Panda has become Lettera

Latte Other Software & Development
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Shiny Frog - maker of Bear - has released the beta of Lettera, open for testing.

  • Markdown
  • single file
  • folder as workspace
  • live rendering
  • tables
  • exports to PDF, epub, HTML, docx, rtf, jpg
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Very nice. It has potential.

I wish Scrivener’s editor worked this way. Basically, keep all the rest of Scrivener’s layout, tools, etc., the same, but give it a nice modern editor like this one. Would be very slick.

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Seems like a slightly sexier version of Typora.

The problem I have it is that Bear is subscription-based, and Shiny Frog are not declaring their pricing here. Since I don’t do subscriptions – and never will – it’s not for me.

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Looks nice. Interestingly, “Lettera” was one of the initial names for our new writing app, but we decided against it because we were worried about trademark implications with Olivetti, since, if I recall correctly, there’s still an active trademark on it. (It’s the same reason we didn’t call Scapple “Vellum” - because of Ashlar-Vellum - but in the end Vellum was used for ebook creation software and it never proved a problem, so we are obviously too cautious. :slight_smile: ) It’s a good name.

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Hi, KB.

I TestFlighted the beta of Lettera. Its functionality is extremely limited right now. So to be clear, it is in no way near being a Scrivener replacement, and likely will never be.

But I really like its editor, which is similar in approach to several modern programs. The “real” text is stored in Markdown, but you don’t necessarily see it. Rather, it displays in WYSIWYG rich text. You can instantiate styles by typing Markdown, by pressing hotkeys like cmd-B, or by choosing from a toolbar or menu. But the plaintext/Markdown[1] back-end opens up a wealth of possibilities related to text workflows.

I really look with great hope toward your New App as maybe bridging the best of both worlds.

  1. (Lettera adheres to the CommonMark guidelines. I think for writing, Pandoc-flavored Markdown might make more sense, but I leave it to more expert folks to comment on that.) ↩︎

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Stories like that are always really interesting … I’m serious.:grinning_face:

And now that we know what the app is not called, could you give us a little encouragement and tell us when it’s coming out… roughly? :wink:

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Just to be clear, as I have specified elsewhere, the new app does not use Markdown. I’m not interested in creating another Markdown editor. It’s a much simpler and light editor than Scrivener’s though.

Roughly some time in the 2020s, I hope. :smiley:

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I really hope so. I don’t like MD.

Ah, good—then I’ll still have some time to buy a bottle of champagne and put it in the fridge :grinning_face:

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