October 25, 2015

Sublime Text 3 : Select, Skip, and Select All

(Originally posted on 2015-09-08)

Select a word:

With your cursor anywhere in the word:

⌘ + d selects the word
⌘ + d again selects the next occurrence of the word
⌘ + d again selects the next one

Skipping over an instance of the word:

Type ⌘ + k, ⌘ + d to skip the next occurrence of the word.

Selecting all instances of the word:

^ + ⌘ + g will select every occurrence of the word

(Obviously, these are Mac keyboard shortcuts)

macosxguru at the gmail thingie

SublimeText3

October 25, 2015

Siri Speaks Different

(Originally posted on 2015-10-07)

Before iOS 9, Siri’s accent was a function of your choice of language. In iOS 9, you can have Siri speak to you in an Australian, Canadian, Indian, Kiwi, Singapore, UK, or US English accent. In fact, there are ton of other languages and accents if you are feeling like experimenting.

macosxguru at the gmail thingie

Siri iOS

October 25, 2015

Ulysses for iPad - The complete writing solution

(Originally posted on 2015-03-13)

The icon

What am I looking for in an iPad writing app?

1. For the last year and a half, I have been looking for Ulysses for iPad. The same experience and environment provided by the Mac app on the iPad. That has been my ideal of the perfect writing app for the iPad.
2. There is no number 2.

Why? Because Ulysses provides a complete environment for your writing. It is a product which encourages you to write and lets your writing live and grow in it. It is the best designed piece of writing software that I have seen. I love working in it. So, I want the experience replicated on the iPad. I had been using Editorial on the iPad. I like it. It is in my mind, the best text editor on the iPad, but it is not Ulysses. So, I have been pining for Ulysses for iPad.

Finally. Ulysses for iPad is here.

If you are familiar with the Mac version of this application, you are going to be very comfortable with the iPad version. The developers have replicated most of the functionality of the Mac version in the iPad version and the experience is almost seamless.

External keyboard

You can use Ulysses on the iPad by typing on the onscreen keyboard. I am not very fond of that experience. I can use it in a pinch, but most of the time I like having an external keyboard attached to the iPad. If I am in the middle of serious writing, the external keyboard is something that I rely on. You can get one of a whole slew of external keyboards for the iPad. They connect to the iPad through Bluetooth, and they provide you with a full size real keyboard. Makes the process of entering text much more comfortable than the onscreen keyboard. I have used the Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K760 for Mac/iPad/iPhone, the Logitech Bluetooth Multi-Device Keyboard K480 for Computers, Tablets and Smartphones, Black and the Logitech Bluetooth Easy-Switch K811 Keyboard for Mac, iPad, iPhone - Silver/Black. All three of these keyboards are multi-device keyboards, in that you can use them with your computer, your iPad and your iPhone. They work very well and they are well made keyboards which feel good to use. I recommend them heartily.

You do have similar benefits from any bluetooth enabled keyboard you want to use. Get one. Makes writing on the iPad a much more elegant experience. In addition, it lets you use keyboard commands. The keyboard bar provided by Ulysses for the iPad is useful but I find keyboard commands more efficient. Also, there are keyboard commands which do not have any equivalents in the onscreen keyboard or the keyboard bar. For instance, ⌃E gets you to the end of the line, and ⌃A gets you to the start of the line that your cursor is on. I find myself using the ⌃E command a lot. On the Mac version, ⌃E gets you to the end of the paragraph you are on, and ⌃A gets you to the start of the paragraph you are on. Very useful, and it works in all your text editors on the Mac.

iCloud Drive

I like Dropbox. I am not very fond of iCloud. At least, I wasn’t very impressed with iCloud till I started beta testing Ulysses for iPad. Now called, iCloud Drive, it works. Yes, surprised the hell out of me, but it works, like it should. In fact, I am writing this document on the iPad and the iMac. The changes I make get reflected in the other device in a few seconds and I can write on the same document on both devices without any glitches. Initially, I thought that the Soulmen folks have done some voodoo on their own to make this work so well, but I am coming around to the realization that iCloud Drive has really improved and the promise of instant syncing is being delivered. Yeah, I am as surprised as you are.

