Off the Beat: Bruce Byfield's Blog

I generally write in Bluefish. It has just about everything I need -- a word count, a spell-checker, and shortcuts to produce clean HTML (if that's what the editor requires), and little of the overhead and distractions of a word processor. But I am always on the lookout for other tools, which is why FocusWriter interested me. Unfortunately, while it shows some promise, it turns out to be another writing tool designed more for wannabes than a working writer.

I am actually surprised and disappointed to make that statement. Graeme Gott, FocusWriter's developer describes it as a "fullscreen, distraction-free word processor," which sounds like something that should suit me. And, whether full-screened or windowed, with its auto-hide menu and icon and status bars, FocusWriter does provide a minimalist environment in which to work. The problem is that FocusWriter also provides other features that Gott imagines that Writers need that are actually other forms of distractions.

Take, for example, the progress indicators. If you are writing for publication, an approximate word count is useful. Assignments are usually given out in approximate word-lengths, which helps editors plan layout. However, the key word here is "approximate." In selling over 950 articles, I have yet to meet an editor who wants more than a count rounded off to the nearest multiple of 50 or 100. Only amateurs care enough to get the exact count.

Under such approximations, exactly how words are counted, which FocusWriter allows you to set in its preferences, is largely irrelevant. Personally, I have not the least idea how Bluefish calculates words -- whether, for instance, it counts HTML tags or spaces or counts words as five or six spaces. All I know is that no editor has complained about my word counts, and what I get is more than good enough for me.

The same goes for pages. I almost never have a request for page count, and editors themselves seem uninterested in accuracy nearer than to within half a page, because the number of ads and the amount of copy deleted or added makes up any difference.

As for the number of characters, which FocusWriter also gives, forget it. Nobody is interested. The same is true of the percentage of daily goal. Daily goals are a concern of wannabes, who want to knock off and agonize over their strivings in their blogs as soon as possible. I -- and every other selling writer that I know -- is more concerned with finished pieces. The closest we come to worrying about daily goals is ticking off the points we wanted to cover, either mentally or perhaps on a sticky note where we scrawled them.

FocusWriter does have one feature that might be useful: A timer with an alarm. I can imagine myself using the timer to remind myself when I need to stop writing and do something else -- like go to bed, or to work on a non-fiction project for which I am getting paid an hourly rate. But it is easy enough to set a reminder via a simple script and crontab job, and at any rate I suspect that the point of FocusWriter is not so practical, but rather, like the percentage of daily goal, a way for wannabes to know when they can stop tormenting themselves.

The Formatting Dilemma

Another problem with FocusWriter and applications is how they handle formatting. If their main goal really is distraction-free writing, then they need support only plain text or at the most the insertion of HTML or XML tags, which is what Bluefish does. In other words, they can become the desktop equivalent of Vi or Emacs (or at least set off down that road, since both these classic editors can be extremely versatile with the right extensions).

However, perhaps aware that some manuscripts need to be formatted, FocusWriter also includes the option for formatting. Probably in order to avoid supporting Microsoft's .doc format, which unfortunately remains the standard in many publisher's offices, FocusWrite opts for supporting .RTF format instead, and printing to PDF.

When you toggle .RTF at the bottom of FocusWriter's Format menu, the menu enables some basic formatting for different typeface weights, as well as line alignment and tabs. The logic seems to be to allow basic manuscript formatting -- yet, for some reason, line spacing is left out.

So, for that matter, are styles. Instead, FocusWriter requires manual formatting if any is to be done at all, as though it were simply an electronic version of a typewriter (and, in fact, FocusWriter's built-in -- and annoying -- sound effects of manual keys and a carriage return suggests that is exactly how the developer thinks of it)

But those who have bothered to learn to use templates and styles will know that this choice actually makes FocusWriter more inefficient than a word processor, not less. One of the purposes of a well-designed template is to allow formatting to be added automatically, without the writer making decisions. By contrast, manual formatting means that the writer is more distracted than they would be in a word processor. In other words, FocusWriter's implementation of formatting is actually working against its goal of enabling distraction-free writing.

Nothing on a Text Editor

I am not just singling out FocusWriter as a target, only to use it as an example.of some typical confused good intentions. In my experience, when someone tries to write software for writers -- whether a dedicated editor like FocusWriter or a more elaborate planner like StorYBook or Writer's World Maker, they usually seem to refer to what wannabe writers would like, instead of what might actually help a beginning or established writer.

There is nothing wrong with developing software for writing hobbyists, of course. But the trouble is that such software tends to offer what the hobbyists want, rather than what they actually need, and to encourage them in unproductive habits. You only have to compare such tools to my colleague Dmitri Popov's Writer's Tools extension for OpenOffice.org to see a feature set that writers might actually use.

As for me, I'll be staying with Bluefish. It may be intended mainly for developers, but it provides a better balance between lack of distractions and features than I expect programs like FocusWriter to manage in the next half dozen releases, if then.

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