There I was, feeling all guilty and stupid about having so many writing tools on the iMac… really, how many can you need, can you justify, can you even use?
The answer, apparently, is “More than you already have.”
First of all, my sympathies to those whose clients or editors or other demons require extensive (excessive) formatting. (I came up through Amiga and Kaypro (WordStar) and endless iterations of various Windows apps. I used to feel your pain.) I tried NeoOffice and Open Office and AbiWord and StarOffice, and trashed them as unnecessary, though I can imagine eventually having to revive one of them. And of course there’s the inevitable AppleWorks, for which I have yet to find any use.
Today, virtually all my work can be done and transmitted – e-mailed or printed out – in rtf or pdf. So for almost everything, I need little more than Scrivener.
The only significant exception is playscripts: a couple theatres and directors I’ve worked with use CeltX, so I do too.
Then how come I have Ulysses and Bean and Journler and Smultron as well?
I bought Ulysses before I discovered Scrivener; it’s what my father, with his engineer’s mind, would have called “neat but not gaudy.” I keep it around, and still use it now and then, because, well, because it’s paid for and it works well and it looks just a bit like a BMW.
Bean is there as an all-purpose file handler and as a back-stop doc reader.
Journler is there because I use it as, well, as a journal.
Smultron is a basic necessity, a fast and simple text editor. I use it now mostly for blog entries.
On my “portable” – an old IBM clone – are a couple text editors (Q-10 and NoteTab) and and a clip tool. No internet stuff of any kind, so no distractions even if I want them. All I can do with it is work, which comes back into the iMac as txt.
Oh yeah, I have also started playing around with Lyx and TeXShop. I don’t need that elegance, but it’s fun to have on hand. You know, just in case.
Phil
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