The blog of Ulysses, a Markdown-based writing app for Mac and iOS, covering releases and its move to subscription pricing.
HN commenters recommend Ulysses as a text editor with good organization and export, and discuss its switch to subscription pricing as a sign of long-term commitment.
Hi, this is Jesse. I am original designer/creator of FoldingText. Mutahhir has since taken the project over while I continue to work on TaskPaper and WriteRoom. I see a number of FoldingText history questions. I'll try to answer all of those here.
The idea of FoldingText evolved from:
1. Out of college I got to work on the Jazz ZUI (Zooming User Interface) toolkit and then build it's successor Piccolo. http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/piccolo/. For me this was a super cool project to work on. I liked to take notes and tried/build various ZUI notes apps. Great fun but I always ended up using plain text files on my desktop instead of fancy ZUI app.
2. I gave up on ZUI for notes and decided instead to build Hog Bay Notebook, a Mac app for notes. Similar concept to Evernote (but a few years before I think). Database of text files with a full text index for searching. After a few years I was making my living selling this app, but I would still tend to go back to keeping my notes on desktop in TextEdit.
3. Around this time https://ulyssesapp.com added "full screen mode" to their app. Was a popular feature, but Ulysses was a big app with lots of other features that I didn't really want. So I spent a week making WriteRoom 1.0. WriteRoom was a very basic text editor with one feature... that it could zoom into a nice fullscreen mode. It originated the term "Distraction free writing"... so yeah for that! :) This quickly sold better then my notebook program which had at that point I'd put…
I use https://www.notebooksapp.com/. It works with plain files, txt, markdown and WYSIWYG (HTML). It also allows you to write your own stylesheet and JS. So I have a custom template (CSS) and I write almost everything in WYSIWYG (ie HTML). Works really well for code too, as I get syntax highlighting.
Other apps I have tried and used over the years:
- http://www.mweb.im/ (markdown)
- https://ulyssesapp.com/ (markdown)
- http://lightpaper.42squares.in/ (markdown)
- http://alternoteapp.com/ (Evernote GUI)
- Many, many others
Notebooks really stands out because it has a great iOS app, syncs via Dropbox (plain files), and handles TXT/MD/HTML + Custom CSS&JS.
The Mac app is not great, but it's adequate. I frequently talk to the author and they are rewriting it to be more "Mac friendly", but that's a bit away (1 year maybe?).
For the longest time, I tried to stay true to Markdown, but as I get older, I just want things to be easier, and to look nicer, and I now prefer writing everything in WYSIWYG. Since I have custom styles, I can stick to standard structure (ie H1, p, ul, ..), which is in spirit close to Markdown (ie structure only). And I can still customize when I want complicated things (I wrote a couple special classes for some use cases).
Plus, it works with the filesystem, so you get folders, which I personally prefer to all this tagging BS. It makes it easier to have everything in one place: work stuff and personal stuff, and to keep it all neat and tidy. Also,…
It's totally based on the software you use on it. Some examples of great creative software I enjoy:
Procreate http://procreate.si/
PINNACLE STUDIO PRO http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Products/studio/ipad/
Continuous http://continuous.codes/
Coda https://panic.com/coda-ios/
Adobe Sketchbook Pro https://www.sketchbook.com/?locale=en
iMovie
Swift Playgrounds (has full access to iOS libs) http://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/
garageband
amplitube http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/amplitubeios/
Djay pro https://www.algoriddim.com/djay-pro-ipad
frame.io https://www.frame.io/
ulysses http://www.ulyssesapp.com/
Auxy http://auxy.co/
There are a bunch of others but those are my favorites/ones I've used in the past. I've been able to create full game prototypes all on my iPad. In fact the next game jam I do may just use my iPad. Pair it with a dropbox account and fast internet and I can handle almost anything a computer can, though admittedly it's limited in a lot of cases. Still can't do full releasable app builds on device for example.
> some way cross-apply the license purchase price to a subscription
They did do this. From the footnote to to their original announcement[1]
Recent purchases of the Mac app will unlock up to 12 months of free use, and purchases of the iOS app will unlock up to 6 months of free use. Your individual free-use duration is calculated from your actual purchase date, respectively, and if you bought Ulysses on both platforms, we will add together both periods.
[1] https://ulyssesapp.com/blog/2017/08/ulysses-switches-to-subscription/
149 comments and no mention of http://www.ulyssesapp.com/ yet. Although the recent change to a subscription pricing model was off-putting at first, it is reassuring in some ways because it underlines the developer's longterm commitment.
That said, I've recently been using Notion for EVERYTHING at work, and now considering if I could do likewise for my personal notes/essays.
PS. It's funny how the intense competition between 'distraction-free' writing tools has almost become distracting in its own right.
For lightweight stuff, there's vanilla Markdown, but you have no control over formatting. For more serious work using markdown, you can try out Ulysses[0] or Scribus[1].
And, if you feel like spending an obscene amount of money, on the order of $10k, there's Arbortext APP[2]. (I don't know why this even exists?)
[0]: https://ulyssesapp.com/
[1]: https://www.scribus.net/
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbortext_Advanced_Print_Publisher