A more lightweight app that's closer to iA Writer in its abilities is Byword, which costs a mere $10.99 for macOS and $5.99 for iOS, giving you a combined total price of about $17. Description of iA Writer 5.4.5. IA Writer (was iA Writer Pro) is a professional writing suite that gives you full control over your notes, drafts and edits. Features – Workflow states – Custom typefaces, carefully set for optimal readability – In-app preview – Reading time, plus sentence, word, and character count – Real-time iCloud sync. Alternative products to iA Writer 45 alternative and related products to iA Writer 4. Embed images, tables and text as blocks of content in text “A clean, simple writing environmentdelightful.” – New York Times. IA Writer 4 is a writing tool for the brave, available on the desktop and mobile. As of Version 3 (currently at 3.0.1) iA Writer and iA Writer Pro are merged back into a single program. If you bought iA Writer Pro through the App Store version 3 is a free upgrade. So far I'm liking it much better than the old 'Pro' version with it's convoluted workspaces (writing, editing, notes).
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Thursday, 3 September 2020, 11:52 am
Article: Digitl
Article: Digitl
IA Writer is a text editor. A stripped back, race-tunedgreyhound of a writing app. There’s nothing fancy orcomplicated. That is its attraction.
You can start puttingwords together within minutes of installing thesoftware.
It is the most productive writing tool I’veused since learning to type on manual typewriters. It couldbe the software you are looking for.
You can keep your fancy,feature-rich word processors. They have their place, butthey are not always the most productive tools.
I keep acopy of MicrosoftWord on my Mac to stay compatible with clients andco-workers. Rapidweaver 8 1 5 lug. That way there’s no chance of anythingslipping between the cracks in a complex editingjob.
iA Writer first
Yet when it comes towriting a newspaper feature, a blog post or commercial copy,iA Writer is my first choice. Every time.
That’s becauseiA Writer’s minimalist approach gets out of the way.There’s no temptation to mess around choosing the rightfont for this communication. You won’t wonder if thecrosshead typeface you’ve chosen is a good fit with thebody.
You don’t have choices. There’s nothing totinker with. Or, at least, not much.
Instead you can focuson your words.
Over the years iA Writer has evolved. Itdoes more today than it did when I started using it aboutfive years ago. Yet you couldn’t accuse it of featurebloat. It remains simple.
Works everywhere youdo
One advantage of keeping the software simple isthat you get a near-identical experience whether you arewriting on a large screen desktop Mac, an iPad or aniPhone.
For years iA Writer was an Apple experience. Todayyou can get versions for Windows or Android. The crossplatform experience is almost as smooth as staying inApple’s walled garden. This makes it an excellent choicefor people moving between Apple, Microsoft andAndroid.
Text editors in general tend to be a form oflowest common denominator. IA Writer has this to aT.
iA Writer 5.4
Earlier this year iA Writermoved to version 5.4. That added features such as localstorage, new export options and context menus.
If this wasan ordinary product review, at this point I’d run throughhow these feature work in practice. But I won’t because Ifind I never use them all. My understanding of them isabstract. I’ve tested them and seen they work asadvertised, but they don’t get a second glance in the heatof battle.
You can do something complex with blocks ofcopy, which you can insert as content blocks inyour document. Again, I’ve tested, but never needed this.It may be the feature you’ve been looking for.
Madefor cloud
The new feature that I do use is theability to make local copies. In normal use iA Writer storesdocuments in your iCloud account. Because each document istiny, files are tiny. You won’t chew through iCloudstorage the way you might with word processordocuments.
For a while iCloud integration was buggy. Attimes you couldn’t be sure they document was where itshould be. Having local backups meant you never faced losingan afternoon’s writing brilliance.
In May iA Writermoved to version 5.5. In part the upgrade brought thesoftware in line with the new features in iPadOS. You cannow use a trackpad or mouse with the software on an iPad.Not that I’d want to dothat.
Markdown
We’re 600 words into thispost and there has not yet been any mention of Markdown.This is a simple markup language that lets you format yourtext. Type a * symbol either side of a word and it will showup in italics. Put two * around a word and it is inbold.
There are a handful of these Markdown commands tomemorise. It doesn’t take long and it means you can keepyour hands on the keys without reaching for the mouse ortrackpad.
That way you can type faster. It’s moreefficient. As a bonus, you are less likely to get arepetitive strain injury. The commands soon become hardwiredin your fingertips. Yet I must confess there are times Ihave to look up the more obscure ones.