I can start a document in the inbox of iCloud, on either the iPad or the Mac. It appears very soon in the other device. I can edit and work on it, as I feel like, on either device. When I am done, I move it to a folder on the Mac. It is a no friction way of editing and working on a document, irrespective of the device. I find myself utilizing the special talents of both devices. This probably needs an explanation. The experience of using the iPad and the Mac are intrinsically different. On the iPad, I have no distractions, you are effectively on full-screen mode and just writing. It is very good at providing an environment where you write. Just write. I find it easier to edit on the Mac. So after I have the outline and the writing done on the iPad, I edit on the Mac. I also find it easier to add the markdown components to the document on the Mac. Things like links and images are better done on the Mac. You can do them on the iPad, I just find it easier on the Mac, and that is what I find myself doing. The whole process is fluid and I must say that it is very pleasureable. I find myself writing a lot more and hopefully, writing better with this combination.

Keyboard row

Markdown requires you to type a bunch of symbols. Ulysses for the iPad makes it easy for you to type these symbols by providing an extra keyboard row. It contains all the markup you are going to use to write markdown. Press on them and you get a popup list of markup. They are categorized in some way which doesn’t seem intuitive to me. I don’t really know where is which little code, so when I am using the keyboard row to find something, it is pretty much a hunt and peck search. I know the syntax of markdown enough that I don’t find myself going through this exercise often enough to be a pain. If you are starting with markdown, at least on the iPad, you would probably be better off with a cheatsheet than searching for what exactly you are looking for. On the other hand, the markup is there, you just have to find it. Throughout this article I have screenshots of the various pop ups to help you along.

Here comes the first one:

The Headings pop up

This is the Header pop up. Pretty simple.

Themes and Markup

Ulysses for the iPad like on the Mac, supports a markup called Markdown XL, in addition to regular Markdown. Markdown XL is a variant of markdown which lets Ulysses support annotations, footnotes and attachments. It is the default markup and it is fully supported by the iPad version. You have the choice to use either of Markdown, Markdown XL, Textile’d, a new variant called Minimark, or your own custom markup. I write in Markdown XL or Markdown for the most part. When you start a new document, you are given the choice of specifying the markup you would like in the document, like this,

Choice of markup

Since we are showing an image, we might as well do another one:

Lists and others

This is the second pop up from the keyboard bar. I understand the icon and it makes me think of lists. I guess I can elaborate that understanding to include indents, outdents and block quotes. It is a stretch, but kind of intuitive.

Ulysses for Mac has lovely themes in-built and there is a whole host of user-contributed themes which are available in the Styles Exchange portion of its website. All the themes which you have installed on the Mac are available to you on the iPad through the magic of iCloud. If you want you can make your own themes through the Mac app. The iPad app doesn’t let you make themes. If you do make your own theme on the Mac, it can be used on the iPad too. You can learn how to make your own themes here.

Adding fonts to Ulysses for iPad

The application lets you access the system fonts in iOS. You also have the ability to add any font you want. I use Nitti. So, on the Mac, I took the whole folder of Nitti and compressed them. I send my email account, the compressed file. On the iPad, in Mail, I just tap and hold on the archived attachment, out pops a window which gives me the options showing what I wanted to do with the attachment, I chose Open in Ulysses. Ulysses on the iPad launches and the active font is Nitti. That is it. That is all I have to do to add fonts to the application.

Adding Fonts from Mail

I can have the same result by archiving a font in Dropbox. In Dropbox, I select the file, I tap the share icon, I tap the Open in… icon, I tap Open in Ulysses, and I now get to use the font in Ulysses for the iPad.

Adding Fonts from Dropbox 1

This is the second step:

Add Fonts from Dropbox 2

Since we are doing images, might as well add the third one from the keyboard bar.

Misc keyboard bar icon

This is where the intuition takes a break. I don’t really know how this collection is intuitive. But it does contain Markdown syntax which are very useful to me. I call it the Misc icon.

A trip through the preferences

Ulysses for the iPad doesn’t have very complicated preferences. They are accessed by clicking on the gear icon at the top of the window.

Settings 1

You can do the following things here:

1. Set the default font for the document.
2. You can choose to restrict the number of characters per line, the space between the lines, the paragraph spacing and the first line indent (if you want any)

setting 2

3. You can choose the theme you want to use. I find myself using a tweaked copy of Solarized XL all the time.
4. You can choose to be in dark mode. One of the advantages of themes for Ulysses is that almost all of them have a dark mode. On the iPad, I spent a lot of time in dark mode, it is a nice way of working.

settings 3

In text editing options, you have a whole plethora of choices, which are pretty self-evident. The one thing I want to add is the recommendation to use TextExpander 3 + Custom Keyboard. I use it on both the Mac and the iOS devices. It makes writing easier and efficient. I don’t want to write without it.

settings 4

The Sheet preview options define how you want the sheets to be displayed in the sidebar.

