October 29, 2015
Comparing Ulysses with Write
(Originally posted on 2014-06-08)
Ulysses III, referred to as Ulysses for the rest of this article, has just been updated.
Write: A Note Taking & Markdown Writing App, referred to as Write for the rest of the article, has just been released.
I thought this was a good time to do a comparison between these applications, and their features. The goal is to locate what these apps are good at, what they are not so good at, and how they fit into your writing workflow.
This is what I am going to cover:
- Stated Purpose of the Product
- Proprietary database
- Markdown support
- Advanced features
- Environment
- Price
- Conclusion
Stated purpose of the products
Ulysses is a writing environment. The developers of Ulysses, are not specific about the kind of writing they are supporting. It is geared towards writing your notes, your blog posts, your daily diary, your epic novel, anything you want. Ulysses is designed to support all your writing. You write in it and export to any format you want.
The goals of Write are comparatively modest. Ostensibly, it is geared towards maintaining your notes. You can add any folder you have on the hard drive to it, and you can access your files through it. You can access files in your Dropbox folder, your iCloud folder or any local folder on your hard drive. It reads all kind of text files, plain old txt files, md or markdown files, and even fountain files.
Proprietary database
This is the elephant in the room when it comes to any discussion of Ulysses. If you are going to use the full features of Ulysses you have to let it manage your files in a proprietary database. You write in it. You export to whatever format you want, but the files itself are not available to you in any other program.
The people who work in text files are interested in text files for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons is that they can work on their files with whatever program they choose and the file format is universal and well supported, and that gives them freedom from relying on any one program. That freedom you have to give up if you adopt Ulysses as the main weapon for your writing.
Ulysses is revolutionary. It is trying to achieve things which no other competitor in the space is attempting. It is trying to redefine the notion of markup. It is letting you for all intents and purposes refine your own markup and providing you an environment where you can work in your own markup and then export to any format you want. But to achieve this, you have to make the trade-off. You have to let Ulysses be in charge of your files.
Write doesn’t do this. You have your files in folders, Write lets you access, edit and add to your files. The files are text files, markdown files or fountain files. They are all accessible by any program you prefer including Write. For those of you who are used to text editors like SublimeText or BBEdit, Write acts as a project which maintains your folders with text files in them. There is no proprietary anything. The files are universally accessible and Write just acts as a manager of your files.
Which system is better? For me, it is Write. I don’t like being tied to one program for my writing. Files being universally accessible is a feature which is important to me. So, I like Write. However, I find myself using Ulysses all the time. I came up with a compromise. I like working in Ulysses, and didn’t want to give it up. So, I write in Ulysses and then when the writing is done, I export to a markdown file which resides in a folder managed by either SublimeText or Write. It is my attempt at having the best of both worlds. It works.
In the latest update, Ulysses has considerably improved its handling of external source files. What does that mean? Ulysses has the ability to manage both files in its proprietary database and also text files in folders which already exist on your Mac. These latter files are the external sources I am referring to. They have now included the ability to have inline links in these external sources and have moved away from the disgusting habit of changing your external files without asking you. However, in my use of the program, I have noticed that it is considerably less stable than it was previously and the option to choose inline links over reference links is not sticky through crashes. You choose inline links. The program crashes and the preference reverts back to reference links. Very irritating behavior. I am sure they will fix it in a future update.
Markdown Support
Write supports MultiMarkdown 4.0. For those of you not very cognizant of markdown, this means that Write supports tables and some other extensions provided by Fletcher Penny’s implementation of Markdown. At its core, Write is a very capable multimarkdown editor.
Ulysses can’t make up its mind. It wants to ride the wave of the markdown editors, but it doesn’t want to support all of the markdown specifications. It has its own biases and preferences that it brings to the support of markdown (like classifying its support of inline links as supporting the lowest common denominator). It has improved its support of links, and supports footnotes but it still doesn’t have table support. I think at the bottom of it, Ulysses is much more interested in letting you define your own markup and working in your own specifications, than adhering to some pre-defined set of rules of markup.
If you are looking for a strictly markdown-based text editor, Write wins this battle.
Advanced Features
In this section, I want to address some of the more advanced features of both editors and make some comments about them. This section is going to be fairly large, so grab a coffee or your choice of beverage.
1. Markup
Write supports MultiMarkdown 4.0. Ulysses supports elements it wants to support. No table support is the glaring omission in the Ulysses toolbox.
2. Full Screen
This is the distraction free mode that is popular in writing applications. Both programs do a very good job of supporting full screen mode. Write implements a variation to the usual full screen mode by providing the user a choice of the width of the text area in full screen mode.
It is surprising useful in that it gives the user the choice and I seem to be fond of the medium width setting.
In Ulysses you can implement this by changing the page width to however many characters you prefer. The same width holds true for both the windowed mode and the full screen mode.
3. Dark Mode
Write does not bother to implement a dark mode. The theme specification makes it appear that there is an option to include it but the program seems to ignore the background specification in the theme file. It was present during the beta stages, but the presence of a visual glitch might have forced the developer to dump this feature before launch. I am sure it will reappear in a later version.
