editor is really cool. But I'm on a tablet and stuff like selecting text is a bit awkward (the up down auto scroll is not exactly the same as the native one and isn't as precise as the native one).
Cool idea! I approve of the privacy oriented design. But it looks like you didnāt actually test this on iOS as automatic text correction is completely broken.
Also your website appears to have been written and generated entirely with an LLM. That doesnāt inspire trust.
Thereās no better way to get a lot of testers than to have a Show HN.
Iāll confirm - there are cursor bugs on iOS. Both on newlines and autocorrect.
Iām personally more forgiving of an LLM āhelpedā site, if it looks like there was a human in the loop for the process. An LLM has more context about the design goals and architecture than the reader, so if itās an informative page, Iām not personally bothered.
A human is needed to show how appās technical features are relevant to a particular audience with a shared social context. As the LLM is not (and should not ever be) a participant in that social environment, any marketing it generates will almost certainly land as tone deaf or presumptuous.
Definitely not comfortable with it creating a server-side identity for me on first open without any sort of confirmation prompt. Closed immediately because I can't imagine I'd want anything that'd be used for before I've even gotten to try anything.
I wish Office 365 would hire someone like the author. Online Word never renders the same as it would in the Desktop software...and this matters. I deal with only modestly complex documents when I write grants but I do need to stay within page length limits for sections, I need some layout stability...so I inevitably fire up my Windows VM to run the application.
Before anyone suggests LateX, I know, I know, but when you write collaboratively, you don't always get to choose the platform.
I wrote a similar tool to this many years ago that used JATS as an internal document model, using contentEditable, and I can relate to the pain you refer to. Getting the semantics right in cases where you split or join text that has varying types of nested context was hard.
I like what you did here in terms of the cursor that points one way or the other: it tells you if you're in "normal" mode, or for example, in a bold region. I don't think I've seen that before so, if you made it up, that itself is a cool invention.
This looks slick but I think you need a better way to market it.
The 2D canvas part is the norm for anyone who wants performance. Working with the DOM becomes painfully slow and resource intensive the moment you add syntax highlighting, spell checking, and other visual chrome, to large documents.
This is why Monaco (the editor widget behind VSCode) is a canvas. Why terminal emulators built with web technologies use canvas. And so on.
So I wouldnāt say the canvas part of the heading is a differentiator.
Not bad! But it got slow after I pasted the text of a random blog post 20 times or so. I don't think this will work for writing a book. But for short to medium length notes, it will do fine.
We should chat (check bio)! For almost a decade now Iāve been working on a writing tool that might benefit from it. I build occasional forks with procgen on top it. That being said better bidi handling is something Iām most interested in.
Enso.sonnet.io - what Iām talking about.
(On untested.sonnet.io youāll find notes about the experiments / toys related)
Ok the custom rich text latex editor is really cool. But I'm on a tablet and stuff like selecting text is a bit awkward (the up down auto scroll is not exactly the same as the native one and isn't as precise as the native one).
But still this is an awesome project!
What UI library did you use? Looks clean.
Cool idea! I approve of the privacy oriented design. But it looks like you didnāt actually test this on iOS as automatic text correction is completely broken.
Also your website appears to have been written and generated entirely with an LLM. That doesnāt inspire trust.
Thereās no better way to get a lot of testers than to have a Show HN.
Iāll confirm - there are cursor bugs on iOS. Both on newlines and autocorrect.
Iām personally more forgiving of an LLM āhelpedā site, if it looks like there was a human in the loop for the process. An LLM has more context about the design goals and architecture than the reader, so if itās an informative page, Iām not personally bothered.
But Iām probably in the minority.
A human is needed to show how appās technical features are relevant to a particular audience with a shared social context. As the LLM is not (and should not ever be) a participant in that social environment, any marketing it generates will almost certainly land as tone deaf or presumptuous.
Thatās the āhuman in the loopā part. Use the LLM to generate a copy and the human to refine it.
If you think successful campaigns these days are always entirely done by humans, then Iām afraid youāre mistaken.
Definitely not comfortable with it creating a server-side identity for me on first open without any sort of confirmation prompt. Closed immediately because I can't imagine I'd want anything that'd be used for before I've even gotten to try anything.