That is pretty much it for preferences. So, I am going to do show another icon from the keyboard bar.

This is the A icon:

A icon

Gives you the ability to mark something, or to turn something into bold(strong) or italic(Emphasis). I use the keyboard commands for this, ⌘b for bold and ⌘i for italic.

A collection of observations

1. Ulysses for iPad has complete output options. You get to define the styles of the document type you are outputting to, and it does its thing. You can output plain text, html, ePub, PDF, or RTF. RTF is useful if you use Microsoft Word. So you can write on the iPad and treat the iPad as a complete solution for your output needs too. I write in markdown and tend to output to PDF if I have to share the document with other people. Most of the time, the output stays in markdown, so this output function is nice to have but not intrinsically important to me.
2. I have been writing this document for the last three days and of course after I praised iCloud Drive, the whole setup took a major dive. Apple’s Internet offerings were offline for a while. I notice that the reliability of syncing is a little touch and go. I was a part of the beta for this product and most of the discussions online seemed to deal with problems regarding syncing. I haven’t run into them myself but that is a concern for the product. I would prefer it if the developers implemented Dropbox syncing. You have the ability to export your document to a whole host of cloud services like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Box and even Dropbox. So you are covered in case of emergencies. I have been relying on the Mac version for the last year and a half, and have been in the beta program for the iPad version, and have never lost a document.
3. There are people who are very comfortable writing in anything they have in front of them. I read that George R. R. Martin writes in Wordstar. He is quite productive and creative. There are also people who obsess about their writing instruments and find themselves writing less and obsessing more as a result. So, my advice is the following, I love writing in Ulysses for the iPad and Ulysses for the Mac. If you are looking for a tool, you can adopt these and they are going to provide you a gorgeous environment to write in. If you are happy with your tool of choice, why are you reading this review? Get back to writing.

I am going to explain another of the icons in the keyboard bar here:

setting 5

I call this the B icon. It has nothing to do with the markup. Raw Source and Code would probably have been better depicted with the letter C. But Comment and Delete? I don’t know.

I am going to complete the remaining two icons on the keyboard bar here:

setting 6

I call this the media icon, and then the markups make sense. You can add a footnote, video, image, Annotation or a link through this icon.

The last one now:

setting 7

I have no idea what to call this icon. It is in my mind the oops icon. You can Clear Markup and Undo.

I like the fact that the markdown syntax is available in the keyboard bar, however unintuitive it might be. I tried to come up with a better classification scheme or a better notification scheme and I came up empty. So, I am not going to beat up on the Soulmen for this one. I am glad they are available. Thank you.

Recommendations

If you write and are looking for a home for your writing, you cannot go wrong with Ulysses for the iPad and Ulysses for the Mac. They have made my writing life incredibly pleasureable and efficient. I live in these two programs nowadays, and I am ecstatic about it.

I have written about Ulysses for the Mac before, here.

macosxguru at the gmail thingie

Some other takes on Ulysses for iPad

Ulysses for iPad — The Brooks Review

Ulysses - Do You Write?

Ulysses gets even better… and an iPad app too | David Hewson

Quick Thoughts on Ulysses for iPad - The Newsprint

Ulysses for iPad: The go-to text editor for long form writing | iMore

Six Colors: Review: Ulysses for iPad and Mac

Ulysses iPad iOS Writing

October 25, 2015

Desk: The publishing app

(Originally posted on 2014-12-01)

DeskApp

Desk is a new publishing app on the Mac OS. It is available in the app store and costs $29.99. It lets you write a mix of markdown and WYSIWYG and post to several of the more popular blogging engines.

It is at version 1.0, so we are at the start of the journey of this product.

The stated features/goals of Desk are the following:

1. The Experience: “True distraction-free interface,” both “Markdown and WYSIWYG,” “speed and efficiency,” and media integration.
2. Technology: “Your platform”  (WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Facebook, Typepad, Movable Type, Squarespace, and more to come soon), “everywhere you are,” “post management,” and “community powered.” 
3. Philosophy: “Never changing,” “a storytellers app,” “decisions not options.” 

I am going to write this review keeping in mind the goal of the app and the stated motivations of the developer. And I am going to start at the bottom of the above list of goals.

Storytelling

I agree completely with the developers fascination with stories and the need to tell them. It was interesting for me to read someone else’s take on what I believe. We are the sum total of our stories and we should share, because out of this sharing comes understanding, wisdom and love. I read the developers blog on Storytelling, and found a shared value system. That was the reason behind me buying the program.

