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Time to talk about my writerdeck

veronicaexplains.net

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Re: Time to talk about my writerdeck

#231

Post by lproven »

gnabgib wrote: post #163
dv35z wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth mentioning - for a long time, I found my handwriting messy AND my hand would tire out. When I was about a teen-ager, I decided to write in call-caps, very clearly. I've been doing that for a long time now, and worth giving a try.

teen-ager? call-caps? Cursive (several hundred years old) fixes this.. all-capitals(caps) or block-caps makes writing more laborious, possibly easier to read (which is why it used to be requested on hand-written forms?)

> (several hundred years old)

Several thousand more like.

Re: Time to talk about my writerdeck

#232

Post by lproven »

ungreased0675 wrote: post #112

I recently installed Alpine Linux as part of a side quest and was blown away by just how fast it was without running a GUI or loading up a bunch of background programs. It was so fast a little voice has been telling me my daily driver laptop should run a minimal Linux distribution like Alpine.

It's quite remarkable, isn't it?

It is how Linux used to be in the 1990s: tiny, simple, blindingly fast compared to the big lumbering commercial OSes...

... Which now are also Linux. Which is terribly terribly sad.

Re: Time to talk about my writerdeck

#233

Post by lproven »

dredmorbius wrote: post #166
UncleSlacky wrote: post #94

Why not just use DOS? e.g.: https://github.com/lproven/usb-dos At least the laptops that can still run DOS natively tend to have fairly good keyboards...

You'd have to find a suitable editor. For a long time I had a copy of Wordperfect 4.x which I'd fire up occasionally under either DOSEmu or FreeDOS. Among other disappointments: - I've forgotten virtually all my WP muscle-memory. Vim is where it's at. (I was once quite proficient at WP, but the last time I used it significantly was well over 30 years ago.) - I find DOS apps tend to play poorly with any screen resolut…

> You'd have to find a suitable editor.

You didn't follow the link. You should have.

I built that USB-DOS tool and it contains a wide choice of word processors, from plain text editors with the WordPerfect command keys, to full-on professional tools, plus a choice of outliners and also a spreadsheet for the sort of writer who needs to model stuff -- like Andy Weir or John Barnes, to pick two I rather like.

Re: Time to talk about my writerdeck

#234

Post by lproven »

alexhans wrote: post #226
dredmorbius wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have to find a suitable editor. For a long time I had a copy of Wordperfect 4.x which I'd fire up occasionally under either DOSEmu or FreeDOS. Among other disappointments: - I've forgotten virtually all my WP muscle-memory. Vim is where it's at. (I was once quite proficient at WP, but the last time I used it significantly was well over 30 years ago.) - I find DOS apps tend to play poorly with any screen resolut…

When I saw this post I immediately thought of WordPerfect. It had such a pleasant interface for that time. But yeah, one of the things made me go for vim over Emacs a long time ago was its relationship with touch typing and not leaving the home row with the vim modes. Learn Vim script the hard way [1], even if you didn't end up writing any actual vim script, was a game changer in terms of understanding the semantics.…

> When I saw this post I immediately thought of WordPerfect.

The final DOS WordPerfect works wonderfully on even early 21st century kit.

But it's not free. WordPerfect still exists and it's on sale.

So, in USB-DOS, I included WPEDIT, the WordPerfect plain text editor, which has the same UI but no formatting.

Re: Time to talk about my writerdeck

#235

Post by archargelod »

choilive wrote: post #139
teruakohatu wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are surprisingly many "portable" typewriter options out there (including electronic ones). An odd laptop ($0) with free software ($0) makes more sense than buying another electronic device.

If you don't value your time sure. Pen and paper is also basically free and even simpler with no setup time..

Handwriting or using a typewriter is great if you're writing something solely for enjoyment of the process. But if you want to store, organize and use any of your writing in the future - you have to go digital.

Re: Time to talk about my writerdeck

#236

Post by meribold »

richardlblair wrote: post #114

I find fhe discourse here hilarious. Haven't most of us built our skillsets and careers out of side quests? There is so much I wouldn't know or understand if I didn't go down the odd rabit hole.

Lots of comments are also massively overestimating the amount of time/effort that creating this setup required.

Re: Time to talk about my writerdeck

#238

Post by maleldil »

infinet wrote: post #170
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #50

This is an awesome setup. I like it, good job. That said, I do think there's a bit of irony to solving your "paying attention to writing" problem by setting up your OS from scratch, choosing to swap out the default networking stack, installing a novel flavor of your preferred text editor because you're "trying to get to know it a bit more," customizing your battery readouts, tweaking the login sequence, and then, aft…

I guess I will setup something similar or more complex. But there are alternatives: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12114947 "George R.R. Martin Writes on a DOS-Based Word Processor From the 1980s". No internet, no multi tasking.

That's doing wonders for his productivity.

Re: Time to talk about my writerdeck

#239

Post by alexwwang »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #50

This is an awesome setup. I like it, good job. That said, I do think there's a bit of irony to solving your "paying attention to writing" problem by setting up your OS from scratch, choosing to swap out the default networking stack, installing a novel flavor of your preferred text editor because you're "trying to get to know it a bit more," customizing your battery readouts, tweaking the login sequence, and then, aft…

Just open a term, start opencode, and tell my idea to LLM and ask it to write a passage of given length and save it to a file for me. Then the review loop starts. This is the writing job in the new era.

Re: Time to talk about my writerdeck

#240

Post by geek_at »

alexwwang wrote: post #239
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #50

This is an awesome setup. I like it, good job. That said, I do think there's a bit of irony to solving your "paying attention to writing" problem by setting up your OS from scratch, choosing to swap out the default networking stack, installing a novel flavor of your preferred text editor because you're "trying to get to know it a bit more," customizing your battery readouts, tweaking the login sequence, and then, aft…

Just open a term, start opencode, and tell my idea to LLM and ask it to write a passage of given length and save it to a file for me. Then the review loop starts. This is the writing job in the new era.

honestly this explains so much about many blog posts or journalistic articles I read in the last year
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