Ulysses and its themes do a fantastic job of implementing dark mode. Every theme has a built in light and dark mode. It is the perfect environment to write in. If you write in the evenings or at night, you are going to rely on dark mode to keep the glare of the monitor down and give some relief to your eyes.
Write implements this too. Typewriter scrolling however is taken to a completely different level by Ulysses. It is a kind of variable scrolling which lets you set the point at which you want the screen to scroll. Once you have tried this mode, you are going to wish that every editor had implemented this feature. Typewriter scrolling by Ulysses is the feature done right.
5. Unified Library
Write implements this better. Click on the + sign and add any folder on your hard drive to Write. Doesn’t matter whether the folder is only on your hard drive or backed up to the cloud through Dropbox, Box, OneDrive or GoogleDrive. All the sub-folders and files in the folder are now accessible in Write.
I have been noticing that a few people on Twitter are wondering whether Write can be a replacement for nvALT. If you ask Brett Terpstra, he will probably say that he doesn’t see nvALT as competing with Write. nvALT, competes much more with Evernote, than it does with Write. He is right in that assertion. nvALT, is a strange beast which does a lot of things other than just managing a folder of notes. However, a lot of users have no real idea of nvALT’s abilities and use it almost exclusively as the manager of a folder of notes. For them, Write is definitely an improvement . Write manages multiple folders and not the single folder approach of nvALT. So, if you have notes in one folder, some assorted text files in another, and the files for a book you are writing in another, Write can manage all these folders in one
application and that is a feature nvALT or Katana cannot match.
6. Quick Open
Ulysses has a Quick Open feature which lets you search for files and their contents across the library. ⌘ + O gives you a search panel and you can type in the name of the file, part of the name of the file, or just some content that you think it contains and it will give you a list of all the files in your library which matches that content. Reminds me of the ⌘ + P shortcut in SublimeText. Works equally well and it is very useful when all of your life seems to be in Ulysses folders.
Write doesn’t have anything that is directly comparable. You can search within individual folders or assign tags to individual files to ensure a collection of files based on the tags. Tags used by Write are also used by the Finder in Mavericks. I find that I am slowly embracing the usage of tags, but still find the library wide search of Ulysses much more convenient.
If you use either of these programs as your manager of text files, you are quickly going to find yourself with the task of locating particular files, or a group of files. Ulysses uses filters in the Library pane to group files together, you can set up filters by clicking on the + sign at the bottom of the Library pane.
Ulysses uses filters with very extensive abilities and you can narrow down the criteria you are using to filter your content. This is an enormously flexible system where you can be very specific in the filters you use. I am not very good with tags, or the discipline that is required of tagging, but to me, this looks like a system which is more versatile than tagging. 
Ulysses also lets you assign keywords to your documents. You can attach keywords to sheets by Ctrl-clicking on them in the sheet table and selecting “Keywords…” or by clicking “Attach” in the top right corner of every sheet. (Another option is to press space after you’ve selected a sheet in the sheet table.) Keywords are useful when you’re creating filters. For example, you could assign the keyword “Draft” to all your drafts, which would allow you to collect them all in one place using a filter. These keywords are Spotlight searchable too. In External Sources, Mavericks’ tags and Ulysses’ keywords are exactly the same. In general, keywords are basically the same as tags of Write.
Write uses tags. You add tags by clicking on the text “add a tag” on the bottom left corner of the editor window.
These tags are also accessible through the Finder in Mavericks. For those of you who are using tags in Mavericks, this will come in very handy and will be easy to use.
I like the flexibility of Ulysses’s keyword and filter system, but Write and its tagging system also manages to find the files I am looking for. So, you are not going to be have any trouble finding files or groups of files in either of these programs.
8. Search and Replace
Ulysses’s search and replace is very minimal. You search and replace something with something else. You have the option of replacing a particular occurrence or all of them. It is the standard TextEdit search and replace.
Write is a little more refined in its implementation of search and replace. It provides the option of ignoring case and wrapping around and thus covering the whole of the document.
What is interesting about the Search and Replace implementation in Write is this little drop-down dialog box which lets you be a little more specific in what exactly you are replacing and where.
I find that both of these programs Search and Replace functionality could be improved by support for regular expressions. Scrivener, an application, Ulysses explicitly competes with, supports regular expressions in their search and replace function. I am sure that the use of regular expressions is an edge case and the benefits of its implementation are open to debate. I just miss it.
Both Ulysses and Write support images and the support is astonishingly similar. This is how Ulysses does it.
This is how Write does it.
The Soulmen, developers of Ulysses have a history of doing innovative things which have been the inspiration behind the product features of many other products. That trend continues, it seems.
Both of the products support footnotes. Ulysses gives you a popup panel in which you enter the contents of the footnote. Like this,
In Write you type in the code for footnote like in MultiMarkdown.
Ulysses provides you the opportunity to add annotations. These do not export to markdown or html. They are just to aid you to think through the process of writing, or to act as reminder devices for you. You can achieve a similar effect by using comments in both Ulysses and Write.
Tables are not supported by Ulysses. They are a part of the Multimarkdown specification and are supported by Write. I write my tables using Tables Generator and paste into Write. It works like a charm.
10. Statistics
Writers always seem to worry about things like word count goals and word counts achieved. Both of these programs do a good job of showing you your document statistics.
