You might remember the excellent Blockwriter mockups by Khoi Vinh[1]. I was browsing the Internet, reading books, and working very hard to forget that I had a book to write that I had been writing for the last five years. In a way to appease my inner guilt-machine, the procrastinator in me (which is always in overdrive, which can't be too good for its health --- oh joy! oh rapture! Oh wait…) decided that Blockwriter was exactly what I needed to get back on track.

This app, by the way, is for Windows and uses .NET 2.0. Don't be fooled by the screenshot; I'm using a WindowsBlinds theme.

Blockwriter screenshot

The footnote that isn't

[1] Back before I bought my MacBook, I made the mistake of skimming the post and therefore completely missing the fact that the application, umm, hasn't been created yet. The point in case: I was struggling mightily between buying a MacBook or a PC, and ended up buying a MacBook because of, umm, the Blockwriter. We won't talk about what happened when I came back to the site and didn't find a download link. :p

Anyway: after banging away at my keyboard, I came up with what we'll call an alpha release. I'm going to post it on my site before I give into the urge to start over from scratch again so that the app is perfect.

So, what Blockwriter lets you do (read: not do) at the moment:

Tada!

  1. You can't delete text with the backspace key.
  2. When you use the "delete" key, you see a bullet in place of the deleted character, which is important for people like me that obsess over line endings matching perfectly (no "justified alignment" doesn't cut it because of the ugly spaces within the line).
  3. You can save your file by pressing CTRL+S, but otherwise there's no indication that such thing is even possible.
  4. No font-changing allowed, another important "procrastination is to be drawn, quartered, and hung until dead" feature for people like me, who change font families, sizes, and colors even more times than they press the "delete" key (changing the font for some reason doesn't feel as stinky as deleting stuff).
  5. A semi-transparent exposé-style black background that stays put over the entire screen as long as the text editor is running. Having the brilliant power of foresight, I wisely refused (and will continue to refuse) to allow the user to tinker with the opacity level.
  6. You can't mass-delete text by keeping the delete key pressed. It's a favorite technique of mine, one which makes me feel horrible to not be able to do --- almost as horrible as the Missing Key report pressed by Backspace's parents.

  7. You can't change the size of the form, either, though you can maximize/minimize it, but only until I can figure out how to stop you from doing it without getting rid of the title bar (the text "editor" looks quite horrible without one).

  8. Shortcuts are disabled, by which I mean CTRL+C, CTRL+V, and CTRL+X.

  9. Text selection is also disabled. There's no reason why you should be able to select text. Obey.

  10. Umm. That's it, I think.

Maybe features in next "releases"

…planned for an unspecified time in the misty future:

  1. Autosaving every couple of seconds or minutes. I'm thinking about spamming an unreachable folder so that at least some of my your drafts have a chance of making it out alive.

  2. A timer, whose sole purpose is to disable access to every other application on your computer including the taskbar, IM, and any and all browsers so that the only thing you can do is pull the plug or beat the crap out of the CPU with a big bat to rid yourself of the text editor during the allotted time.

  3. Exporting and priting capabilities. Exporting is basically saving, which we already have but only a keyboard-freaks such as myself would figure it through sheer, dumb luck.

  4. Port to MAC. I hear this shouldn't be too difficult, but I doubt it. Installing Mono has been a pain and when I say "pain," I mean PAIN, and by PAIN, I mean "I haven't managed to successfully install MONO on my MacBook yet, goddamit!"

  5. Fix the mysterious bug feature bug of autoscroll to the top: suppose you wrote enough (or maybe you just pressed Enter ten times) to get a vertical scrollbar and supposed you deleted something on the last line, you'll find that your editor will automatically scroll up to the top, even though your cursor stays at the bottom. Don't know why.

  6. Have my awesome undead black screen handle multiple screens. Currently, it only occupies the current screen.

  7. Make a nice icon. Or maybe 10 of them.

  8. Anything else I, the procrastinator extraordinaire, can think of.

Disclaimer: I'm in no way responsible for anything this app does to your machine. It's provided "as is." Please keep that in mind before downloading the executable.

Download the alpha-release of the app and let me know of any bugs or features or whatever.

Enjoy!