The Ultimate Typewriter

[celandine]

I know an elderly man who doesn't use computers. His typewriter suits him fine. He once remarked, though, that he would like a (hypothetical) stripped-down computer that does nothing but word processing, and, most importantly, has an 8.5 x 11-inch screen like a sheet of paper. He just wants a tool that works like a typewriter -- not a whole new paradigm of how to think (or, in his opinion, how to avoid thinking. He gets fairly huffy on the subject.)

I was wondering: do vertical 8.5x11 monitors exist? Would it be possible to build the Typewriter?

[b.i.o]

Optionally, after he gets secure with OO.org, uninstall it, and make it load vim or emacs at random instead.

Uh, why? The goal here seems to be aiming for simple here. vim/emacs are primarily for programmers/programming, not word processing.

[Axman]

Uh, why? The goal here seems to be aiming for simple here. vim/emacs are primarily for programmers/programming, not word processing.

You just said it: VIM is for editing and composing, not word processing. It doesn't matter if you're a programmer or not, it's a nice and extremely powerful utility if you're interested in the text, be it Perl or English. Word processing is all about finishing and printing, which honestly, I don't ever do. And it does print and spell check and all that, too, so since I don't need to put photos and text boxes into stuff, I only use Word for people who dislike .txt. Which is retarded.

And if I did want to do lots of arrangement stuff, I doubt that Word would be powerful enough. It's just so damn... generic. Plus I suspect that someone jumping into writing and editing from the typeset world would be a lot more likely to appreciate the modal system of VIM over the completely inclusive system of Word.

I've never used Emacs, though. Can't speak for that.

[celandine]

Thanks -- that sounds like a good plan. And I think Axman is right about Vim: text editing is probably more natural to start with than Word.

[b.i.o]

You just said it: VIM is for editing and composing, not word processing.

Right, but if someone wants what is basically a typewriter in computer form and doesn't want to deal with the complexities of computers, vim is not what I'd be handing them.

[enk]

You just said it: VIM is for editing and composing, not word processing.

Right, but if someone wants what is basically a typewriter in computer form and doesn't want to deal with the complexities of computers, vim is not what I'd be handing them.

In a terminal, vim -y ("easy" mode) is pretty simple, and the UI is less cluttered than in emacs and the abomination that is pico/nano.

You should just find the number of screen columns that fits a sheet of paper and set that as the textwidth in vim

[enk]

The problem I see with using a text-only editor, of any kind, is that it is not strictly WYSIWYG, since the text wrapping is not necessarily how it will appear on the page.

Yes it is. A4/Letter/Legal holds exactly 80 chars of 10 pt monospace font. In other words: Use a standard terminal in a VT and you can do WYSIWYG text wrapping all night long.


You were joking with the random emacs/vim thing, but actually (IMO at least) a terminal based editor keeps it more typewriter-y than toolbars and dropdown menues in gedit or a word processor.

[dharvai]

Can i suggest the Alphasmart Dana? http://www.alphasmart.com/products/dana-w_In.html

Simple and pretty much just built for word processing.

Or you could go completely minimal and use the Alphasmart Neo but i don't know how much formatting you will need (neo is built to just enter text).