Ulysses lets you set goals for individual sheets or a group of sheets. You Control + click on the group or the individual sheet and you get a dropdown menu, like this,
You choose Goal… and then you get a pop out window like this:
If you click on “at least,” you will get a dropdown menu letting you choose, about, at least, or at most the number, which you get by clicking on the question marks, words, characters, sentences, etc. that you are interested in tracking. You can periodically Control + click on the sheet, choose Goals… and check on your progress.
If you are happy with your progress, Ulysses lets you share the data with your friends via a host of services. You can also get a less colorful version of the data by clicking on the meter like icon on the toolbar.
As you can see, if you need statistics, Ulysses seems to have you covered.
Write is much more minimal in its approach. It doesn’t let you set goals. However it does provide you a running word count at the bottom right corner of the editing window. If you click on it, you get more details, like
I like Ulysses presentation and the ability to set goals, but Write is adequate in its implementation.
11. Full version history
Both of these programs save your files automatically. So, you never really have to save your documents. Ulysses, saves your file every 30 seconds, or saves a version when you press ⌘ + S. Write also has an automatic save schedule and saves when the focus is moved away from the application.
In addition to the automatic save, when you invoke the ubiquitous ⌘ + S, Save keyboard command, Ulysses saves the present version of the document. It also maintains a complete version history of the document, so you can, theoretically go back in time, and retrieve a previous version of your document if you choose. It is a great way to save a version, keep on writing, check how the story flows, and if it doesn’t, you have the ability to go back to a previous version where the flow was acceptable. It is a feature which is implemented in Scrivener through snapshots. But this is the best implementation of the idea I have seen.
Write doesn’t attempt any effort at version control. If you want to go back to a previous version you have to use Time Machine, the system service, to achieve a similar result.
12. Bookmarks & Notes
Bookmarks is an Ulysses feature. You can place bookmarks in your text. They usually denote something that you need to come back to, or act as a memory aiding device to help with your writing.
You place a bookmark by control clicking on any line and choosing Add Bookmark from the dropdown menu. You remove bookmarks by control clicking the line which has a bookmark and choosing Remove Bookmark from the dropdown menu.
Notes is another Ulysses feature. You can add sheet notes to your document. So, each sheet can have its own notes. Hover your mouse pointer over the top of a sheet, click on “Attach” and then “Note…”.
So, in the process of writing, you can use both Bookmarks and Notes to act as memory cues. Bookmarks act on particular lines, while Notes are attached to the sheet you are working on. Bookmarks and comments are really interchangeable. They can have the same effect. Remind yourself to do something to a particular line.
Write supports commenting, it lets you use the html commenting system or the Critic Markup syntax to add comments to your documents. This is an advantage of MultiMarkdown 4.0, it supports the Critic Markup syntax natively. CriticMarkup is a way for authors and editors to track changes to documents in plain text.
Ulysses is the obvious winner of this feature comparison, but the support of CriticMarkup gives Write a feature which is absent from Ulysses.
13. Favorites
Working in both programs will mean that you work with a lot of files. There are some files which are at the top of your workflow, files you get to quite often. Both Ulysses and Write gives you the ability to designate some files as favorites, and then gives you the ability to access them quickly.
In Ulysses, choose the file in the sheet list, control click on the file and from the dropdown menu which appars, choose Add to Favorites.
You have access to your favorites in Ulysses by going to the star icon on the top right of your window.
In Write, you select a file to be a favorite, by clicking on the star to the top right corner of the editor window.
You access your favorites in Write by choosing the Favorites tab on the Library.
14. Split and Merge
This is where Ulysses shows the benefits of some of the design decisions behind their product. In Ulysses, when you are working in internal sources, documents are conceptualized as sheets. They are just sheets of digital paper you are writing on. They can be as long as you want them to be, but that is all they are: sheets of digital paper. You can split a sheet into two sheets, if you think the sheet is too long or if the idea you are expounding needs it. You can do this by choosing Split at Selection from the Edit menu.
This splits your sheet into two sheets, starting the second sheet from the point where your cursor was. It is a nice way of breaking up content into chunks for you to work on. Ulysses also lets you merge sheets together. If you feel that the contents of two or more sheets belong together in one sheet, you have the ability to merge those sheets together into one sheet. You do this by selecting the sheets in the 2nd pane, and then choosing Merge Sheets… from the File menu.
Write has no corresponding function.
15. Writing Modes
This is a Write only feature. Write supports three modes of writing. In Rich Text mode, most of the markdown syntax disappears, except those of links.
In Hybrid mode, the syntax coloring stays and so does the markdown syntax. It looks like this.
In Plain Text mode, all of the syntax coloring disappears and the editor shows all the markdown code without any of the visual effects of the code. Like this,
In Ulysses the usual mode is the comparable Hybrid mode, but you can design a scheme where all the syntax highlighting goes away and you are left with plain text.
I find myself in Hybrid mode in Write most of the time, I like having my markdown syntax visible and like seeing the effects of the code when I do write in Markdown.
