Oddbean new post about | logout
 Since shifting Mac to Linux, which I'm delighted I did, there's a single app that I'm missing, and it's proving very difficult to replace. That's iA Writer (https://ia.net/writer).

I found Typora (https://typora.io), which is solid, but it, nor any other I've found, have the same writing tools. iA Writer is like having a stern editor at your side. I use also use LanguageTool (https://languagetool.org). Great at grammar, spelling, and the like, but also not the same.

So, what do you use to write well (on Linux)? #asknostr

 
 That's my secret, I don't write good 
 Me write pretty one day. 
 Even rereading my post, I should have proof read it. YOLO! 
 vim  
 I'm a vim-er for life, but nah. Unless you have plugins I don't know about. 
 I use markdown extension on chrome to see md files written in vim - if I have to !  

As for writing docs .. #mdbook is my go to .. with mdbook I can serve the book to localhost which is pretty nice to review the work .. 

On vim plug-ins .. my fav is coc-vim .. it has everything - spell checkers  and language tool for grammar ..  and most of the code analyzers too ..just in case you wanna review code ..

But the primary reason , I stick to vim is it is great  in terminal .. firing up GUI on my old desktop makes it super sluggish :-)  And my laptop always stays in back pack :-)  
 This looks promising. Thanks.  

https://github.com/fannheyward/coc-marketplace 
 It does need node js but it is super fast .. almost as good as native vim plugins ( if not faster ) .. and no dependence on GUI .. 

They have sample config in readme file .. works on both nvim and vim ..

Thanks for the ⚡ s ☺️ 
 Yeh, not crazy about that dependency, but good to hear it's fast. I did poke around the install docs. I don't see a clean way to drop it into my lazyvim config, but I'll keep digging. 
 https://github.com/neoclide/coc.nvim  this is the one you need to drop into config .. I use vim-plug so not sure about lazyvim config but should work out in similar way  ... 

The link you shared is the market place  built on Coc  .. It is a good idea but I have no use of it :-)  
 Once you have the plugin installed  .. :PlugInstall  in my case with vim-plug -  then you can install other coc-extensions ..  for example :cocInstall  coc-ltex   for language tools  ..  there are tons of them which you can see at the market place  .. 
 
 You can also install marketplace as an extension  :CocInstall coc-marketplace  .. it is just a fancier way to search coc extensions  ..  
 Thanks. I got it working, and tried it a bit. Pretty kludgy, but I'll keep tinkering and see what I can do. Thanks for the pointers! 
 Have you tried some of the local ai plugins for neovim? You can specify the model and then maybe use it to help with editing? I'm sure it's not as smooth as whatever magical Mac thing OP is referencing. 
 I do use ollama and a handful of models, but AI writing is increasingly detected and penalized by Google, et al, when writing for the web. So, the goal is less of it, not more. 

Nothing magical about what iA built. They just put in the work to create an excellent rules engine. 
 have you tried ghostwriter (https://ghostwriter.kde.org) ?  
 Thanks. It looks good. There are lots of these iA Writer clones, but none have the same caliber of writing tools. 

https://ia.net/writer/support/editor/style-check 
 How much do you use the word highlighting? I'm on Linux and thought about a tool like that and had no idea it existed. How good is it actually?

My main problem with such an editor would be that I wouldn't bother writing for example this nostr reply in a different tool. I'd want it integrated in the browser with it having access to the full context. Then, the possibilities would be endless. 
 LanguageTool, you mean? I constantly use it, though I've now lost the native MacOS app. The Firefox extension works very smoothly.