Concentration is supposed to grow when you have to listen to cheap ambient crap? Oh come on! And burning your eyes out by staring at an almost white background photo (yes, I know it can be replaced) should give you “inspiration”?
“Don’t forget to save your work”—so it does not save automatically? The mere chance of my text being pulverized in the data nirvana will keep me from being relaxed enough to reach it myself. Nah.
Or am I wrong? Anyone in this place of serious writers who has tried Ommwriter?
Come now. You obloquize the simple (dare I characterizationalize it as “humble?”) invidiousness of Omm. Note this is – oblivionously – a self-generaticalized piece of software: we are told – informitacled, as it were – that this program “firmly believes in making…” an so forthinessitary. No humanishistic intervention required.
From the few minutes I’ve tried OmmWriter, you’re limited to only three background images and a handful of sounds. They’re all beautiful choices but they do nothing for my creativity.
Scrivener’s fullscreen’s paper color can’t be made transparent and can’t be placed wherever you want however, you can:
Place the page left, right or center.
Choose any color for the paper color.
Make the paper any width and height and give it any size padding.
So I have OS X in single application mode so that Scrivener is the only app visible, turn of the background transparency to let the wallpaper underneath show through and hide the editor under the window. And it looks like this:
It can be done but, you need to either choose or design a wallpaper that will give you a chunk of blank space on the left, right or center.
The aesthetic would be easier to achieve if we could pick backgrounds for fullscreen mode and if the paper could be made transparent so that I wouldn’t have to save a new layout and run in single app mode.
And for those of you who have WriteRoom, you can also do something similar in there too.
Editing to add, I have just discovered, “Hide main window” in the fullscreen prefs. Now, to figure out how Keith got the background pic to show under the paper in his screengrab.
It is screen shots like this that make me feel like I am too much of a nerd. While I find the idea absolutely thrilling I can’t bring myself to deviate from the system defaults due to a desire for simplicity in recovery from failure and a need to use the darn thing as a tool. Not that you don’t use your system as a tool, but I would spend all day looking for backgrounds, getting even less done than normal.
Seriously, while it is beautifully executed it’s not something I would use in anger. Of course you can have the music running while writing in Scriv, but it sends me into a trance.
I do not want my keyboard to sound like a three-year-old with a drumstick and a pile of blocks; if there’s to be any sound, I prefer that which is traditionally associated with typewriters.
I do not want background music which sounds like a reject from a Xanax commercial; if there’s to be music, I want MUSIC: something between the Bach Cello Suites and Kodaly’s Dances of Galanta, depending on my mood. (See: This Is Your Brain On Music, by Daniel Levitin.)
I do not write (or type) on ornamental paper. If I need visual stimulation – or relaxation or diversion – I can look out the window or go for a walk. Or watch the screen: my desktop changes every fifteen minutes, cycling through a collection of images from APOD. (I prefer those which include terrestrial imagery.)
While I admire the zeal and technical prowess of anyone who can put together a program for writers, I am reluctant to endorse – all the more so to purchase from – a developer whose writing skills are suspect. (One of the reasons I was instantly attracted to Scr is that KB is demonstrably a good writer himself.)
Ah, but I said “visual” stimulation; those are – for me – largely tactile. I have much experience with axe and somewhat less with bottle, Lady Of The House having explained the social value of drinking from a glass; I have an aversion to large bodies of very cold water into which I might inadvertently plunge, so ice fishing is a no-no.
You may instance, of course, the danger attendant upon axes and bottles, but those provide a significant ROI which ice fishing does not: warmth.
Me thinks you do the fishing wrong. First you build your little ice fishing hut. Around here those are as small as 4x8 and as large as 16x24. in either case a wood Burning stove is included. If you are real ice fishing man you include solar panels and a battery array so you can watch the Bills lose and keep the wings warm (I never understood this, you have a wood stove, use it). Once you have your hut all you need is a truck to cart it. I recommend the old jeep CJ-7 as they almost float with nice wide ice tires (a fact that could be important). Friends are optional but they do help the time pass.
There are only 2 things that typically go wrong. The first is avoidable, just leave the Mrs at home. The second is infrequent, but on occasion some idiot actually brings a fishing rod. Just don’t invite them back.
And if the lake never ices over don’t worry about it. The hut is still usable. Just take it to the Walmart parking lot.
It is Thanksgiving week and lots of people in the U.S. take the Thursday holiday as an excuse to take the whole week off. Usually, that’s how long it takes to recover from travel, too much food and traveling back.
Not sure why anyone here would know anything about Ommwhatever. If you look back at the replies there is not any positive feed back. Even the original post was one that approached disdain. If want to report a bug you need to work with the folks that wrote the product.
I would suggest that the lack of response is understandable given the US holiday this week, but would also point out that most folks tell their user base when they will not be available. You might want to think about that when looking at the product.
Developer shows up on Twitter. Starts to answer questions. App is announced by TUAW. The hordes descend on Omm website to download program. Site crashes. Site rises from the dead. Rinse and repeat.
I know that there was a rejected attempt to add background and “paper” images to fullscreen mode in the past, but this is a feature that I’m still a proponent of.
In its absence, I wish I could at least make the page color transparent in FS mode. Then I could use a desktop wallpaper to accomplish much of the same effect.
Keith’s post taunted the possibility. What say you, Master Architect?
