[HN Gopher] IA Writer in Paper
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IA Writer in Paper
Author : scop
Score : 121 points
Date : 2023-12-08 16:49 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ia.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (ia.net)
| blueflow wrote:
| I thought the pictures were blank white. Which kind of person
| photographs a pure white product on a pure white background?
| theyinwhy wrote:
| Photographer is the word you are looking for.
| shrubble wrote:
| Seems a bit "twee" or whatever the word is, is it embossed into
| the paper or just very faint lines? And why show only Japanese
| handwriting when you are putatively, willing to sell it to people
| who will write in English?
| cianmm wrote:
| They've got a Tokyo office so they're probably interested
| selling to that market too
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| My experience is that no demographic cares about paper quality
| like the Japanese.
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| Given how many extremely high quality, end game, niche items
| I've ended up buying from Japanese companies, I'd agree.
| tiltowait wrote:
| From my (very brief) foray looking into the "high-end
| penmanship" hobby, Japanese notebooks seem to be some of the
| most highly regarded, so it makes sense to me.
| adaboese wrote:
| Misread as "AI writer". I thought it is another competitor
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Does everyone experience episodic, like, dyslexia when they try
| to read thru and think too fast? I always had this when test-
| taking as a student.
| GaggiX wrote:
| Yeah it happens to everyone, I read "AI winter" in the title
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| I love iA Writer and will shill it till I die. One of the few
| pieces of software to genuinely change my professional and
| artistic life.
|
| I screamed for a second when I thought this was them releasing an
| eink device. Something like Remarkable, that would be a day one
| buy for me.
|
| I tried to get this hacked together with one of those Chinese
| Android eink tablets, but the save/sync was unreliable (only time
| I've ever lost writing) and the overall experience was poor
| compared to my iPad. But my soul pants for iA Writer on eink.
| seeknotfind wrote:
| I love it too :) so many good memories writing, staring at that
| perfect blue cursor blinking. The markdown renderer is
| beautiful too because it still renders a lot of the special
| characters. Header hashtags off to the left.
| Caddickbrown wrote:
| Have you tried something like Obsidian? How would you compare
| it?
| samsolomon wrote:
| Not who you asked, but I like and own both, but have found
| myself moving to Obsidian more and more. I'm not entirely
| sure why. IA writer now has document linking and I love the
| typography. I like the editor better.
|
| I think there is something that makes file organization
| easier in Obsidian. I have a plugin that creates a new note
| for each given week. And it feels easier to navigate a bunch
| of files without the descriptions/first few lines of the doc.
|
| EDIT: And this thread has encouraged me to second guess
| myself about some of these things and there's a setting to
| remove descriptions in the library. Maybe I'll try picking IA
| Writer back up!
| kstrauser wrote:
| For me, they're so different that it's hard to compare them.
| Obsidian is a great tool for linking, searching, querying,
| and visualizing sets of thoughts. It happens to have a text
| editor, but that's not the brilliant part about it.
| Obsidian's editor feels _to me_ like a method to get data
| into the note database. Also, Electron.
|
| iA Writer is a one the best text editors I've ever touched.
| It happens to have tools for linking and searching notes, but
| that's not the brilliant part. Writer's data management feels
| _to me_ like methods to navigate around to the note I want to
| writing. Also, it 's a "Mac-assed Mac app", looks and feels
| exactly like it belongs on my desktop, plays nicely with all
| other Mac apps, and couldn't be faster or more responsive if
| it were hand-coded in assembler.
|
| If I want to store and search notes, I'd _probably_ pick
| Obsidian (although I 'm currently using Bear Notes for that).
| If I want the best writing environment I know of, I'll reach
| for iA Writer every time.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I use both, and won't exchange one for the other. Obsidian is
| a knowledge management tool. iA is on the other hand is a
| writing tool. I compose my blog posts there, esp. its writing
| aids are very helpful.
|
| While obsidian is getting more and more of my knowledge, all
| focused post authoring is happening and will happen in iA.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| One thing I battled with in iA Writer is its objection to
| adverbs and adjectives. Eventually I came to appreciate its
| position, realizing that they add little value to text.
| Filligree wrote:
| That sounds like it's not very useful for fiction, then?
| llm_nerd wrote:
| _Obviously_ you can turn that syntax highlighting off. Add
| that the majority of writing is non-fiction (I 'd wager
| 99.99%+ of written words). Or least purported to be non-
| fiction.
