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9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

papereditor.app

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Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#251

Post by fauigerzigerk »

Analemma_ wrote: post #184
germandiago wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you are now locked down to one environment.

The insistence that every application/framework must be cross-platform, or its worthless, is so bizarre to me. What is even the point of having multiple operating systems if they can't have distinct features to gain competitive advantage by attracting application developers? If operating systems can't differentiate, we might as well all use Windows. Cross-platform applications have their place, but sometimes I like h…

What I find bizarre is that this is often discussed without considering the specifics of the app.

I agree that not every app must be cross-platform. Text editors are a good example. The economics may or may not be more difficult. Yes the audience is smaller but the cost may be lower as well and you may have a competitive edge over cross-platform apps.

The problem with starting a single platform app is that you have to decide very early on that you're not going to need any collaboration/sharing features (unless the app is built on top of some cross-platform protocol or file format) and that you're not going to serve multi-platform users any time soon. This is a big decision with far reaching consequences.

I think there's a risk for developers (and tech bloggers) to become so enamoured with the fine details of their platform of choice that they lose touch with the priorities of the user community.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#252

Post by 20after4 »

Solvency wrote: post #125
20after4 wrote: post #104

> In the end, building a polished, frictionless support chat was one of the best decisions that I have ever made for Paper. Many many years ago, I used to run a web hosting company. One of the first things I did was I built one of those little chat widgets that let me chat directly with visitors on my website. This was around the year 2000 and before I had ever heard of liveperson which was somewhat new at the time.…

Why didn't you offer a customer support number?

I did have a phone number, however, when someone is about to click "buy" on a website but they have one hesitation, they aren't as likely to dial a phone to get an answer. When they can click a button and have instant response right there on the page.

I was a really powerful sales and support tool.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#253

Post by papereditor »

makk wrote: post #249

Had never heard of paper editor. Just using it now for the first time and WOW. This is amaaaaaazing. There's this thing I've wanted to write for a while now and could never quite get started. Something about this UI just pulls the writing out of me. Love it!

Thank you!

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#254

Post by jwells89 »

Analemma_ wrote: post #248
jwells89 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could be at least partially solved if cross platform frameworks filled in feature gaps between platforms, making their feature set a union of features on all supported operating systems, but this rarely happens. Instead they typically take a least common denominator approach, limiting apps written with them to only the most common basic features.

It does happen though - Qt tries very hard to do that. I don't know about literally everything, but the majority of platform-specific features/optimizations can be exposed through Qt with enough work. And what is the result? Everyone complains that Qt is too hard to use, and so it has utterly lost the cross-platform war to Electron, and meanwhile the devs who want the platform-native functionality (like the OP of the…

Qt is probably closest among cross platform frameworks, but comes with some thorns that can be difficult to ignore and contribute to that “hard to use” sentiment.

The way Qt Widgets is for practical purposes usable only with C++ or Python is one such thorn, as is its use of custom types like QString. Both increase friction significantly as many devs aren’t able to use their preferred language and can’t use the language primitives they’re familiar with. Qt Widgets apps also require a good deal extra elbowgrease to make feel good on all supported platforms due to oddities in widget layout and drawing, and to my knowledge use of newer features (like blurred “vibrant” (macOS) or “mica” (Windows) window backgrounds requires dropping down to native code.

For QML, devs are stuck with JavaScript (which while functional, isn’t everybody’s cup of tea) and face some of the same issues that web/electron devs do with needing to pull in third party frameworks (like MauiKit[0]) to have a usable widget set.

Distribution is a problem across the board in Qt with tooling being a less than great state. It’s a very common issue to see crashes in Qt apps as a result of some incantation being missing.

In short Qt has the right idea, but I believe it’s held back by many of its technical and design decisions. I’d like to see a project that’s like it, but built in a modern language with good C interop so high quality efficient bindings can be easily generated, and has a bigger focus on good DX.

[0]: https://mauikit.org

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#255

Post by lenkite »

jimbokun wrote: post #158
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #94

> Swift has come a long way and my guess is Apple has either embedded it into their platforms or added some fancy tree shaking for the binary. It went ABI around Swift 5 or so. I took a huge leap of faith, in 2014, and started using Swift, exclusively. It's turned out OK. I'm not quite as positive about SwiftUI, though. I think it will work out, but it has a huge amount of catching up to do, if it is to replace UIKit…

When I tried using SwiftUI, the performance for scrolling through lists past a certain size was very painful. I guess there were ways to mitigate this slowness, but they were very unintuitive and did not give me confidence in the developers commitment to keeping apps snappy and responsive. The APIs for NSTableView and NSCollectionView, in contrast, were always very responsive and performant when used in the default w…

I wish Apple had stuck to Model-View-Controller instead of shoehorning React philosophy into their native UI framework. Personally, I find the "old-school" way of doing things far easier to follow and understand.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#257

Post by luizsantana »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #94

> Swift has come a long way and my guess is Apple has either embedded it into their platforms or added some fancy tree shaking for the binary. It went ABI around Swift 5 or so. I took a huge leap of faith, in 2014, and started using Swift, exclusively. It's turned out OK. I'm not quite as positive about SwiftUI, though. I think it will work out, but it has a huge amount of catching up to do, if it is to replace UIKit…

Well, migrating swift versions was not too fun

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#258

Post by papereditor »

twiss wrote: post #243

Only very tangentially related, but I think the generated Markdown shown in the last screenshot under "Gnarly bits" is not correct? It contains `[**Alfred Nobel]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Nobel ) for this prize.**`, with the bold starting inside and ending outside the link; I don't think that's possible. It should either start outside, or have two sections of bold text (inside and outside the link).

The Markdown engine is bespoke. I don't follow any specs. Paper might be looser in what it allows than other Markdown editors. Practically no one had issues with that over the years. :)

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#259

Post by papereditor »

jasonjmcghee wrote: post #239
meindnoch wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I often find myself wanting to use that internal stuff And then curse Apple when the internals change and your app breaks?

I would never

It's a calculated risk. You can make unique experiences with private stuff.

Apple ships betas, so there is plenty of time to see if stuff breaks with the latest OS.

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