16. Copy Plain text and HTML
This is another Write only feature. If you select a section of your document, and right click on the editor window, you see a drop-down menu, you can copy plain text or formatted HTML of your selection to the clipboard and then paste that content into any other application you choose. This is what it looks like: 
17. Export
Both programs excel in this feature. Write gives you a myriad of options to export your data. In fact, the pop up menu which controls the export options scroll down to where I need two screenshots to show you all the choices. So, here goes, this is the export panel in two parts:
As you can see, Write has you covered when it comes to export. It lets you control the format of the export by a css file, which you can tweak to fit your needs. The system is not very robust, in that it doesn’t let you have multiple export formats, but it is present and you can get around the lack of choices by having multiple css files available to you and switching them around in the preferences depending on your needs. I hope that this section of the program improves over time. At this point, it works, but it could be easier to work with.
Ulysses excels in exporting your document. It breaks up the export choices into four parts:
- Plain text and markdown
- PDF, TextEdit(rtf), and Word(rtf)
- HTML snippet or HTML single page
- epub
In plain text and markdown export, Ulysses gives you the option of saving to a file as plain text or markdown, you can also send it to Marked 2 or Marked, or copy to your clipboard.
Interestingly if you take your cursor to the right of the save button, you see a folder, you can drag the folder to the Finder and it will contain the plain text or markdown version of the file you are exporting.
In PDF, TextEdit(rtf) or Word(rtf), Ulysses lets you send the file to Preview, the system PDF renderer, or preview the file within Ulysses.
Thanks to the Ulysses Styles Exchange, you can also choose the style you are going to use to export the document.
The HTML export has a similar arrangement, you can export as a snippet or a single HTML page.
You get to choose the styles and formatting of the export.
Environment
Write does a very good job of providing an environment for you to write in. It needs a dark mode, but beside that quibble, it is a very good application to work in. The developers have tried really hard to provide you with the right kind of choices and you are going to be happy working in it.
Ulysses is the standard everyone in this space tries to reach. It is almost perfect. I have been trying to write this section for a while now, and it has been a struggle. I can’t point to one thing that the program does which makes the environment it provides to write on so compelling and comfortable. It is not one thing. It is a whole slew of little things which make writing in Ulysses an absolute pleasure. The product has evolved over the years into the best environment I know of in the Macintosh world. If you adopt Ulysses you are going to be happy in it.
Price
Ulysses costs 44.99 in the App store. Write costs $9.99.
Conclusion
The deeper I got into this comparative review the more I realized that I wasn’t being fair to Write. Firstly, the price. These two products are not direct competitors to each other. Secondly, the stated goals of the developers. Write is positioned as a note-taking application. Ulysses is a writing application for all your needs. Thirdly, the time that the products have been in the marketplace. Ulysses III has been out in the marketplace a long time. The latest iteration is a rethink of Ulysses II, which was a rethink of Ulysses I. They have had a long time to fine tune the feature set. The evolution of Ulysses has been a pleasure to follow. Write on the other hand, is brand spanking new. They haven’t had the chance to re-iterate. Re-design. Prune and add. This is their first shot at it. This comparison isn’t fair.
It is really a credit to Write that they have stood up so well to this rather unfair comparison. It is a very well designed piece of software. It is very capable of doing what it purports to do, which is: note-taking. It beats out the other competitors in this space, and there are a lot of them. If you are looking for note-taking software, you should get Write. It is the best of that breed of software.
If you are a writer, looking for a home. An application you can live in. And write. Get Ulysses. It is going to ensnare you. It is going to thrill you. It is going to be the program you enjoy writing in, whatever it is you intend to write.
You can buy Write here.
You can buy Ulysses here.
macosxguru at the gmail thingie.
Ulysses
Write for Mac
Writing
Software
Mac OS
October 25, 2015
Review of Ulysses 1.1
Ulysses III hit the App Store a couple of days after the Maverick launch. Naturally with my obsession for text editors, I was excited about the product, hoping that this would be the product that the developers promised. You know, The most advanced text editor on the planet.
Version 1.0 met with rave reviews around the web. There were few dissident voices, one of them, mine. I have included the whole review of version 1.0 below this updated look at version 1.1.
Firstly, the two major issues I had with version 1.0: Lock in and arbitrary changing of file content when you bring in files from external sources have not been solved. The lock in is an integral feature of the design of the application and I am sure that the developers can’t do anything about that. With the improved export options, I am willing to give up that criticism. I am not so forgiving about the change to file content that happens with files in external sources. I have a feeling that this criticism is going to be addressed when the developers revisit the design of the text editor. This is not based on anything the developers have said explicitly. It is based on the tweets from the developers (@ulyssesapp), and a lot of wishful thinking on my part. I might be still wrong and the application might exhibit this unacceptable behavior for the rest of its existence. The criticism was valid for version 1.0 and it will remain valid till they explicitly fix it. It was unacceptable
behavior and it continues to be so. It has forced me to not enable external sources at all for the application.
The claim of being the The most advanced text editor on the planet is somewhat shaky if I have to keep another text editor involved in the process of handling text files because the application is ill-behaved. But, I am getting old and discovering patience as a virtue. So, I will wait, hoping they fix this obnoxious behavior.
Now the good stuff.
