Dark Room

Dark Room is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment. Unlike standard word processors that focus on features, Dark Room is just about you and your text.

Basically, Dark Room is a clone of the original WriteRoom that is an OS X (tiger) exclusive application. It is a child of necessity, as there were no viable alternatives in Windows to produce the same behavior. Sure, you can kind of emulate the behavior by jumping through a bunch of hoops in Word/Writer, but it isn’t the same. Also, you can do something similar in emacs, but who wants to learn a bunch of obscure keyboard shortcuts?

The goal of the project is to capture the essence of WriteRoom, while keeping it simple and just as free.

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(version 0.8b // 11/17/2006)

Requirements

Keyboard Shortcuts

  • File Menu
    • Clear Document: Ctrl+N
    • Open Document: Ctrl+O
    • Save Document: Ctrl+S
    • Quit: Ctrl+Q
  • Edit Menu
    • Undo: Ctrl+Z
    • Redo: Ctrl+Y
    • Cut: Ctrl+X
    • Copy: Ctrl+C
    • Paste: Ctrl+V
    • Select All: Ctrl+A
    • Find: Ctrl+F
    • Find Next: F3
    • Preferences: Ctrl+,
  • View Menu
    • Statistics: Ctrl+/
    • Toggle Fullscreen: F11 or Esc

Donations

If you like Dark Room, and have some money burning a hole in your bank account, feel free to drop it in mine. :wink:

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Release Notes

  • 0.8b (report bugs)
    • ADDED: Neutral highlighting
    • ADDED: Cursor blink rate control
  • 0.7.6.2b
    • FIXED: Ability to open files with accented characters
    • FIXED: Text modification state preserved when preferences changed
    • FIXED: Window title not updating when file saved
    • FIXED: Crash when config file is write protected
    • FIXED: Files saved with Unix line breaks
    • FIXED: Wordcount RegEx
  • 0.7.6.1b
    • FIXED: FileNotFoundException when caching preferences
    • CHANGED: Text of statistics shortcut from ctrl+? to ctrl+/ to be less confusing
  • 0.7.6b
    • ADDED: Display active filename
    • ADDED: Keyboard shortcut for statistics window
    • ADDED: Settings cached locally for increaed portability
    • FIXED: Change font/color causes text to disappear until preference pane brought up again
    • FIXED: Coping entire lines and pasting results in final carraige return not being pasted
    • FIXED: Error message for invalid height says width
    • FIXED: No error message for invalid margin
  • 0.7.5b
    • Added check for updates menu option
    • Added auto indent option
    • Added drag and drop onto page to open file
    • Fixed a bug that prevented tabs to spaces from taking effect until restart
    • Removed resizable borders on dialogs
    • Optimized page width in non-maximized window
    • Fixed a bug that resulted in crash when using page setup without any installed printers
    • Optimzied preferences dialog layout
  • 0.7.1b
    • Fixed a bug that reverted tabs to spaces to three instead of custom value
  • 0.7b
    • Added Statistics dialog
    • Added Menu item to launch dark room website
    • Added ability to enable/disable local cache file
    • Added convert tabs to spaces
    • Printing now uses document font
    • Fixed a bug the preventing printing the first character
    • Fixed a bug that made the margin disappear when auto-width selected.
    • Fixed a bug that prevent multiple monitors from working correctly.
  • 0.6.2b
    • Fixed a bug causing the program to crash if there is no text to cut/copy.
    • Fixed a bug that resulted in a crash when enabling multi-monitor support.
    • Disabled “URL detection”
  • 0.6.1b
    • Fixed “process hog” problem related to autosave interval
    • Fixed allow tabs in writing area
    • Fixed preferences access from context menu
  • 0.6b
    • Added launch modes (restore buffer, open last file, clean document)
    • Redone preferences dialog
    • Converted to C#
    • A bunch (mostly little inconsistences that I noticed while converting)
  • 0.5.1b
    • Fixed order of Find and Find Next in Edit menu
    • Font, Page, and Background color dialog defaults to current color instead of black
    • Fixed find next bug that would not allow find to advance to next word
  • 0.5b
    • Added optional Transparency
    • Added Rudementary Printing Support
    • Added optional Autosave (once a minute)
    • Added Find
    • Added Content Cached in a local file to increase portability
    • Fixed Save As bug, now can save as repeatedly
    • Fixed Text Formatting bug, now stripped when copied to clipboard
  • 0.4b
    • Removed rogue formatting in document (shortcut keys, etc…)
  • 0.3.9b
    • Fixed a bug that caused Dark Room to quit if save dialog is canceled
    • Fixed a bug where the font color button did not update when color was changed
    • Fixed a bug that caused the “save changes” prompt to come up while closing regardless of whether or not the document changed
    • Fixed a bug that prompted a “save as” dialog when attempting to save a file that was opened using “Open With”
    • Added Ctrl+, as a shortcut for preferences
    • Added an About Page
    • Added option not to open in fullscreen mode
    • Added option to open to a clean page
    • Added a crappy icon
  • 0.3.2b
    • Fixed a multiple monitor bug that shaded the primary monitor when app is not maximized
    • Added a warning to save when closing (if document modified)
    • Fixed a bug that allowed user to overwrite a previous file if they created a new file, and used ctrl+s to save
  • 0.3.1b
    • Font dialog now defaults to current font
    • Multiple, vertical monitors now supported
  • 0.3b
    • Added keyboard shortcut to exit (Ctrl+Q)
    • Added “Open with Dark Room” context menu integration option
    • Added Multiple Monitor Support (shades monitors not in use)
    • Added ability to open “All Files (*.*)”
    • Added ability to scroll with mouse wheel
    • Added a context menu
    • Changed redo from Ctrl+Shft+Z to common Ctrl+Y
    • Corrected paste to remove formatting information
    • Changed application name from “WindowsApplication1″ to Dark Room
    • Fixed the ability to associate Dark Rom with text files
  • 0.2b
    • Added Multiple Undo and Redo
    • Fixed crash when Save As dialog is cancelled
    • Removed scrollbar, replaced with simple navigation bar
    • Removed exit shortcut key to allievate conflict with cut command
    • Preferences dialog revamped
    • Added page height preferences
    • Added automatic page width and height setting