| turuttituff2000 wrote:
| Mark Twain: "When you catch an adjective, kill it." Stephen
| King: "The road to hell is paved with adverbs".
|
| But what do they know about fiction? :)
| themadturk wrote:
| The killing of excess adjectives and adverbs is _very_ good
| for fiction.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Ah, I hate that you were downvoted for that. For those who
| haven't used it, yes, iA Writer tries to steer you away from
| adverbs: https://ia.net/writer/support/basics/writing-
| tips/parts-of-s...
|
| You can turn that off. I did at first; all the colors in the
| English prose I was writing distracted me. I came to
| appreciate that, though. I realized that I used adverbs and
| adjectives much more than I intended to, and now they stand
| out.
|
| Along those lines, I've also realized that I overuse "great",
| "love", "hope", "literally", and "but". I added those to iA
| Writer's custom patterns, and now it pesters me when I use
| those words. Sometimes I mean to, but I literally love to put
| them in every sentence and hope it turns out great. iA Writer
| says, hey, you might want to reconsider your word choices.
| sergiomattei wrote:
| That software made me fall in love with writing.
|
| I'm a lifelong customer and it's been one of the best purchases
| I've ever made.
| kstrauser wrote:
| > one of the best purchases
|
| Key word there: purchases. Their apps are pricey, but then
| you own them. I'll take that over subscriptions every time.
| sambeau wrote:
| The only thing stopping me from using iA Writer for everything
| is being able to manually sort a folder. I realise that, being
| it's just a folder underneath, this would require storage
| somewhere. But it could be as simple as:
| _index.md: - File 1.md - File 2.md -
| File 3.md
| brailsafe wrote:
| Since it's a mac app, it could store the metadata in either a
| file, like you mentioned, or in a userdefaults preference
| dictionary (plist) that would be stored in the app's library
| support folder, or they could use core data and just keep a
| unique identifier for the path to the folder
| Swizec wrote:
| Been using iA Writer for 10+ years. It's made me a better
| writer. The way it started highlighting cliches and fluffy
| turns of phrase a few years ago has been chef's kiss.
|
| I wish it supported .adoc because sometimes markdown just isn't
| enough.
| RBerenguel wrote:
| Shilling (or not, it's open source, who cares). I made this:
| https://github.com/rberenguel/PiWrite
|
| It is not iA Writer in eink, but I got distant inspiration (I
| used it a lot back when it was released... a long time ago) and
| could be closer with effort.
| fmeyer wrote:
| I use Drafts,
|
| It can take you to places that you never thought would be
| possible with AI writer.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I use both. iA Writer is my definite writing app. It's where
| I write any bit of non-trivial Markdown, to the point I wince
| when I have to use an old-fashioned word processor. Drafts is
| exceptional for dispatching little bits of text to other apps
| through its ridiculously powerful integration and scripting.
| For instance, if I think of something I want to post to
| Mastodon, I press opt-F2 to open Drafts, write it, then press
| F2 to send it to my server.
|
| Writer is a much better text editor IMO. (Drafts is really
| good, but Writer is stupendous.) Drafts is much better for
| interacting with or automating other apps. They're both in my
| dock.
| disqard wrote:
| Thank you for that enthusiastic appraisal!
|
| You made me wonder "is it really _that_ good? ", so I just
| tried it out and loved it, and I'm grateful to you for bringing
| it to my attention.
|
| Have a wonderful day, Internet stranger :)
| glenngillen wrote:
| Did you look at the SuperNote? I've one, and love it. It seems
| more hackable than the Remarkable from what I can tell, though
| the base functionality has been enough for me so I've not
| customised it.
| mrtesthah wrote:
| Is it acid-free / archival grade paper?
| trinsic2 wrote:
| Im not quite sure what this is. Its it just a piece of software,
| an e-ink reader or paper? They needed to set up what this is
| before talking about its features
| modernerd wrote:
| It's a physical paper notebook.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| It's some paper bound together with some glue. For almost
| everyone it has feature parity with something you can buy for a
| couple of $/EUR/PS in many shops. You'll write the same stuff
| in both.
| seeknotfind wrote:
| I hope everyone is signing up for the newsletter so they release
| this. I think I would pay $50 as a one-time gimmick, because I
| genuinely love iA Writer. Though, if I was to use this as a
| normal product and buy multiple times, I think I'd be looking for
| a $20 price range.
| vishkk wrote:
| One of my favorite products -- been using it for note-taking,
| journaling, and miscellaneous stuff for almost a decade now!
