Day 5.

I've been working on nearly everything other than a file system.

I want to get the file system in place, obviously. It'll make everything easier to deal with.

But I was a little disheartened this morning, when I realized that there are already projects that do essentially the same thing.

I used this app called, uh, Marku-? No, Manuskript. Which is a fine name. And it worked pretty much exactly like this does, and it has project settings, and the option to work on more than one file at a time, and merge all the documents into a single one and all that jazz.

Everything I was excited about this one for.

True, it's already feature complete, but it's not as fun to use as this one :P.

It did load my documents from the ODT file, which was pretty great.

So I think I'll keep working on it, even though some of the wind is out of my sails at this point.

The cool thing, the thing that's working like a teeny tiny poot in my sails, is that fact that Manuskript isn't on android yet.

Plus, this looks so great and all that... :P

The other app even did the thing where it opens each file at the end of the line! Like, what?! I thought that was my idea. Apparently it isn't that fantastic of an idea.  And I'm assuming that Scrivener does the same thing. Who'd have thought? :P

Anyway, the other app has a few things that weren't even on my radar yet, those being index cards and spellcheck :P.

Now, they use python for their spell-check, which is cool, that means I can probably use the same spellchecking mechanism that they do, to be truly cross platform. I think I can run python directly within Godot, but I'll obviously have to do more research.

***

What I like most about this, is that it feels like a tool. It doesn't feel like a program. And I want it to be used with a touchscreen. So, yeah, there's still plenty of stuff to do, but I'm going to stick with it, even though it's a shitty road that's well traveled and worn. :P

Most of what I've done today was design stuff, and I guess that's fine. I thought about writing some more, I spent about an hour, maybe, porting my ABC book to Manuskript, and it was kind of a pain. I realized that translating it from ODT to Manuskript format seemed top have worked, but it had a formatting issue that I didn't realize until I was ready to just give up.

So I did. :P

But I'll go back to it, probably. It's probably better suited for actual work than this beta program that I'm running right now.

But this one looks cozy :P. I added textures to the file editor and to the file browser, so it's cool.

It looks something like what I'd build if I knew how to build such a thing.

Oh, that other app had what they called "typewriter" mode, which I believe works like the Hemingwrite mode on here. Well, I've --- I'm not sold on the name, but that's what I think of it as. I could call it "typewriter mode" as well. I'm using it now, and you can tell just how shit of a typist I am. Oh well, I'm fast enough, even when I do spell horribly.

Someone on the Godot forum on Reddit. Good lord, I sound old! Someone on the Godot subrreddit was showing off an infinite painter style app that they're working on. And it looks cool, and it's motivating me to releasing this as well.

I figure, I'll release it on Itch.io (I just turned off hemingwrite mode, it's annoying :P). That way, people could pay me if'n they felt so inclined.

Right now, it's not something that you'd pay for.

It's kinda featureless.

But not FUTURE-LESS! :D.

As a text editor, it does its job.

But for project management, it needs a lot more work.

I redid some more graphics. Now it looks like it's a text editor that's built into Myst, which is pretty sick, if you ask me.

Big ol' 90's buttons and aesthetic.

It makes me want to make more things like this. I'm pulling from Myst and Clue for inspiration, now. This feels like a Mr. Body Murder Mystery writing program. I still want to make the top menu bar disappear. Perhaps I'll put it on a timer related to the amount of typing that you've done, and when you stop, for, let's say, 5 seconds? Then the menu comes back.

Maybe 5 seconds is too long?

Maybe 3 seconds is good. Everything can fade out and just leave you alone to type.

Yeah. I like this :P.

***

I've spent some time just making everything look better, which some might say is a waste of time, and others might say that the first thing that any consumer would do would be to rate an app based on its appearance.

So I've made it look fantastic. :P

A little fantastic. It's still ugly in some ways, so I've got much more that I can do.

And every new feature adds loads and loads of bugs to fix. Each step is taking me significantly longer than the steps before.

Hold on a sec, I need to add a keyboard shortcut to hemingwrite mode.

***

Now I need to think of a keyboard shortcut. Ctrl-backspace already does something (deleting words, can you believe it? I had no idea!)

Alt-Backspace isn't anything yet...

Testing again?

Works Perfectly! Yes, sir!

I fixed it, thanks to the power of using Google to help solve all my problems! :P

Seems like the right tool for the job!

***

Alright. So today's task of doing a bunch of random GUI shit is done. Tomorrow, I'll start attacking... uhm...

Probably setting up tabs and actually loading files into the file slots in the explorer.

Then I'll be able to start doing exports and things.

Yessir, it's coming along.

I also need to keep tweaking the GUI, it's getting a little messy, and I want to prevent that.

I'm thinking I need to make icons tomorrow as well, to make the TopMenu smaller.

In any case, I'm going to go read and then fall asleep. Good night, Frand.

The birds are singing, and the sun is coming up again.