In the late 80s I was working at an academic institution, and personal computers were still mostly the domain of nerds. One person I remember didn't know any other program except Lotus 1-2-3. But she used to write entire letters and documents as spreadsheets, with all the text in one gigantic cell. The only thing I found impressive about that was that the program didn't crash when it hit 65,535 letters in a cell.
Show HN: A spreadsheet for writers
11–20 of 58 posts
Re: Show HN: A spreadsheet for writers
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll make the changes inside the webpage. It's like Excel but without automatic grids. You have to add them manually. The way I write, I think things and then I think ABOUT things. Word & Excel's structures kinda work for this but not exactly. Excel didn't have enough freedom and was clearly designed for numbercrunching and all the extra features also got in the way of thinking. Word had too much freedom. Also, they…
The indentation of submenus is too small. You should try something more similar to usual menus. It would be nice to be able to export this as a docx, xlsx and pdf file. Importing is perhaps impossible, but exporting should be doable. > The way I write, I think things and then I think ABOUT things. I don't understand. You are talking about writing a book? About writing an internal memo for your team?
So, the main set of thoughts goes up and down, and the thoughts about the main set of thoughts go to the left and right. Usually on the same level but sometimes not.
Writing books, movies, screenplays, etc. Contexts where subtext is heavy. Contexts where meaning per time is dense.
I'm planning to be able to export this as an HTML on top of those formats.
You'll be able to upload your Zeminary writings as a static webpage.
I'll change the indentations.
Re: Show HN: A spreadsheet for writers
#13You need a high-speed 15 second GIF/mp4 screencast with keypresses visible (maybe use a trial of Camtasia) if you think all the hotkeys should be used a lot. At least a screenshot or two of a "document" in progress! (Screenshots here apparently: https://twitter.com/Zeminary/status/1432195697449766921 , though it would be cool to show a complex document.) Also, set the title attribute on your navbar item divs and moda…
Thanks for the GIF suggestion.
Thanks for catching those UTF-8 errors.
Thanks for letting me know about the title attribute.
Yeah, I actually used it exactly like a higher resolution Trello to plan out this and other apps and the roadmap.
I'll make an example document sometime soon and post it on hackernews as guerilla marketing.
Re: Show HN: A spreadsheet for writers
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll make the changes inside the webpage. It's like Excel but without automatic grids. You have to add them manually. The way I write, I think things and then I think ABOUT things. Word & Excel's structures kinda work for this but not exactly. Excel didn't have enough freedom and was clearly designed for numbercrunching and all the extra features also got in the way of thinking. Word had too much freedom. Also, they…
This makes a ton of sense. I've heard it said that there are those that spread and those that stack when organizing. This is an example of a spread, where Word is made for stackers. When I work on stuff it drives some people nuts because the idea I have is to spread all the pieces spatially so I can see all the parts at all times as I take things apart, and then condense it in as I finish. So when taking things apart…
That's exactly what led me to make Zeminary. I kept running into problems with decomposing my thoughts in a way that didn't interfere with my main line of thought. Or with trying to grasp all the thoughts in a situation.
Re: Show HN: A spreadsheet for writers
#15In the late 80s I was working at an academic institution, and personal computers were still mostly the domain of nerds. One person I remember didn't know any other program except Lotus 1-2-3. But she used to write entire letters and documents as spreadsheets, with all the text in one gigantic cell. The only thing I found impressive about that was that the program didn't crash when it hit 65,535 letters in a cell.
That's one benefit of Zeminary over other word processors.
You can edit a paragraph without shifting the whole text.
It gets really useful when you have to write a book or thesis or movie script. Anything very long really.
Something I noticed working with the JS editor in Zeminary was that the load time increased exponentially with more and more text and formatting.
So chunking it helped to offset that problem. I don't know if Word has that problem. But I know I can load the Zeminary equivalent of a 100k words formatted Word file in about 5% or 10% the time.
Re: Show HN: A spreadsheet for writers
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll make the changes inside the webpage. It's like Excel but without automatic grids. You have to add them manually. The way I write, I think things and then I think ABOUT things. Word & Excel's structures kinda work for this but not exactly. Excel didn't have enough freedom and was clearly designed for numbercrunching and all the extra features also got in the way of thinking. Word had too much freedom. Also, they…
I still don’t understand what it’s for. You think things then write about things makes no sense as an explanation to me. The fact that word/excel kinda works but not really also doesn’t help. Maybe make a video where you write something in the boxes and explain why they go where they go.