| CharlesW wrote:
| This is a new, unreleased product, iAnotobutsuku (iA Notebook).
| rpastuszak wrote:
| I think the Enso[*] version of this would be a single piece of
| paper and a pen filled with ink which disappears after 10-15
| seconds.
|
| Does anyone know if such ink exists or if there's a way of making
| one cheaply/safely? I want to build prototype and record a video.
|
| (* Enso is a stream of consciousness writing app I built some
| time ago, hence my very clever idea: https://enso.sonnet.io)
| dbtc wrote:
| I don't know about on paper, but I have seen (videos of) people
| writing (chinese) calligraphy on pavements with water and big
| brushes, which fades in a few minutes as it dries.
| syncbehind wrote:
| Get yourself a buddha board :) you can basically do something
| like that.
| CharlesW wrote:
| For anyone looking for a "dark mode" solution:
| https://www.jetpens.com/Etranger-di-Costarica-Blanc-de-Noirs...
| syncbehind wrote:
| What ink do you use with this? I find a lot of "bright" inks to
| not be opaque enough.
| starkparker wrote:
| Metallic silver or white gel ink works well. I like silver
| for being a little more reflective in low light. Or white-out
| pens, unironically.
| loughnane wrote:
| I didn't know anything about ia writer before this post. I love
| it's specs but I feel I'm halfway to setting up something similar
| --and more flexible--in vim.
|
| I hadn't spent more than 5m in vim a year ago. Now it's like a
| superpower for writing. I've got ProseMode that makes it look
| pretty, custom linting rules through Vale (eg it flags if I try
| to say 'amazing'), and lots of other stuff. At this point I even
| use it for all my work writing.
|
| In any case, it makes me feel good that's there's software out
| there letting people reach the same heights.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| Looks nice, but wouldn't hurt to know the price. At least a
| ballpark.
|
| Given all the pompousness and dripping exclusivity I'm guessing a
| bit under $100 ... ?
| selykg wrote:
| A $100 notepad? Gimme a break.
|
| Given Baron Fig and Leuchtturm charge a premium (and are
| $20-30), I'd guess one of these would be under $30 if they had
| enough interest to produce large enough quantities. The price
| really depends on quantity.
| syncbehind wrote:
| This looks like good paper. I hope it doesn't bleed or feather
| like most with fountainpen ink.
|
| I like the idea.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Ya'll may also want to check out Midori1, a favorite of the
| journaling community. There's also Northbooks2, a small American
| company. And Nanami Paper3 if you want to try out quality paper
| in the ultra-thin direction.
|
| [1]: https://md.midori-japan.co.jp/en/products/mdnote-cotton/
|
| [2]: https://gonorthbooks.com/
|
| [3]: https://www.nanamipaper.com/products/cafe-note-b6-slim-
| grid....
| pryelluw wrote:
| I bought one of the midori notebooks. It's so nice that I feel
| bad about using it.
| maxverse wrote:
| I've had that happen. I recently bought a few Muji notebooks
| for $2/piece[1]. They're thin, beautiful, and relatively
| cheap. I want to use them to doodle with less constraint or
| self-judgement, but still with a good experience. It's a
| weird balance between writing in a way that feels good, but
| also not judging yourself too much because you're using
| beautiful tools and materials.
|
| [1] https://www.muji.us/products/bind-grid-
| notebook-9s62?_pos=2&...
| kyle_o wrote:
| As soon as I've paid for one version of iA, I seem to always need
| another. Keep it up!
| dshakti wrote:
| User since day 1 of the launch! Writer and Presenter are my 2
| most used apps that I never close. They are both, philosophically
| speaking, made to make you think and challenge you to articulate
| better with every single use.
|
| The release notes of Writer 7 literally brought a smile on my
| face. So did the notebook. Simple oceans like these is truly what
| human craft is all about.
| dabei wrote:
| Took me a couple of minutes to realize this is not an AI launch.
| jopsen wrote:
| Been loving the android app until recently, it's started to fail
| auto save :(
| marcomourao wrote:
| If they follow their app pricing model, it will cost EUR13,55
| more in my country for absolutely no reason.
| vcg3rd wrote:
| So they took 10 years to reinvent Whitelines?
| minikomi wrote:
| In case anyone was wondering, the text is from Night on the
| Galactic Railroad by Kenji Miyazawa.
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(page generated 2023-12-08 23:00 UTC)