Ulysses III is much improved over the last version. Version 1.1 is considerably better and it adds a whole host of features which were conspicuously missing from the last release.
It is back. It is well implemented giving you complete flexibility on the placement of the text. No one else does this in the text editing field. I get to choose the most comfortable position for me, and the program keeps the line I am working on right there? Fantastic. You have to try this to get it. I am telling you, that it has made writing on the application an absolute pleasure for me. I think this feature alone has made me want to live in this application. It is something that other writing environments like Scrivener should look at adopting. Impressive and indicative of the innovation The Soulmen have always brought to their software.
Quick Open
The way Ulysses III is organized gives me the opportunity to have different collections of documents on the Mac. So, I have a collection of files which deal with my blog. Another collection, which deals with my book, another one which deals with ideas I have on politics and so on. ⌘ + O gives me a fuzzy searchable panel somewhat reminiscent of Sublime Text, my other favorite text editor. Importantly, it makes switching between documents I have been working on easier.
New Window
Sometimes you need a few documents to be open while you work on one. Type ⌥ + ⌘ + N and you have a new window. Choose the document you want to remain open. Switch between open documents with the standard ⌘ + `. Makes working with documents much more convenient in Ulysses III.
Smart Paste
Yes. The developers have made pasting text into a document smarter. If you use the old ⌘ + V keyboard command, the text takes the same format as whatever you are pasting into. So, if your section is code and you paste into that, whatever you pasted, is now code. You get to invoke smart paste by holding down the ⌘ + V keystroke. You get a nice panel which lets you choose the format you want to paste in with. You can select through the keypad or numbers on the top or select through the mouse. Intelligent.
Smart Paste
Assorted Other Improvements
- The export options have been much improved in this version. You can export to epub, pdf, rtf (word documents) and you can use styles to control the look of the output you will generate. The customization of this feature is explained in detail in the Styles section of the website. I have not finished exploring this section yet. I am more interested in generating markdown documents and html documents from my writing.
- Fuzzy search through all the documents that you have asked Ulysses III to manage for you. This coupled with in-collection markup search or in-file content search means that you are now equipped to deal with a large collection of documents in the application.
- There is now an efficient in-app preview of your document. I must admit that I prefer previewing my document in Marked 2. It adds a host of tools to improve my writing and that is essential to me. You can customize the style of the preview and have your custom style applied to the preview window.
- There is an integration with Daedalus Touch available to you. So you can work on a document both on the Mac and on the iOS devices, with some constraints.
Takeaway
Ulysses III has evolved. It has gained more polish. It has grown some amazing one-of-a-kind features. It is still one of the prettiest environments to write in. I am impressed. It still hasn’t sorted out the habit of turning into reference links all the inline links in your external source documents. My workaround is to not let it handle my external source documents. I must admit that this is not an optimal solution and it would be much better if the developers changed this behavior. In the meantime, I am going to keep working in Ulysses III, and Sublime Text.
I recommend Ulysses III with some reservations.
macosxguru at the gmail thingie
Previous Review
Ulysses III - The Pretty, Passive-Aggressive-Braindead Text Editor
The web is replete with rather glowing reviews for Ulysses III. This is a fair sampling of what is available on the Web:
Mac App Review: Ulysses III - the candler blog
Ulysses III: A Next Generation Writer’s Environment for OS X - The Mac Observer
Mac App review: Ulysses III - BrettTerpstra.com
Ulysses III – A Markdown Writing App Like no Other | Mac.AppStorm
Ulysses 3, A Text Editor From The Future [Review] | Cult of Mac
Ulysses strives and seeks to be a better text editor for Mac | TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog
Ulysses 3 review: Get ready for change | Apple 24 Seven
Wordius - Ulysses III: A review
These two are the exceptions in that they are not particularly gushing:
Ulysses 3 (The Soulmen) Mac App Review - Stale Coffee
Ulysses 3 by Gabe
I am going to add my perspective on Ulysses III to the “not-so-gushing” category.
I am not going to be doing a very thorough review of the product. You can find that in a selection of the reviews which already exist. I am going to raise two issues: One philosophical and the other a matter of execution.
Before I go to the criticisms, let me reiterate some of the positives which have already been pointed out in detail by others.
- Ulysses III is beautiful. The UI is very well designed. The look is unique and a pleasure to work in.
- The improvements in the markdown specification which the developers call “Plain Text Enhanced” are very nice and useful.
- The developers have paid a lot of attention to the details of the application and it shows all over the product. You are going to be pleasantly surprised as you discover the many and varied little details of the implementation and it is going to make the process of writing in it, a truly immersive experience.
Philosophy of Lock in
One of the many reasons I use text files is that I don’t want to be locked in to any particular program when it comes to managing my text files. I can have a folder full of text files and I can use any program I want to interact with my folder of text files. At any given time, I am using Sublime Text, BBEdit 10, nvALT, or Byword to interact with my text files. The advantage is that there is no lock-in. I don’t have to use any particular program. I can use whatever I want and the text files are there and ready to be used. Ulysses III goes against this convention. It’s main selling point is embodied in the statement “All your texts. In one place. Always.” Of course, this implies a lock-in. Most of the improvements made
by Ulysses III on the Markdown specification are only available to you if you agree to be locked in to using their application and their application only.
