App idea: a word processor that doesn’t expose every single possible possible formatting option permanently in a huge top bar. Create headings, write text, mark important sections, insert images, and that’s it. Export as a PDF and move on. In contrast to a note taking app / markdown editor, this would actually be intended as a simpler and more focused alternative to #Word, #LibreOffice and such.
I personally think the current word processor paradigm, and the resulting underlying technology, performs badly UX-wise: many of the formatting options don’t have any semantics at all, and have to be applied manually. What’s the semantic difference between bold and italic text? Why are both options exposed at all? The current state-of-the-art apps are full of quirks like this, and I think it’s time to challenge the decades-old workflow that has lead us to this.
#LaTeX has already addressed a lot of this, so I guess what I would really like to see is a modern, general-purpose app incorporating the same ideas.
Edited 1y ago
Introducing Sentence: an adaptive word processor for the 21st century. The intention of this is not to fully replace every single thing you can do with a traditional word processor, but I'm confident that the vast majority of things you've used them for can be done way quicker and more conveniently with this.
@bragefuglseth uhm what exactly do you mean with "the vast majority of things people do with word processors"? People use them for letters (biggest use), forms and contracts (often strict formatting requirements), invoices (complex content, letterhead), academic papers and theses (very precise formatting requirements)... Markdown doesn't cut it for any of these. Google docs comes close but in reality people want Word because they need Word.
(Also file format compatibility)
Edited 1y ago
@bragefuglseth Looks super nice, I can see it also being used for non technical people to write a blog post and output to markdown to post in static site generators. The main barrier is usually learning markdown vs transforming it in a full CMS.
@gcampax Sentence will have the capability of exporting documents to a selection of file types (PDF, HTML, and so on), so we’re not expecting everybody and their dog to handle markdown. For things with specific formatting requirements, we could e.g. have a way to change the global styling of the document. Invoices, contracts and similar corporate stuff is probably best suited for specialized software anyways (maybe word processors *is* that specialized software?)
@bragefuglseth well, part of the popularity of word processing is that to some extent everyone has to deal with that stuff... eg. small businesses, freelancers, landlords need to make contracts and can't afford specialized software.
Ultimately, who would be the target user of such app?
And it's not about the export format, it's about the complexity of formatting and the internal representation. Markdown doesn't have alignment or margins, so even a letter can't be formatted correctly...
@gcampax @bragefuglseth Maybe frontmatter header could fill the base formatting needs as the metadata of the underlying markdown format? Not to go wild with customization, but for basic formatting needs like, document type and margin.