In iA Writer 5.5,there’s a new Markdown code. Two equals signs around aword will highlight it. That’s like the yellow marker youfind in word processors. It’s hard to miss.
You'reeither going to love Markdown or hate it. Skylab studio 2 1 – easy powerful sky replacement. It works for me. Irecommend giving it a try before deciding. There are freetrial versions of iA Writer 5.6.
PDFviewer
The other 5.5 upgrade was the addition of aPDF viewer. When I write for my website1 I can publish text direct toWordPress. All the formatting comes with the words. If Iwork for a client who needs a Word document, yes that isalmost every client, I can save my iA Writer document in adocx format.
Adding the ability to save in PDF formattakes this further. Yet, like many new features, I don’tuse it. Or, more accurately, I haven't used ityet.
That’s not the point. Each feature upgrade expandsthe software’s reach to users who need more than basictext editing but not as much as a word processor. IA Writerrolls out a few new features every year, but you couldn'tsay the software is bloated or even on the road tobloated.
iA Writer 5.6
We’re now at iAWriter 5.6. It’s been around now for a month. The latestversion adds a style checker. It could help improve yourwriting. The checker looks for cliches,fillers and redundancies. When they appear in your text,they are grey.
You can choose to edit them if youwish.
I don’t always agree with the software styledecisions. Journalism relies on short simple language. Whilethat can get hackneyed, it’s a way of getting a messageover fast.
And there are words iA Writer 5.6 doesn'tapprove of, like also or too, that areuseful for journalism.
Good housekeeping
Theremaining updates in iA Writer 5.6 are all backgroundhousekeeping things that developers do and casual users maynot notice. Files now open faster, but that was never anissue for me. The noticeable background update is that hugeiA Writer files don’t slow down.
IA Writer’s price hasclimbed over the years. When I first bought the software Ipaid NZ$3. It was a promotional price. Today the softwarecosts US$30 for the Mac and $9 for the iPad or iPhone. Youcan get it from the relevant app store. Thereare free trial versions.
You have to buy both if you planto use the software on a Mac and an iOS device. I don'tbegrudge it.
Compared with the alternatives it’s abargain. You have to pay roughly four times that amountevery year to use Microsoft Word.
Other word processorscan cost more. This is important. Journalists and others whowrite for a living get paid in ways that make it hard tobudget for a regular subscription. A flat one-off fee isbetter. You know where you are and you know for certainthere will never be a month where you face not paying thesoftware subscription or skipping ameal.
Critics
You’ll see critics complainthat iA Writer doesn’t have collaboration tools. In partthat’s because the idea of collaboration doesn’t sitwell with distraction-free writing. Nothing is moredistracting than someone jumping it with an annoying,pedantic edit while you are crafting your next perfect pieceof prose.
Meta 1 8 1 – music tag editor download. Collaboration is important. It is not the be alland end all of working with others.
The upside is thatit’s easy for iA Writer to work in with collaborationtools. At times when I’m asked to work with, say, GoogleDocs, I will write first in iA Writer, then load the textinto a shared Doc for the editing party to begin. I've beenknown to pull paragraphs or sections from the shareddocument, paste them into iA Writer, make my edits andreturn the text.
IA Writer isn’t for everyone. Manypeople feel they need the handholding they get from aproduct like Word. Or they feel comfortable using the samething as everyone else. There are companies, clients andindividual managers who will insist you use Word.
When Iwas thinking about this idea earlier, it occurred to methere is an analogy with music. IA Writer is to a wordprocessor what, say, a fretless string instrument is to aguitar or keyboard. If you are on top of your writing gameand confident, you can get better results without theguiding baggage. If that's not you, then fine. You havealternatives.
- As an aside, I’m using iA Writer 5.6 nowand there’s a neat set of Markdown codes for creatingfootnotes.
IA Writer 5.6: Better than a wordprocessor was first posted atbillbennett.co.nz.
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Bill Bennett stories are republished on Geekzone and Scoop.
Stories published on this site are available to publishers for a fixed fee or a monthly subscription.
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I’ve been looking for a serious writing program. Maybe serious isn’t the right word, because I use Vim and BBEdit, and those are nothing if not serious. But they don’t feel right for the type of concentrated, long-form prose that I am trying to write. The contenders that I settled on are iA Writer and Ulysses.
Both are great, and I would recommend either. Choosing between them is more about your personal preferences, workflow, and writing needs. My observations based on my particular needs are below.
You should also check out the comparison by Marius Masalar.
Comparison
This is not comprehensive, just a few things that happen to be important to me.
