All good text editors have one thing in common: they put the text first. No matter how powerful they are and how complex functions they may have, the text is the King.
Take vi and emacs. Both of these editors, despite taking very different approaches to editing and working with text, put the text front and center. You can learn the basic editing functions of both vi and emacs in about twenty minutes. Then, if you wanted or needed to, you could spend the next few months digging into more obscure functionality. No matter how far you reach though, the software *always* tries hard to stay out of your way. You always feel like working with text and not working with text-manipulating software.
This difference is subtle but important. The elegant simplicity of the software corresponds to the inherent simplicity of text.
Throughout the long history of text editors (and understandably text editors are one of the oldest kinds of software ever created as they are essential tools for programmers to write code), the most successful were those, that followed this philosophy of staying out of the way and putting text front and center, avoiding clutter and adding only what's absolutely necessary.
Today, mobile devices are the primary and oftentimes the only way people interact with software and computing. And while many people don't think or care about text editing, surprisingly it's much more ubiquitous than most people expect.
Taking notes and managing todo list are two of the most common tasks people do on their phones. And these are in essence text editing.
When I look on the plethora of note taking and text editing apps, I just couldn't help but think that app authors often forget what the core of their app is.
Text.
Simple, plain, old text.
I see fancy animations, transitions and sexy new concepts (hello paper stacks) but I also see clutter and weight that take away from the intimate, lonely act of writing words on paper (or digital canvas).
Make the text stand out. Make it beautiful, make it the star. I don't give a shit about animations. I want beautiful text and ability to edit it as easy as possible on the device at hand.
I think iA Writer is the app that almost nails it.
