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)
(version 0.8b // 11/17/2006)
Requirements
- Windows XP / 2000 / 2003
- .NET Framework 2.0
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.
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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
Please let me know when you have this for Windows Vista.
Thanks,
Lola Vanslette
Thanks for writing this. It looks like a fun tool to help me focus on my writing.
Is this project alive? I’m wondering if it works pretty well on Windows Vista/7
It works fine on vista.
Wondering where all the comments went to. Having a problem with text size which I have had before and I remember there was a couple of comments for a very simple shortcut style fix…
This is a great app! I really love it… Although there’s one feature I would love to see; a full screen lock. I often get distracted because I have to check my mail, facebook or whatever. If this app featured a time specific lock so that you can’t exit the full screen mode in a specific time (specified by the user when entering the full screen mode) this wouldn’t be a problem anymore, because you are forced to focus on the task in front of you…
Just an idea
BTW: Works well on Windows 7 RC!
Great idea Danni
I know what you mean.
Lola, it works fine for me on Windows Vista Ultimate, 32-bits. You may just need to download the .NET framework from Microsoft.com…
Thanks for writing this, Mr. Developer
(By the way, the emoticon in my comment was supposed to be a face smiling, not a neutral guy with a moustache…)
Hey this is a great tool…. but…. but…. it does not support saving Unicode text… I lost almost 12 hours of effort in writing in a non-English language
This software is great! And it works great on Windows 7 too! I pinned it to my taskbar.
Dark room will automaticly transform the UNIX newline character to windows form.
This is not what I wanted.
Can you add the new features like windows newline to unix newline or unix newline to windows newline ?
Very nice. I’m running it on Windows Vista 64-bit. No issues. It has become my main tool. Thank you.
Ok so now I’m feeling really stupid. I’m going to download this because apparently I can’t live without it even though I have no clue what its about.
I came here from a page about no distractions and immediately find myself being distracted. I should have been born a bower bird cause I think any shiny trinket seems to get my attention
Ah, now that I downloaded it and it worked immediately I feel good about myself again:-)
It’s a bit of a shock when the screen disappears completely and I was rather relieved when I intuitively hit the escape key and normal service was resumed. But now having done that, I can see how this will be a very cool piece of software to blot out the bright lights of distraction when I write my articles in the future.
The only thing missing is the ability to customize the context menu; that aside, it is a pleasure using Dark Room.
(That, and remembering the file reloaded already exists: it seems like hitting Ctrl+S should save the reloaded file, not bring up the Save As dialog – this consistently happens upon re-opening DR.)
Hi! I would like to thank you about this software. It reminded me times when the fastest computer were an Apple IIe with a green CRT.
Lovely.
I have this on my Vista SP1 laptop. No troubles at all. I simply copied the whole thing to my profile folder so it could not interfere with UAC and folder access rights when saving configs and then simply added a link to the desktop.
Wow, just heard of this software from Ewen Chias newsletter. Haven’t ever seen or heard about it before, how is being promoted? anyway, I plan on giving it a try since so many find it helpful. thanks to everyone! (and happy online marketing, too)
nice
Well…
I like this one better than Q10 because of the right click options. However, the right click menu does not have file options (open, close, quit, etc.) and there is nothing that shows the keyboard options available.
Please add a file> menu to the right click menu.
What I would really like, is to have something like this for Linux.
I love using the darkroom. It is the perfect writing program. I’m very impressed.
I have a few small requests, however. The next time you tweak it, could you make justified alignment available? It would also be incredibly helpful if a bold, underline, & italics function were present. These features help insert a bit more feeling into a piece of writing.
Good luck with your current projects! Thank you for sharing this program with the public!
thank u!!! nice soft!