Leafnote - One to Avoid

(Originally posted on 2014-12-07)

One thing it does well

Leafnote does one thing well. If you have a project (a collection of documents) and its contents are broken up into different sections (each individual document), you have the ability to move the sections around in your document. Conceptually, every section, is its own document and you can determine the order of the project as a sequence of different sections. So, effectively, you write the sections, then you order the sections into the best order that you can conceive. Then you export. This is a feature shared with Scrivener, Ulysses, and every other outlining program in the marketplace. Other writing programs let you achieve the same effect, but it is not as smooth and easy as in Leafnote.

All the other things

Nevercenter, the developer describes the product as "super-minimal." They are not kidding.

There is no preference panel. None. You don't get to choose the font you write in. You don't get to tweak the look of anything. You don't get to do anything to customize the appearance. You have to work, as is.

That has some benefits. Like I said before in the review of Desk, the developers who design these minimal apps believe that preferences are distracting and they are interested in reducing all distractions. A commendable goal, however, I like writing in Nitti, and if I am going to be staring at the screen for hours on end, I want to see the font I want, and not some arbitrary font chosen by the developer.

There is no typewriter scrolling. No dark mode. No ability to change the font size. No ability to change the leading, the amount of vertical space between lines of text. Nothing. The developer makes no effort to provide an environment conducive to writing. I am writing this review in Leafnote and I already have the start of a headache. The font is too small, the space between lines is too scrunched and it is uncomfortable to be here.

What is even more disturbing is that there is no find function. If you have any number of notes, you are going to have to find the right one you are thinking about. That exercise is going to be manual. I have no words to describe how painful that process can be. This is a product designed by someone who doesn’t write much, or has a much better memory than me.

This is a non-standard writing app. It doesn't support some of the basic features you take for granted in any text editor/note-taking/writing program. This is not a comprehensive list of all the useful stuff which this application does not support:

• Doesn’t let you select a word and hit ⌃ + ⌘ + D for dictionary lookup.
• Doesn’t let you hit ⌘ + + or ⌘ + -, to increase/reduce the font size.
• Doesn’t implement a find function. You have no ability to find anything in this program. The find function does not exist. So the find exercise is completely manual.
• Doesn’t let you move a line up or down. You can move sections up and down your master document if you have broken up your content into sections, but individual lines? Only through cut and paste.
• No sort fuction.
• No fullscreen option.

Conclusion

Leafnote provides a demo for you to try out. You can try it out.

My recommendation is to avoid it.

If you are looking for a writing/note-taking app, you will do much better with a whole slew of alternatives available in the marketplace. This is not a comprehensive list of alternatives which are better than Leafnote at providing you a better designed writing environment:

• nvALT, free
• TextWrangler, free
• Katana, $9.99
• Write for Mac, $9.99

People who disagree with me

Leafnote: A text editor that's powerful in its simplicity | TUAW: Apple news, reviews and how-tos since 2004

Leafnote review: Focus on writing, not on how to use the app | Macworld

Taking note: Leafnote

macosxguru at the gmail thingie

Is Scrivener going to make me a better writer?

Is Scrivener going to make you a better writer? Nope. Writing will make you a better writer. Scrivener will give you the tools to become a better writer. For your part, you have to write, and you have to understand and use the tools that Scrivener provides, and that might make you a better writer.

This is not a review of the product. The review of the product is easy. For a writer, this is the best product I have seen in the marketplace. If you adopt it, the act of writing is going to be a little more pleasant. I recommend the product heartily to everyone: it helps me think, organize my thoughts and write.

To get the maximum benefit out of Scrivener you are going to have to do some studying. This is a pretty complete and complex program. It does a lot of things designed to make the process of writing easier and more efficient. You are not going to get the most value out of it by just picking it up and working in it, some study is required.

You should read either of these books:

Take Control of Scrivener 2 by Kirk McElhearn
Or,
Scrivener for Dummies by Gwen Hernandez

If you are a novelist, or an aspiring novelist, get your hands on:
David Hewson - Writing a Novel with Scrivener

The manual and the practice document that Scrivener provides are fantastic but these other books are better designed to hold your hand through the process of becoming familiar with the program.

If you are a writer you are going to be living in Scrivener for a very long time. The investment you make in learning how to use the program is going to be very beneficial to you in the long run. So, get to it.