I have a philosophical problem with this concept of lock-in. I don’t want to be tethered to any one particular application. I use text files, it is an universal format avaiable to a whole host of free and paid applications on all computing platforms. By contrast, an Ulysses III file is only readable by Ulysses III. Ergo, the lock-in.
Ulysses III tries to get away from this problem of a lock-in by giving you the opportunity of using Ulysses III as an editor of your text files which you can add from external sources. So, technically, you can bring in the aforementioned folder of text files into Ulysses III as text files and you can edit it in the program. You lose all the advantages of the “Plain Text Enhanced” when you are dealing with files added through external sources but that is a compromise which makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is what happens to the external source files when you bring them into Ulysses III, which leads me into the second part of my critique.
Execution Foul up, or Thou Shall Not Screw With My Markup
If you make the mistake of adding a folder of your files to Ulysses III to manage as an external source, be prepared for your files to change in ways that you are not really prepared for, or change in ways that you really should not be asked to expect.
One of those iron clad expectations from a text editor should be the following: When you handle a file, you will not change the contents of the file unless I explicitly ask you to. That should be so obvious that I never imagined that I would have to state this maxim. So, what happens?
I have a file I maintain as a text file with a bunch of inline links.
Bunch of inline Links
When I take this file and add it to Ulysses III as an external source. This is what Ulysses III does to it:
Bunch of Reference Links
Excuse me?
WTF?
You changed the content of my file? Why? What makes you think that you have the right to do that? You didn’t ask me. You just went ahead and did that?
When asked about this the developer said the following:
We’ve had a lot of discussion regarding this issue and decided to use reference-links instead of inline links in the end. You’ll be able to customize the way your markup is exported with custom markup and full exporters, which are coming in future versions.
Excuse me? You had discussions and decided that it was prudent to change my content to fit some arbitrary model of yours? You changed my content. You changed my markup. Without asking me. And I can put it right by exporting? It is a text file. I don’t want to export it to another text file. It is a damn text file. Leave it the fuck alone. The solution is some export model which will be available in future versions? What are you smoking? Can I have some?
I was trying to imagine the discussion between three imaginary engineers when this product feature was being discussed:
Engineer favoring reference links: We are going to be using reference links.
Engineer favoring inline links: (was busy playing with himself/herself)
Engineer favoring giving consumer the choice: What happens if the consumer wants inline links?
Engineer favoring reference links: Fuck them.
Engineer favoring inline links: (was busy playing with himself/herself)
Engineer favoring giving consumer the choice: They might have a reason for favoring inline links.
Engineer favoring reference links: Fuck them.
Engineer favoring inline links: (was busy playing with himself/herself)
Another alternate take on the discussion between three imaginary engineers when this product feature was being discussed:
Engineer favoring reference links: We are going to be using reference links.
There were no other people in the meeting.
Do me a favor. Leave my markup alone. Don’t make decisions for me. And don’t change my content. Don’t ever change my content.
Summary
I had very high hopes of Ulysses III. The developers promised to revolutionize text editing. I followed their Ulysses 3 devblog | Building the greatest text editor the world has ever seen. with great interest. I bought the product in the first few hours of it being available in the App Store.
In its present incarnation, I am not going to be using the product though. I can look beyond the problem of a lock in. The ability to export to other formats from the program makes that somewhat easier to overlook. It introduces an extra step into the workflow but that is something I can compromise with. However I cannot trust or recommend an application which changes my content. Can’t put up with that. Will not put up with that kind of passive-aggressive-braindead behavior. Sorry.
macosxguru at the gmail thingie.
Ulysses
Writing
October 25, 2015
The Panoroma Investigation and Apple’s Lame Response
(Originally posted on 2014-12-21)
The Panorama program is available here:
[BBC Panorama Apple’s Broken Promises BBC Documentary 2014 Workers Life in china Making iphone 6
This is what we learned from the Panorama program:
- Apple’s supplier Foxconn had to put nets around the buildings to stop the workers from committing suicide.
- The workers at the Pegatron plant are working insane hours 12, 14, 16 hour days are not uncommon.
- The workers are sleeping on the job. They are exhausted.
- The paper trail doesn’t mean anything. The reality and the paper trail are not the same. So when you audit the books, you are auditing a mirage which has nothing to do with reality.
- The sleeping quarters are not compliant with the company regulations.
- When Apple buys tin from Indonesian smelters, you have no idea of the origin of the tin. They might be coming from illegal mining operations which hire child labor.
I thought these were the salient portions of the program.