Decisions not options

A lot of these minimalistic text editors seem to share the developers take on feature bloat. He states “Every time you give a user an option, you are asking them to make a decision. When a user doesn’t care or understand the option this ultimately leads to frustration.” Makes absolute sense. Only the developers of Microsoft Word would disagree with this notion. Unfortunately, it can be carried a little too far. I like writing with Nitti as my font of choice. The developer doesn’t give you the ability to change the font. It is not a bad font that the program uses. It is actually quite usable, but the choice of a font is not a technically complicated decision. We have been all using computers for a while and we get the mechanics of changing fonts. You want me to live in this program, give me the ability to choose the font I want. This gimmick made sense when iA Writer used it first, that was what? Seven years ago? We are over it. Now can I please use the font I want in my documents?

I understand the need to reduce complexities. I understand that when you take away the preferences, the resultant benefit is the reduction of distractions, but I really like my font, and it’s absence is distracting.

Never changing

The developer addresses the issue of consistency with the following statement, “Just as we have our favorite notebook and our favorite pencil and/or pen, I hope that Desk becomes that emotionally involved in the user’s writing experience – that they can wake up knowing that the app hasn’t changed and so they can do what they need to do: Just simply write.” I find myself agreeing with the sentiment. We are creatures of habit and it feels good to know that my writing environment is going to stay the way it is. There is a comfort to that. It is a little strange talking about emotional attachment to software, but I understand the sentiment. I am emotionally attached to Ulysses III, I live in it. It is always open on my computer, I am always writing in it. I am getting to know the ins and outs of the program and it is my tool of choice. I remember when the first version of Ulysses III was released, I was absolutely distraught, I ranted up a storm. It didn’t have the features I really wanted, it did things I didn’t want it to do, and it did some things badly. I was equally agitated with the first update, but over time, it got better. The developers iterated, the product improved, bugs got fixed, and now I live in the program. Can Desk achieve that kind of an emotional connection with its users? Only time will tell. But consistency is one factor in the road to that kind of emotional connection and the developer of Desk has the right idea.

Your Platform

Desk does a great job of supporting most of the common blogging platforms, and there are more to come. I would like it to support ghost.org and squarespace more comprehensively but that maybe a problem with the blogging platforms not having a public API available for the developers.

Everywhere you are

Desk supports iCloud and local storage. So, you can access your work from multiple computers. I find iCloud very temperamental, I avoid using it. The local storage in Desk for me, is a Dropbox folder. That gives me the benefit of working on my Desk documents wherever I want to, with whichever Mac OS machine is handy.

Post management

Desk lets you manage and edit all your existing posts in the blogging platforms it supports. That makes it easy to revise and update posts from the past. Very useful feature.

Community powered

Desk runs a forum for its customers. The interaction between the users and the developer is going to address the areas of further development of the product. It is seemingly the preferred way of the developer engaging with the users. Small indie developers who are in the App Store have a problem in that they don’t really know who their users are and this is a great solution to the problem of disconnect between the developer and the product. Ulysses developer, The Soulmen, solve this problem by being hyperactive on Twitter. Long time BBEdit developer Bare Bones Software, solves this identical problem by being very active on Twitter and also by running a Google group.

It is not enough to be engaged with users. You have to listen to their suggestions, be responsive to their feedback and add value to the interaction. Community building is a worthy goal but it takes at the minimal, time, involvement and a worthy product. Good examples to emulate would be the Sublime Text community, the BBEdit community, and the Scrivener community. I like the goal, this is what will give the product stickiness in the long run. We shall see how this works out.

I am a little hesitant about the prospects of building a community around Desk. It is a publishing app. There are a lot of writing apps around. Desk is distinguished in that space by its publishing feature. In that space, the competition is a little narrower: MarsEdit, Blogo, and Byword are the ones which come readily to mind. Is it possible to build a community around a blogging app? That is the question. I don’t have the answer, but I have some observations. Communities build around products which are:

1. Customizable or extendable. SublimeText, TextMate, and Ulysses are good examples of this category. Desk by its design is not customizable or extendable.
2. Complicated and deep. BBEdit, Adobe Photoshop, Alfred, are good examples of this category. Desk by its design is neither complicated nor deep.
3. New to the world. In the sense that the products challenge the prevalent way of doing things. They cause, in equal measure, discomfort and ecstasy on the part of the consumer. Scrivener and Ulysses are good examples of this category. Desk by its unique design shows some traction in this space.
4. Designed to let the user express their individual preferences and choices. Almost all the products I have been talking about exhibit some tendencies towards this customization. Desk by its very nature is anathema to this ability to customize and extend.

