they.misled.us » dark room x

Flex 4 Gives Me a Headache

Jeff — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:14:20 +0000

I’m glad that I decided to wait until the release of Flex 4 prior to the release of DarkRoomX. Much of the style hacking I was doing for presentation in DarkRoomX has been obsoleted in Flex 4, and the new spark controls. As a result, upgrading will not be the simple matter of a little refactoring like I expected. Basically, I had to start a new project, and I am porting over things from the old project bit by bit. It’s going to be a long and painfully process but I hope that it will be worth it in the long run.

NativeMenu Glitch in Snow Leopard

Jeff — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 05:32:12 +0000

Is anyone using the preview release of DarkRoomX in Snow Leopard? I have a testing system setup, and when I ran it I noticed a weird issue with the menu. Apparently, I am getting a duplicate, useless apple menu. I am curious if this is an issue with Air and Snow Leopard, or just DarkRoomX, if anyone knows an Air app that uses OS X’s native menu I would like to know so I can test it out.

Distraction Free Writing in 2009

Jeff — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:56:01 +0000

While Dark Room has been mostly dormant, many things have changed. I originally got the idea for Dark Room from Jesse over at Hog Bay. WriteRoom was really the first in this modern era of retro text editors. Back then, WriteRoom was the only game in town, and it was, and still is, Mac only.

Unfortunately, around this time my powerbook passed into the after life. This meant that I had to switch to my windows laptop as my primary machine for a while. And, since I had gotten so used to WriteRoom, I needed something. After spending a couple of days searching, I was quite surprised not to find anything available for windows. This is when I decided to pick up the torch, and write Dark Room. However, it did not remain alone for long.

Now, there is a glut of this style of program. Here are just the few that I know of off my head:

Cross Platform:

Dark Room X
jDarkRoom

Windows:

Dark Room W
Q10
WriteMonkey

Mac:

WriteRoom

Linux:

PyRoom
RubyRoom

Web:

DarkCopy
Writer
MyTextFile

I would love to hear feedback on what you love or hate about these programs, as it will help me determine how best to shape future development of Dark Room.

An interesting factor here is that even though there are more programs, they are still pretty fragmented, as people are sort of just porting over functionality from applications exclusive on other OS’s.

jDarkRoom was the first cross platform implementation. However, I have not had much luck with it using an OS other than Windows. Which reminds me, I need to get with that developer to help him work out some kinks I experiences while using the app in OS X.

Dark Room X is my attempt to build an application that does everything you need, and nothing you don’t. I want users to be able to pick it up, love it, and be able to use it on anything. Be it their wife’s spyware loaded windows box, they’re sweet MacPro work station, or the linux box they keep as a guilty pleasure. It is just the first step in my ultimate goal: the ability to access, and work on your writing in the interface you love from anyplace at anytime.

Dark Room X – Preview Release

Jeff — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:22:58 +0000

Here it is, finally, that which you have been waiting way to long for: the preview release of Dark Room X.

Please go ahead and download those, and remember all the disclaimers (software provided as is, no guarantees that it will work, etc…).

If you run into any issues, don’t hesitate to let me know so I can get it first before the initial release. And, last but not least: enjoy!

Download Dark Room X (Preview)