This is the letter from Apple senior vice president of operations Jeff Williams to the UK employees of Apple, it was posted at Read: Apple’s letter to UK staff over Chinese factory conditions - Telegraph:
UK Team, As you know, Apple is dedicated to the advancement of human rights and equality around the world. We are honest about the challenges we face and we work hard to make sure that people who make our products are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve. Last night, the BBC’s Panorama program called those values into question. Like many of you, Tim and I were deeply offended by the suggestion that Apple would break a promise to the workers in our supply chain or mislead our customers in any way. I’d like to give you facts and perspective, all of which we shared with the BBC in advance, but were clearly missing from their program. Panorama showed some of the shocking conditions around tin mining in Indonesia. Apple has publicly stated that tin from Indonesia ends up in our products, and some of that tin likely comes from illegal mines. Here are the facts: Tens of thousands of artisanal miners are selling tin through many middlemen to the smelters who supply to component
suppliers who sell to the world. The government is not addressing the issue, and there is widespread corruption in the undeveloped supply chain. Our team visited the same parts of Indonesia visited by the BBC, and of course we are appalled by what’s going on there. Apple has two choices: We could make sure all of our suppliers buy tin from smelters outside of Indonesia, which would probably be the easiest thing for us to do and would certainly shield us from criticism. But it would be the lazy and cowardly path, because it would do nothing to improve the situation for Indonesian workers or the environment since Apple consumes a tiny fraction of the tin mined there. We chose the second path, which is to stay engaged and try to drive a collective solution. We spearheaded the creation of an Indonesian Tin Working Group with other technology companies. Apple is pushing to find and implement a system that holds smelters accountable so we can influence artisanal mining in Indonesia. It could
be an approach such as “bagging and tagging” legally mined material, which has been successful over time in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We are looking to drive similar results in Indonesia, which is the right thing to do. Panorama also made claims about our commitment to working conditions in our factories. We know of no other company doing as much as Apple does to ensure fair and safe working conditions, to discover and investigate problems, to fix and follow through when issues arise, and to provide transparency into the operations of our suppliers. I want you to know that more than 1400 of your Apple coworkers are stationed in China to manage our manufacturing operations. They are in the factories constantly — talented engineers and managers who are also compassionate people, trained to speak up when they see safety risks or mistreatment. We also have a team of experts dedicated solely to driving compliance with our Supplier Code of Conduct across our vast supply chain. In
2014 alone, our Supplier Responsibility team completed 630 comprehensive, in-person audits deep into our supply chain. These audits include face-to-face interviews with workers, away from their managers, in their native language. Sometimes critics point to the discovery of problems as evidence that the process isn’t working. The reality is that we find violations in every audit we have ever performed, no matter how sophisticated the company we’re auditing. We find problems, we drive improvement, and then we raise the bar. Panorama’s report implied that Apple isn’t improving working conditions. Let me tell you, nothing could be further from the truth. Here are just a few examples: Several years ago, the vast majority of workers in our supply chain worked in excess of 60 hours, and 70+ hour workweeks were typical. After years of slow progress and industry excuses, Apple decided to attack the problem by tracking the weekly hours of over one million workers, driving corrective actions with
our suppliers and publishing the results on our website monthly — something no other company had ever done. It takes substantial effort, and we have to weed out false reporting, but it’s working. This year, our suppliers have achieved an average of 93% compliance with our 60-hour limit. We can still do better. And we will. Our auditors were the first to identify and crack down on a ring of unscrupulous labor brokers who were holding workers’ passports and forcing them to pay exorbitant fees. To date, we have helped workers recoup $20 million in excessive payments like these. We’ve gone far beyond auditing and corrective actions by creating educational programs for workers in the same facilities where they make our products. More than 750,000 people have taken advantage of these college-level courses and enrichment programs, and the feedback we get from students is inspiring. I will not dive into every issue raised by Panorama in this note, but you can rest assured that we take all
allegations seriously, and we investigate every claim. We know there are a lot of issues out there, and our work is never done. We will not rest until every person in our supply chain is treated with the respect and dignity they deserve. If you’d like to learn more about our Supplier Responsibility program, I encourage you and our customers to visit our website at apple.com/supplierresponsibility. Thanks for your time and your support. Jeff
This letter made me gag. What a bunch of poppycock.
Firstly, what the hell is Williams and Cook offended about? Does Apple have material objections to the findings of the program? They explicitly admit the situation in Indonesia. They do not challenge the assertions about the working conditions or hours in the factories in China. Apple points to their audit of the documentation and the program explicitly shows the documentation to be meaningless and not representative of what exactly is happening. What are they offended about? And more importantly, who gives a shit about whether they are offended or not? Apple increasingly talks about the values that guide their organization and everything Apple does and stands for. Set a bar. You have to meet it. When someone points out that you are falling short, you are offended? Give me a break. Get off that self-pity horse and fix the problems. Don’t whine. Fix the problems.
Apple’s get out of jail free card is based on the notion that they are the only company who tries? Apple is one of the largest companies in the world. Its claim is that there are deep underlying values guiding every decision it makes. That is what gives them the ability to charge the premium prices they demand in the marketplace. Their products are not just electronic gizmos. They are electronic gizmos which were produced within a value system. Apple’s value system includes this one “…that people who make our products are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve.” Really? Remember that this one has taken a few hits in the last few years. Remember this executive team was also in charge when Steve Jobs made a deal with Google, Intel, Adobe and other silicon valley companies to stop poaching engineers from each other. That was a collusion amongst employers to keep employee wages down. That is the effect of discouraging poaching. Keep a lid on engineer wages. That was treating
people with respect and dignity? That is Apple’s history. So now when they tell me that they are offended by the suggestion that workers at one of their suppliers are being made to work overtime without their consent, I have to ask them, how gullible do you think I am?