Scrivener

macosxguru at the gmail thingie

Create footnotes, headers and footers in Pages in iOS

On the iPad, tap on the plus (+) symbol on the format bar. The format bar is the bar of little icons on top of the keyboard. Then tap on Footnote

To get to the headers and footers, tap on the Spanner a the top of the page. Then tap on Document Setup.

When you do that you are going to get to a representation of the page which shows the headers and footer areas. Tap on them, and add your headers and footers.

On the iPhone, with the keyboard visible, tap and hold where you want the footnote to appear. From the pop-up menu which appears tap on the more button to the right of the pop-up menu.

You are going to be shown an extension of the pop-up menu. Tap on Insert.

On tapping Insert, a drop down menu will appear. Choose Footnote in that menu.

To apply headers and footers, you are going to have to tap on the Spanner button on the top right.

Tapping on the Spanner button will give you the Tools menu. Choose Document Setup in that menu by tapping on it.

You are now going to be in the header and footer page or the Doc Setup page. Click on the relevant areas and type in your headers and footers.

Hope this was useful.

macosxguru at the gmail thingie

Ben Brooks tackles the ad blockers

(Originally posted on 2015-09-27)

Which iOS Content Blocker is the Fastest? — The Brooks Review

A Few More Thoughts on My Top Three Content Blockers — The Brooks Review

Saving 30% or More of Your Data Transfer With Content Blockers — The Brooks Review

Ye Olde Content Blocking — The Brooks Review

Finally, he expresses his opinion on “Native Advertising.”

Native Advertising is a Bad Solution — The Brooks Review

Kudos to Ben Brooks. He is providing a valuable service in testing the various ad blockers out and presenting data-supported recommendations. I bought 1Blocker based on his say-so and am happy with it.

He is thinking about the ethical issues related to ad blocking and he makes some interesting assertions. The issue he is trying to handle deal with bloggers who expect to monetize the exercise in some way. He is not much interested in media houses and their web sites. They have a dedicated sales staff and there is “separation” between the revenue source and the writers reviewing the products. He is much more concerned about the individual operators like him and me, who have to juggle the dilemma of writing and finding ways to generate income from said writing. The conflict obviously arises when a product you review ends up being a sponsor of your writing. The core problem is credibility.

There is a big word associated with this debate. It is “objectivity”.

The chain of sequence is the following: You are objective, that is, free of biases. You write and recommend something, or do not recommend something. The reader respects your objective opinion and thus values your recommendation (or lack thereof). Anything that gets in the way of this fanciful equation is going to be a drag on your credibility.

I am not sure that writers who are writing on the web to make a living, are really “objective.” We are not academics, we are not trying to provide analysis of objectively collected data points (I would argue that few academics in the social sciences meet that bar). We are a composite of our biases and inclinations and we look at the world through that prism. If that is something that is relevant & entertaining, then people pay us attention. That is our audience.

More importantly, I am not sure that we need to be “objective.” In fact, the more biased you are, the better your opportunity to gain attention. I remember the early days of Gruber. People liked him because he was unapologetically an Apple fan. His audience has grown a lot since then. His unique personality, his ability with the written word, his irritating baseball tweets, all add to the persona he has created and successfully monetized. I am not certain that people go to Daring Fireball because they think Gruber is objective. They go there because he is entertaining and sometimes he has good information to share. And he does snark, oh-so-well.

As an independent in this market space, how do I build credibility? This is a list of some of the things I do:

1. If I am reviewing a product, I try to provide links to other reviews of the same product. I am particularly conscious of doing this when I am panning a product.
2. I try to lay out my biases if they are relevant. I like Ulysses, I use it every day, I make sure that people know that when I write about it or its competitors.
3. Credibility is a nebulous thing. You have to work on building it over a period of time and your readers will get the picture. Can you lose it? Sure? But it won’t be in the sponsors you have accepted money from. It will be in your writing.

macosxguru

Access Drafts in Mail app on iOS

(Originally posted on 2014-07-13)

When you are writing an email, you might feel the need to do something else and does that mean you are going to have to lose all the writing you have already done on the email? Nope. Tap on the Cancel button, and you will see two options: you can delete the email, or save it as a draft. Choose Save it as a draft.

Now how do you get back to the saved draft? Just tap and hold the compose email button on the top right hand corner. Like this:

There will be a listing of your saved drafts appear when you do that. Choose the one you want to work on, and be on your way.

macosxguru at the gmail thingie