Links: A couple of writing tools

[sonia]

Ellipsus, collaborative alternative to Google docs
sineala wrote up a recommendation for Ellipsus, a free online collaborative editor that is staunchly anti-AI. "Barring significant regulatory changes, we will never weave generative AI into Ellipsus."

That gives them points in my book, but the flashy-flashy site and need to create an account don't draw me in at the moment. I like to do my writing on my local machine. I'm posting this so that I can find it later if I want.

And also, apparently it's great for collaborating and getting beta feedback on fanfic (and other writing), so I'm posting it in case anyone here is interested in that. Read sineala's post for more about that.

Setting up vim for writing
Vim (vi improved) is the modern successor to vi (visual) which was the full-screen successor to ex (extended), the original one-line-at-a-time editor on Unix. Vi was released in 1976, and vim was released in 1991. Vi and vim are modal editors, so you can be in edit mode or command mode, and you can also type a ':' in command mode which puts you in line mode at the bottom of the screen, where you can still use ex commands. They are usually used by programmers, or as a fallback when other editors aren't available on Unix.

I learned vi first, and then emacs (which has control characters instead of modes) and then much later VSCode. I occasionally dip into vi when I'm editing a file in the terminal, or editing a git commit message. When I'm thinking very hard about coding, I revert to typing vi commands, even though I'm in VSCode instead.

All that to say, it's surprising to see someone set up vim for writing instead of coding.

This mastodon post from Mx. Aria Stewart says:

I just set vim up for editing prose and uh

... y'all remember spell checking that uses an actual dictionary? That doesn't gaslight you about whether a word is in a dictionary or not, it just tells you?

For what it's worth, Configuring Vim as a Writing Tool by Theena is a decent hint at things that are useful for making vim writerly

Comments

[silveradept]

I knew that vim and emacs have, through plugins, become multi-tools that do all kinds of things in addition to text editing, but I'd be intimidated by the learning curve to think about using vim as a writing tool for something like that. Perhaps if I were in the situation like the OP was, trying to cut out the number of programs involved, and to have as little program-specific things added to the text file so it can be edited on everything, I might be interested in figuring out how to maximize a text editor to its limits. I don't quite have the need for cross-device collaboration yet.

[sonia]

I agree, good to know that these things exist, but I'm not ready to jump on the bandwagon. I did my article writing in emacs for the longest time, but then I impulse-bought Scrivener when I saw a sale go by, and enjoyed using that instead.