You are telling me that you try. I accept that. You are trying. The situation is still not perfect, so try harder. This is important.
Your products are imbued with a value system. That is what makes your brand special. It is not Dell, or HP, or Samsung, or Walmart. All of the earnest pronouncements you make about your value system guiding your decisions is the added aura around your products. That is the added advantage you have in the marketplace. That is the source of your margins, that is the source of your brand loyalty, that is the source of your consumers’ obsession with your products. Don’t screw that up. If you screw that up, you will have the moral standing of Walmart or a Shell.
macosxguru at the gmail thingie
BBC
Apple
Values
October 25, 2015
(Originally posted on 2015-01-04)
In the world of text editors this is a strange beast. The closest product that this is analogous to is Drafts on iOS.
Conceptually it is one sheet of paper. You type on it. You fill it with content that you are working on, and then you send it somewhere. You can save it to a file, prepend or append it to an existing file, or you can use a bundled action/write an action yourself to do with the content what you wish.
Does that sound confusing enough? It does because it is not what we usually do with a text editor. We edit text, we save it to a file, and then we move on. We might occasionally take the content and put it into an email message or a tweet and use some other dedicated program to send it along, but in Textwell it is all done within it. The program ships with a slew of actions which let you do a whole bunch of things with the content you create. When you are done, you clear the one sheet of paper you have, and start with a new blank sheet of paper. Efficient and a little different from the norm.
It has a companion iOS version. With iCloud Drive support, you can work on the same piece of paper on all your devices.
The Mac version of Textwell
This is a well designed piece of software. Don’t get me wrong. This is not competing with BBEdit or SublimeText. It is not feature comparable with a text editor. It is as the developers describe it, a “modeless textbox.” A window where you input text. Then you perform some actions on the text.
For instance, I wrote the following tweet: Trying out the Mac version of #Textwell, the modeless textbox for iOS and Mac OS devices. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/textwell/id905944937?mt=12&uo=4&at=10lrLv.
I selected the text of the tweet and hit ⌥⌘T, which is the keystroke I assigned to the Tweet action, and it posted the tweet through the Twitter app. Done. I cleared the textbox and it was now empty and waiting for the next thing I wanted to do with it.
The interface of Textwell is simple. It is a textbox.
You can extend the window to the right and the left. The left extension is a panel which shows different versions of documents you have been working on. I think this is the version control provided by iCloud Drive. But they are a listing of the different iterations of the content of the page you are working on. On the right is the actions panel. This contains all the actions available to you. You can arrange these in folders and that helps you locate the particular action you are interested in. The actions are Javascript programs which run in the built-in web view. They are very well documented here.
The application ships with a bunch of these actions and you can easily write more if you need them. I have just started learning Javascript, so it will be a while before I write my own actions.
Textwell is customizable to a certain extent. You can use any font you like, and design your own theme to a point. I came up with a version of Solarized Dark. I wish the cursor was a little thicker. I changed the cursor color to Red to help it stick out a little more. Textwell lets you set the maximum text width and that defines the width of the text in your input window.
Interestingly, Textwell doesn’t provide a keyboard command for full screen view, but if you click on the green doohickey on the top left of the window, it will switch to full screen view. It is a usable full screen view, and that is the mode I am in when I am in Textwell. The absence of a keyboard command for that is a little weird.
One suggestion to improve the product for me would be to add a typewriter scrolling mode. It is something I have gotten used to and miss when it is not available.
When I started this review, I was planning a comparison between Drafts and Textwell. The more I use Textwell, the more I realize that the two products are essentially build around the same idea. Write something, move it on to other uses.
The comparison with Drafts on iOS
There are a few differences between the two programs which make a direct comparison between the two somewhat problematic:
- Drafts does not have a Mac version.
- Textwell is at version 1.3.4 while Drafts is at version 4.0
- Textwell on iOS costs $2.99 while Drafts costs $9.99
- Drafts is markdown friendly. Textwell just does text.
On iOS, Drafts is much better designed. It is not even remotely close. Textwell is functional, but Drafts is heavenly. I have been using Drafts since the day it was released, and I think that it is one of the best designed apps for the iOS. Textwell has a long way to go to catch up.
So where does that leave us?
Do you need a textbox? I am a SublimeText user and initially looked on the whole textbox idea as a bit of a gimmick. The more I gave it time, the more I realized that there is something to be said for the modeless textbox that Textwell provides. I like having a dedicated program where I write something, do something to the text and then move on the next task. It focusses you on the task and then lets you clear the page and move on to next task. It deserves a place in the workflow and it is adding value to my routines.
The Mac version is well designed. It is a worthy addition to any text file users arsenal. My hope is that the iOS version matures and becomes as useful on the iOS devices.
Recommendation
If the idea of a textbox on the Mac intrigues you. Get the Mac version and the iOS version of Textwell. You are going to find a lot of ways you will use this neat little program. If you spend more time on the iOS devices than the Mac, get Drafts.
You can buy Textwell Mac version here. $9.99.
You can buy Textwell iOS version here. $2.99.
You can buy Drafts 4.0 for iOS here. $9.99.
macosxguru at the gmail thingie
Textwell
text
Drafts
Bicycle For Your Mind
