Apodion.net

My previous post about Safari and Firefox

got me thinking about issues of default applications and workflow and such. I realized that I spend an awful lot of time and energy, and duplicate an awful lot of work in switching between and among programs which do the same thing. The issue of going between browsers is just the beginning, but it’s also a good example. Any time I need to or decide to switch from browser to another, I have to update my bookmarks, synchronize my preferences, and start a new history. This a) takes up a lot of time and is no fun, and b) completely cuts off my continuity in terms of trying to find something I had seen or backtrack through my browsing history.

I also found that thinking about and formally laying out what programs I use, for what tasks, helps to alleviate the issue. I can’t say that I’ll never switch browsers again; I’ve resolved to stick with Firefox in the past and we see where that’s gotten me. But there are some areas where I’m more firm. Let’s give it a quick run-down:

• Short-form writing: For projects which include many short documents (columns, reviews, etc.), I use Copywrite. It’s got a flexible document system, so for each project you create a set of catagories that apply to that project. Plus, it’s got a per-document and per-project note drawer, and a place to stash links. A very small feature which is an obsession of mine is the word-count directly in the status bar of the document window. Also key: versioning for every document. The clincher, however, is the full-screen view. It’s got custom coloring, for the old-school amber-on-black, and a font-size scaler. I get distracted very easily when I’m on my computer; this is a blessing.

• Long-form writing: If I’m working on some long document, with multiple sections (say, one my several Great-American-Novels-in-the-Making), I’m all about Jer’s Novel Writer. It’s got flexible multiple-section settings, per-section formatting, and separate settings for screen and printing. But the really cool stuff it has is what makes it perfect for writing and editing a large-scale project. You can bookmark any line and write margin notes for any part of the document. Plus it’s got a big flexible database for notes or characters/places/anything else to help you keep track of what’s going on. I do wish it had a full-screen mode, though.

• Word Processing: For format-heavy, straight-to-printer (or pdf) word processing, Nisus Writer Express has never done me wrong. It’s pretty big—that’s why I go with the above two if I don’t have to worry about how the damn thing is going to look on paper—but its formatting and general word processing features are totally boss.

• Reading: There’s an awful lot of literature worth reading available for free on the web. Very recently I found a program called Tofu; all it does is takes selected text (or html) and puts it into justified columns of adjustable width. The upside of this is that there’s no vertical scrolling, and it’s actually much easier to read long pieces of text. It’s infectious; I’m starting to wish that every piece of text that I have to read on my computer be formatted into a justified column. The program is a little touchy when it comes to preferences, but it’s a great tool.

• Note-taking: This is another one that’s found me switching around quite a bit. However, when it comes down to it, there’s nothing better for me than Notational Velocity. It’s dead simple: you hit a hotkey, and the window comes up. Type a phrase into the locator bar; if any notes match the (incremental; nice touch) search, tab will move into the text area for that note. If not, tab will create a new note with that name. It’s the most efficient way to take notes that I’ve found, and what I need more than image-filled cross-referencing rich-text wiki amazingness is a way to quickly and efficiently perform a brain dump before I get distracted and forget what I was going to say.

• Text indexing: Ok, so I didn’t exactly know what to call that. Basically, my homedir is a mess. I use DEVONthink to store indexed, categorized copies of all the stuff that I’ve written, plus documents that I’d like to keep track of, plus various quotes and snippets from things that I’ve read that I’d like to hold on to. It uses super-duper snazzy semantic AI to do ’see also’ functions and the like. It’s quite powerful; I’m frankly not quite sure that I am at the moment using it to its fullest potential.

• Text editing: Oy. This one is a minefield. I haven’t quite pinned it down yet; basically for all my text editing which is not related to some literary project—shell scripts, config files, etc.—I haven’t yet really settled on a default editor. There are several in the running.