Post to WordPress
Ulysses posts to self-hosted WordPress installations.
iA Writer requires Jetpack for self-hosted WordPress.
I have no desire to install Jetpack, so this is a drawback to iA Writer. Ulysses works exactly the way I want it to.
Update: Starting with iA Writer 5.5, WordPress posting on personal sites has been improved.
File Management
iA Writer works on files. Ulysses works on “sheets,” a file abstraction that lives in a database owned by the application.
Both approaches have their advantages. iA Writer’s advantages:
- The files are searchable with Spotlight. Using Finder to search for things will reveal your iA Writer files just as well as searching within iA Writer.
- The files are portable. It is easy and immediate to edit the files in another program. I can use BBEdit or Vim to open a file I created in iA Writer without having to export.
- I can keep the files in a git repository. iCloud probably serves most writers’ needs, but if you’re a git user, having your history in a repository is reassuring.
The downside is that I am doing my own file management. I have to decide what to name a new document. I have to decide where to save my file. These little decisions can slow me down.
By contrast, Ulysses works with a container that manages the files for me. The benefit of this is that no file name or folder location is required when I create a file (or “sheet”). Just ⌘N and I’m ready to write.
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It also easy to compose a work of many sheets. It lets me think in sentences and paragraphs instead of files. I can combine sheets, rearrange their order, “glue” sheets together, and split them apart. It’s more flexible and useful than iA Writer’s “content blocks.”
Fonts and Appearance
Ulysses has a very detailed preference pane to customize every element of my Markdown syntax. I can create themes, and I can use themes created by others. Ulysses comes with a solarized theme, so I picked that. Then I noticed that there is another solarized theme: slightly different and more in line with what markdown looks in MacVim. So I changed to that. After a while, that started to feel garish, so I switched to a theme that mimics Editorial. This was great. But now that theme is starting to look a little…I don’t know…too subdued, maybe. I’ll find something I like if I keep looking. If not, there’s a way to create custom theme styles…
iA Writer looks great. There is a setting for light or dark. There is a font setting with three choices. I picked the one I like and haven’t given it much thought since. I feel none of the theme malaise that Ulysses makes me feel.
Ia Writer 5 4 4 X 8 Sheets Price
Markdown
iA Writer is straight markdown, more or less. More textual than Ulysses, anyway. That is, a link in iA Writer looks exactly like you would expect:
Ulysses has clever little additions that make it less textual and more graphical. The target URL is not listed in the source view. If you double-click on the link text, a little inspector window opens to show the target link. It’s very well done, but I feel the textual nature of markdown is a benefit, and Ulysses loses that.
Share Extension
Ulysses has a (poor) Safari share icon. It can paste a web site title and URL, and that’s about it. It is no match for Bear or Keep It.
iA Writer has no service or share extension.
(Preliminary) Decision
I like iA Writer better. Even though Ulysses does have real advantages, iA Writer just feels better. I like the fonts and the built-in preview styles. I like the more standard, textual markdown source. I like the options for previewing the rendered markdown.
The file handling goes both ways. I can totally get behind Ulysses’ philosophy, but I like having my content indexed in Spotlight.
I love that Ulysses can post directly to my WordPress blog. I get around this iA Writer deficiency by using Byword to open the file created by iA Writer and posting from there. This workaround may become tiresome, but for now it works.
This comes down largely to aesthetics and intangible preferences.
Potential Game Changers
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These are things that might tip my decision the other way, after more time using them.
- WordPress posting. Ulysses just does WordPress posting the way I want.
- File management. I can see myself coming to prefer Ulysses’ style after a spending more time with both.
- Writing Goals. Ulysses can track writing goals, both daily, and set per sheet.
Non-issues
iA Writer has a feature that will highlight words based on parts of speech (nouns, verbs, etc.). I don’t find this useful.
Many are outraged by the subscription pricing of Ulysses. It doesn’t bother me. It is useful how a single subscription gives me access to macOS and iOS versions of the app. If I start writing more with my my iPad, this might be useful.
Ia Writer 5 4 4 X 8 X 6
Recommendation
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My recommendation is that you can’t decide, get both. You can get a week’s trial of both. If that isn’t enough time, just buy iA Writer, and buy a monthly subscription to Ulysses. Give yourself a couple of months to settle into them both. One will reveal itself as your favorite.
This is what I’m doing. I prefer iA Writer, but Ulysses has clear advantages. I want to live with both and see which feels better over the long term. There might be drawbacks to iA Writer that get annoying only over time. When I make a final decision, I’ll post an update.