Here's my guiding philosophy (on Twitter).
Zeminary to me is supposed to be an Ideamusicsheet.
I didn't want to call it that in my post cause that just ... sounds a bit kooky.
https://twitter.com/Zeminary/status/1432571606744899587
Zeminary is more for artists than technologists.
Artists are very concerned with relationships of meaning and time.
When I write, I really only have one main line of thought, but to grasp what that thought means, I have to decompose it. I need to write to the side, to show that at this point in time, this and other thoughts arise. I don't want just the final line, I want to see all the lines that make up that line.
That's overkill for alot of usecases, but necessary for mine.
I also do alot of annotations of dense philosophical works. I have to seriously grasp them because I want my art to cohere.
I guess you could say Zeminary is a metathinking app. Or a chordal or a contrapuntal thinking app. It makes Ideamusic more deliberate.
You can do the same work in other places, but Zeminary makes it alot easier for me. For example, writing in one place doesn't cause everything else to shift around. Images and extra context local to a specific grid can be hidden in that grid (scrollable). The soft shadows help to "bleed" ideas. You can unborder grids to separate context. The bareness and the lack of distracting UI helps me to focus. Movable mindmaps are easier to pull off. There's marks, there's multipoint comments. There's alot of subtle touches. Etc. I'll be adding more feature layers in the future.
One of my future art projects is to write a 4096 part work based on the King Wen Sequence. 64 x 64 = 4096. It'll be very dense. I'm making Zeminary Tensor for that.
Zeminary Tensors might even become an app of choice for anyone looking to author & publish large textworks.
And progressive summarization / expansion / composition.
And analogical thinking.
Re: Show HN: A spreadsheet for writers
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still don’t understand what it’s for. You think things then write about things makes no sense as an explanation to me. The fact that word/excel kinda works but not really also doesn’t help. Maybe make a video where you write something in the boxes and explain why they go where they go.
Here's my guiding philosophy (on Twitter). Zeminary to me is supposed to be an Ideamusicsheet. I didn't want to call it that in my post cause that just ... sounds a bit kooky. https://twitter.com/Zeminary/status/1432571606744899587 Zeminary is more for artists than technologists. Artists are very concerned with relationships of meaning and time. When I write, I really only have one main line of thought, but to grasp…
> I need to write to the side, to show that at this point in time, this and other thoughts arise.
So it's a non linear writing app.
Re: Show HN: A spreadsheet for writers
#18Moving, resizing, adding is so hard. Clicking on some obscure icon within toolbar, that doesn't even feature tooltip for more explanation and then multiple clicks to get down to the operation I want...
It is natural to be able to drag. Maybe pressing some key so that doesn't happen accidentally, or have some snap in corner that must be dragged.
Resizing... we do intuitively within OS for decades...
Adding. Perhaps + sign can be added in the adjacent column/row, that spawns new one.
Having other commands within right click would also be helpful. Well, that's at least how we are used to use word/excel.
Re: Show HN: A spreadsheet for writers
#19Moving, resizing, adding is so hard. Clicking on some obscure icon within toolbar, that doesn't even feature tooltip for more explanation and then multiple clicks to get down to the operation I want... It is natural to be able to drag. Maybe pressing some key so that doesn't happen accidentally, or have some snap in corner that must be dragged. Resizing... we do intuitively within OS for decades... Adding. Perhaps +…
I'll add in drag to move points.
What's the problem with drag to resize?
I'll add tooltips as someone else suggested earlier.
I'll add hover options to make it easier to add new rows and columns.
I've been relying on hotkeys for a long time (you can click the question mark to see the interactions and hotkeys available to you). Thanks for bringing up those mouse-related UI problems.
Re: Show HN: A spreadsheet for writers
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's my guiding philosophy (on Twitter). Zeminary to me is supposed to be an Ideamusicsheet. I didn't want to call it that in my post cause that just ... sounds a bit kooky. https://twitter.com/Zeminary/status/1432571606744899587 Zeminary is more for artists than technologists. Artists are very concerned with relationships of meaning and time. When I write, I really only have one main line of thought, but to grasp…
> I need to write to the side, to show that at this point in time, this and other thoughts arise. So it's a non linear writing app.
Well, it's still linear, but with more dimensions. It thinks of writing as a progression of chords rather than as a progression of arpeggiations.
EDIT: Actually, no you're right. It's nonlinear.