Thus my hesitancy in predicting the growth of a community around Desk. However, I am willing to be proved wrong. So we shall see.

Now the juicier parts, the experience of using Desk. Remember, this is version 1.0. There is a lot of room for growth and change. This is a take on the product as it stands today.

A true distraction-free interface

The product is very well designed. Like iA Writer, before it, all the chrome disappears when you start typing in the program. It is an interesting effect, and it helps you to concentrate on your words. It is obviously designed with care and love and it shows all throughout the product.

However, the full-screen implementation is all but broken. It might be usable on a portable Mac, but on a 27inch iMac, I don’t want to have the line I am working on spread across the whole screen. That is impossible to write in. A smaller window with line breaks at 60, 80, or 120 characters, would make it usable. Byword, iA Writer, and a host of others do a much better job of this.

If you are going to introduce a writing application, you have to enable typewriter scrolling. I don’t want to be staring at the bottom of the screen all the time while writing. All of the competition in the writing space implement this feature. Ulysses does it best by being flexible and giving the author the ability to choose any spot on the screen for the feature.

I have noted earlier that the absence of font choices doesn’t curb but cause distractions for me.

Markdown and WYSIWYG

I understand the need for implementing WYSIWYG. There are a lot of people who are not conversant with markdown and they are comfortable with the WYSIWYG method of styling content. It makes sense to cater to them. But if you are going to cater to markdown users you have to implement all of markdown, and do it well. Users can have a choice of mixing and matching if they want, but if they want to just write markdown, they should be able to do that too. In that case, your syntax highlight should work. At this point it works sporadically, as evidenced by the figure below:

This leads me to another issue. Desk saves its files as .dpm files. This is a proprietary format which is understood only by Desk. In reality it is a bundle much like a folder and in the package is a text file and a settings file. The presence of the text file, which contains all the text content of the post, provides me with some hope that if the program goes away or if I want to cease using it, my data will still be available to me. I would prefer it if the program would let me export a markdown file. At this point, it exports to Docx, PDF, HTML, and RTF. I write in markdown. I would like to keep a markdown file for my backup. I know I can always copy and paste to a text editor and get across this problem, but it would be nice to have the function built in.

Shortcuts

I like the plethora of shortcut commands that Desk provides the user. They are much appreciated. Being the “avoid trackpad at all costs” kind of guy, it is a great environment to work in. I like the “quick publish” feature too. Makes the transition from Desk document to published post really simple.

However the shortcut to full screen mode is ⌃ + ⌘ + F (Look at the iWorks apps). That is the system wide shortcut. Why are you making me learn another one? ⌘ + enter is not standard for full screen mode.

Media Integration

Another very nice feature of the program. It is going to be appreciated by the poster who uses a lot of images. Makes the writing and publishing of blog posts completely frictionless and that can only be a good thing.

Conclusions

I like the application. It is very well-designed. It provides a well-designed home for your blogging.

I am looking for the following improvements from the product:

• Font choices
• Full-screen mode needs work
• Typewriter scrolling
• Full support for Markdown
• The ability to export as Markdown

As a publishing solution, this is a great new product in the marketplace. Has the ability to reduce the friction involved with blogging, and that is a very important feature to have.

Recommended.

macosxguru at the gmail thingie

Some other takes on Desk

Desk: A painless writing and blogging tool for Mac | TUAW: Apple news, reviews and how-tos since 2004

Desk Mac OS

October 25, 2015

Record Smooth HD video using iMovie

(Originally posted on 2014-06-22)

Use iMovie to record smooth HD video.

In iMovie you can record video clips directly within the application. Launch iMovie. Tap on Projects.

Tap on the + Sign at the bottom right corner.

Tap on Movie.

Tap on Create Movie.

Tap on the Camera icon at the bottom of the screen.

See the 1080p/30fps notification at the bottom right corner? Tap on it.

The 1080p/30fps notification changed to 720p/120fps on the iPhone 5s. On the iPhone 5 it might just be 720p/60fps.

Higher frame rate recordings are smoother and more lifelike, capturing more of the motion than lower frame rates. One added benefit of higher frame rate recordings is that it is possible to convert them to slow motion footage without any significant blurring.

You can achieve the same effect through Filmic Pro.

macosxguru at the gmail thingie.

iMovie HD iOS