Hey all.
So I'm on the hunt for a dependable text editor like ulysses, but that has rock solid sync. Recently I've experienced ulysses failing to sync, losing sections of work and generally not filling me with much confidence that my 100 K novel won't be swallowed into the digital ether or, corrections and edits I have made won't revert back to my original blather.
Of course, we can't use microsoft word, because we're on mac and we don't deserve nice things, but other suggestions would be great. I used to use Scrivener but found the export methodology highly convoluted. I'm sad as I thought Ulysses was the one but, on the other hand, if I dump ulysses I no longer have to stay on mac!
Thoughts wanted.
Comments
what's wrong with word?
Why not use the macos version of word? Its quite accessible.
Text editor of your choice, and Pandoc or Quarto
You can use whichever text editor you prefer. Options include TextEdit (in plain text mode), TextMate, CotEditor, Visual Studio Code, Vim, Emacs, etc.
I'm deliberately not advocating any of the options here. People have strong opinions... I'm not seeking to start a text editor dispute.
Then run Pandoc to convert the Markdown file to your preferred output format.
Quarto is an interesting tool that has recently attracted attention for its extensive Markdown and document conversion capabilities. It's based on Pandoc, but it has a variety of useful features and Markdown extensions beyond what Pandoc itself offers.
I'm a UNIX/Linux enthusiast. I'm used to writing in a text editor and running file conversion tools to produce the desired output. I'm glad I wrote my Ph.D. thesis in LaTeX, which I have also used for a variety of other work, before and since then.
Scrivener
Scrivener all the way!
Re: Text editor of your choice, and Pandoc or Quarto
I was wondering if you had links for either of those, and whether they have macOS binaries or can be built with the tool chain provided by macOS or Xcode by default. I too am a fan of text conversion tools.
HomeBrew
The best way to install Pandoc, Quarto, MacTeX and other tools discussed here is to use HomeBrew. For example, with HomeBrew installed, you can simply run
brew install pandoc
Note that HomeBrew includes packages for graphical MacOS applications as well as command line and terminal-based tools.
Joplin.
You can also use a program called Joplin, which is free, that will work on mac,windows,IOS,Linux,and Android! Web site address is www.joplinapp.org