  • I have a certain fondness for Smultron, but there are also some interface niggles that I can’t really get around. It’s got an MDI layout, which is really at this point a basic necessity. It’s got syntax highlighting, html preview, a pretty hefty search function, and support for Code Snippets. Plus it’s got a very rich status bar, with all sorts of useful info in an easy to find location. However, one of the most brain-dead bugs is that if you cmd-w all the documents in the list out, cmd-w does nothing to an empty window. A window that does not respond to a close command is not my friend. This is because if you close the main window in Smultron, the whole damn program quits. I hate that. That’s bush league, man. Just bush league. Of note is Saskatoon, which is a fork from Smultron. There hasn’t been much activity of late, but we’ll see.
  • Textwrangler is by the folks who make BBedit, and it shows. The interface is largely identical; in fact, even the feature set is deep and similar enough that I’m still overwhelmed by all its features and options. It’s definitely a fucking powerhouse—especially for a free editor. Unfortunately, it’s not very OSX-y, I’m afraid. Aesthetically, that is, unimportantly, it doesn’t look like a native OSX app; at the same time however the preferences window is laid out like a battlefield; any halting attempt to pick my way through usually leaves me feeling battered and overwhelmed. Add to that the fact that the toolbar is quite nearly the canonical example of ‘unintuitive.’ It’s a shame; if Textwrangler had an interface worth its feature set, it’d clean up.
  • Subethaedit is a favorite of a lot of folks I know. It’s free, and it’s got a lot of features. It’s just… I dunno. The interface looks a little bare, I guess. If collaborative real-time editing is your thing, there’s really no question. But it’s not mine, and maybe the emphasis on that has led me to dismiss it a little sooner than I necessarily should have. It’s worth another look.
  • TextMate is really neat, but it costs money.
  • There’s also TextForge. I haven’t actually used this one, but it looks pretty legit.
  • And then there’s vim. Let’s get one thing straight: I’m a vi man, not an emacs man. Nothing in this world is gonna change that. Before I coded in any of these fancy GUI newfangled programs, I was using vim. And I still think it’s great. But the fact is that my workflow tends to exist enough in the context of all of OSX’s nice architecture that there’s not a lot of room for vim these days. That said, if I’m working in the terminal and need to edit a shell script or a config file or something, it’s always vim.

  So the playing field is rather cluttered. There’s just so much damn choice, and I have a twisted masochistic fetish for trying out as many of these fucking things as I can. I’m just not resolved yet. I guess I don’t code enough that I need to be, or else I would be.

• Blogging: Ecto. I tried out Marsedit, but it’s just not as featureful. I’m still poking my way around, but I think it’s a good fit.

• Nearly everything, ever: Quicksilver. I’m not gonna say much here about how great it is, or list all the amazing things you can do with it, because there are lots lots of blogs out there who have covered that territory. I’ll simply say this: I’ve been using Quicksilver since the first beta, and I’m still discovering awesome ways I can integrate it into the way I use my computer. As a corollary, I will say that Quicksilver is the program which I use more than any other program, and it is the first thing I install on any fresh OSX install. If you use a Mac but don’t have Quicksilver, you should.

• Bittorrent There’s a brand new app called Bits on Wheels, but I found it a tad buggy. I’ve tried all of them—to my knowledge—and Azureus is the best. It just has more useful features than any other client.

• IRC irssi is still the best. There are a couple carbon frontends, but they’re buggy. There’s X-chat Aqua and Colloquy, but those are either bloated, or buggy, or both.

• IM Adium is the clear winner; why pay for Proteus when adium does everything, and better, for free?

• Contacts Nearly every pertinent app has Address Book.app integration, but I like Sbook5. It’s brilliant; it’s an address book that can parse any text you give it and automagically categorize the info as a name, address, phone number, et cetera. Plus, it syncs up with Address Book, so you get the integration too.

• Calendar iCal is nice, but remind pumped through Geektool is much nicer. It’s got that old-school Unix appeal: flexible, powerful as hell, and plaintext. Interfaces nicely with Quicksilver; 43 Folders has an excellent guide to getting it working.

• RSS I love RSS; I hate the web, I hate websites—I just want the content zapped to me without having to ask and without having to wade through bullshit HTML. NetNewsWire is a totally awesome client, and the built-in browser is worth the money for the full version.

That’s about it, or all I can think of, anyway. It’s quite helpful to me to have all this laid out, and not waste time choosing one out of 3 apps that do the same thing. Let me know what you think. But if you say ‘You forgot App X!‘, odds are I’ve tried it, hacked it, and switched to and from it 3 times, before deciding it wasn’t for me.