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9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

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Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#211

Post by interactivecode »

orenlindsey wrote: post #128
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…

SwiftUI is pretty good, I've been using to build an app. The big problem is navigation and state handling, it's not intuitive (although I never used AppKit or UIKit so I can't say if it's better or worse)

You should give it an other go building on SwiftData and the new Observation API’s. They made leaps and bounds and it’s so much better now!

I’m having a lot of fun with it at the moment. If you stay within the bounds of how they encourage you to build the apps, you can just go go go and with very little work release a fast, stable, native app across all their platforms.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#213

Post by papereditor »

brantonb wrote: post #199

This post was great, so I added the RSS feed to my reader and I almost instantly removed it. I always knew those "7 Best Writing Apps for iPhone (2024)" posts were only there for SEO, but seeing a post from 2021 with that title is frustrating. This post appears to be the only non-SEO-related post in the feed. Not trying to take anything away from the author: the app and this post look great. But consider doing more w…

Thanks!

I've indeed forgotten about the RSS feed. That post was created in 2021, but I keep stuff up to date even for SEO content, so the update time is 2024. That said, those posts are purely for keywords - they have no value other than to get occasional clicks from Google, and to spread the word about Paper.

I'll think about separating the feeds.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#214

Post by brantonb »

mtillman wrote: post #204
brantonb wrote: post #199

This post was great, so I added the RSS feed to my reader and I almost instantly removed it. I always knew those "7 Best Writing Apps for iPhone (2024)" posts were only there for SEO, but seeing a post from 2021 with that title is frustrating. This post appears to be the only non-SEO-related post in the feed. Not trying to take anything away from the author: the app and this post look great. But consider doing more w…

There is no money in doing what you're suggesting. You're basically asking for a donation.

Yes, I'm asking for a bit of work to be done so that I can read their future posts like this. I spend money on well-crafted indie software but typically only after following the author for a while. I'd like to remain engaged and was offering a suggestion on how the author could make that happen.

The current RSS feed is not useful for humans. I'm not into SEO, so maybe RSS feeds are taken into account. You can publish multiple feeds, though.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#215

Post by raincole »

monkeynotes wrote: post #45

All the "fringes" stuff is where the magic is. The author suggests that no one notices some of the refinements, well this may be true on day one, but people discover these touches as they grow more familiar. Those subtle thoughtful additions are what makes the difference between an app I like using, and one I love using. They help me feel a couple of things: 1) A connection; I feel like I noticed something just for t…

It depends on what kind of app you are making. Text editor is probably where the "craftsmanship" shines the most, cause there are just way too many text editors out there.

(Un)fortunately in many other cases it doesn't work like that. People use a certain app to book train tickets even its UI sucks hard and it asks 100 permissions unnecessarily, because the only alternative is get it over the counter in person.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#216

Post by eslaught »

Since the author seems to be in the comments, have you ever considered implementing a Typora-style live preview? (Typora, for those who don't know, hides the Markdown formatting as you type, and shows it again when you move the cursor back onto the text.)

Paper appears to have a more traditional split between text mode and preview mode, and you can't properly edit the formatting in preview mode (e.g., you cannot turn a heading back into normal text from preview mode).

I'm sure it's a pain to implement, but it's the one really killer feature of Typora that I can't live without.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#217

Post by brantonb »

papereditor wrote: post #213
brantonb wrote: post #199

This post was great, so I added the RSS feed to my reader and I almost instantly removed it. I always knew those "7 Best Writing Apps for iPhone (2024)" posts were only there for SEO, but seeing a post from 2021 with that title is frustrating. This post appears to be the only non-SEO-related post in the feed. Not trying to take anything away from the author: the app and this post look great. But consider doing more w…

Thanks! I've indeed forgotten about the RSS feed. That post was created in 2021, but I keep stuff up to date even for SEO content, so the update time is 2024. That said, those posts are purely for keywords - they have no value other than to get occasional clicks from Google, and to spread the word about Paper. I'll think about separating the feeds.

I totally understand that you have to play the game, even if I think the game makes search results worse. Appreciate your consideration and the post itself. (I'm an iOS dev that's made the jump from Obj-C to Swift and now from UIKit to SwiftUI.)

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#218

Post by bsaul »

jshier wrote: post #134
orenlindsey wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SwiftUI is pretty good, I've been using to build an app. The big problem is navigation and state handling, it's not intuitive (although I never used AppKit or UIKit so I can't say if it's better or worse)

Yeah, you really need to combine SwiftUI with a dedicated architecture like PointFree's Swift Composable Architecture. It solves your state and navigation problems while adding dependency and testing solutions as well. Apple's stubborn and bizarrely proud insistence on not providing the full solution here is very annoying.

just had a look at Composable Architecture, and it looks like swiftUI being the equivalent of react, they faced the same problem and someone developed a redux in swift. Am i correct ?

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#219

Post by tl »

raincole wrote: post #215
monkeynotes wrote: post #45

All the "fringes" stuff is where the magic is. The author suggests that no one notices some of the refinements, well this may be true on day one, but people discover these touches as they grow more familiar. Those subtle thoughtful additions are what makes the difference between an app I like using, and one I love using. They help me feel a couple of things: 1) A connection; I feel like I noticed something just for t…

It depends on what kind of app you are making. Text editor is probably where the "craftsmanship" shines the most, cause there are just way too many text editors out there. (Un)fortunately in many other cases it doesn't work like that. People use a certain app to book train tickets even its UI sucks hard and it asks 100 permissions unnecessarily, because the only alternative is get it over the counter in person.

> People use a certain app to book train tickets even its UI sucks hard and it asks 100 permissions unnecessarily

It's worth questioning why this is, as often as you can. We have a wallet app / payment system on most mobile devices that is card agnostic and gets better interfaces. Meanwhile, other services have to make do until a big player like Amazon or Ticketmaster comes along, consolidates the industry and starts charging high rents.

Re: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev

#220

Post by papereditor »

eslaught wrote: post #216

Since the author seems to be in the comments, have you ever considered implementing a Typora-style live preview? (Typora, for those who don't know, hides the Markdown formatting as you type, and shows it again when you move the cursor back onto the text.) Paper appears to have a more traditional split between text mode and preview mode, and you can't properly edit the formatting in preview mode (e.g., you cannot turn…

That would be a massive challenge and probably would lead to more bugs which is against my goal of having a low-maintenance product. The more dynamic is your text rendering, the harder it gets.

You can format from the Preview mode, by the way. You need to use the shortcuts for that or click inside the Format menu. If you put your caret on the line of the heading, then press Command+1/2/3 depending on the level of the heading it will convert the line back to normal text.

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