The Inspector is much too long. When you have an old Mac with 1024x768 screen, the underside of Inspector Window disppears under my Dock. And you can't collapse certain parts of the Inspector, like other apps do. While these old G4 Macs are not state-of-the-art, they are quite capable machines to do light graphic stuff. But the size of the Inspector Window just bugs me.

I like the sidebar on the right much, much better. It let me change and add things much faster. I don't know, but my eyes are just used to go from left to right. And when in viewing lists, like recommendations, my eyes are used to go from top to bottom, scrolling down. Now with the bottom bar, I have to go from one column, to the other. And not only that, because the bottom bar is very narrow (at least on my screen), you have to constantly scroll down and back up for the next column. So now your eyes have to move top-down and left-right, constantly. You have to move your eyes a lot more in a chaotic sense. The previous layout was much more easy on the eyes. I just don't like narrow and wide bottom bars. I like long column views, like the previous sidebar. In essence, with the bottom bar you to scroll much more (or more chaotically), and you have less overview. And it is just too narrow on small screens. So from a usability standpoint, the new layout is bad in my opinion.

I had almost given up, but here is Simon Bell coming to the rescue! It's not finished yet, but I hope it is really soon.

Now I can get information on and off my Newton with ease. Great for text processing. I don't have to use QuickPort, Sloup and minicom again--a workable solution, though.

I hope syncing is not far away. I am awaiting the final release. Thanks Simon!

P.S. How did you do what nobody could in all these years? We'll just call it magic and we'll call you the wizard.

Yes, still very buggy. Crashes every so often. It is all designed very nicely to very high standards. Now if only the code was any good. I think, when the developer irons out the bugs, people will find this app a joy to use. But it's not there yet. I hope soon the app will be less crash-prone. And I will buy the app in a heartbeat.

WriteRoom is evolving. Evolving into something which isn't true to the original idea and philosophy. Version 2 is a totally different beast from version 1. The developers have reassured everyone that version 1 is here to stay for those who like it, and version 2 is simply something more advanced and different. Talk about confusing! I am sad, though, that the developer Jesse couldn't just decide to bring WriteRoom to the market and stick with his original vision of what it is - and very slowly and carefully polish it.

This is what made the original WriteRoom unique (something I have written before on the Hog Bay forum): It is an app that doesn't concern itself with loose scattered documents on your HD, or even with the idea of documents. Its metaphor is more powerful: It is not about docs, it is about pieces of text you are working on and nothing else. It's about focus. The app presents you windows where you can write your text, in the window or full screen, and you don't have to think about anything else because what you see is what you get. I believe moving away from the documents metaphor is a great idea for writers that need focus: I open the app, create a new window, and when I close and reopen the app, the same windows return! I don't have to save the documents to a specific place on the hard drive at all, and I don't have to name them. It's what I would expect, but no other app except for WriteRoom 1 does! This is where computing should be: Moving away from complexity (a complex thinking in metaphors and managing things) to a place of transparency. WriteRoom is very pure in its idea and execution. Until version 2 came along.

Version 2 will find it's audience. And I am not saying that it isn't useful for many people. Far from it. It's just that it's a bit confusing to have a higher version number available, while version 1 is still being actively supported. To me, it feels like the switch from Hog Bay Notebook version 2 to version 3 all over again - but with a little twist.

I don't know why, but everytime I enable Textpander, it interferes with the keyboard shortcut for showing/hiding the Dock. Doesn't matter which key I assign to it, it only shows (or hides) while the keys are being pressed, but then when I let go, the Dock hides (or shows) again. This happens only when Textpander is enabled. I run Tiger (10.4.4).