←back to thread

48 points dduplex | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.4s | source

Hello HN,

I made this simple notepad for writing down whatever comes to mind. The goal is to force you to not get hung up on what you’ve already written. There’s no formatting, you can’t edit what you’ve typed, you can’t select text or move your caret around. There’s no backspace, delete, undo/redo, or paste. You can’t even see any words except the one you’re currently typing, and when you’re done with it, it fades away.

The text is all still there, just invisible. You can save everything you’ve written as a .txt if you want, or just empty your thoughts and let them disappear forever.

The idea was to encourage myself to do more stream-of-consciousness writing. I tend to edit while I write. This forces me to just keep moving forward, and I’ve found it very helpful so far. I was going to build this into my other writing tool, Drift, but I didn’t think it fit with the idea of the project, so I just made it its own thing. I’m calling it Vapor for now.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

1. ssawa ◴[] No.45141207[source]
This is so super delightful. I explored a similar space when I was first learning piano and was enjoying how freeing it is to have the melodies and mistakes sort of drift into the air.

In case the work proves useful to your endeavors: https://github.com/cj-dimaggio/transient-words

replies(1): >>45145385 #
2. dduplex ◴[] No.45145385[source]
Oh wow, I hadn’t come across this one while researching. As soon as I looked at it I felt pretty bad thinking someone had already built something exactly like mine 7 years ago. But playing around with it, it seems different enough that I don’t feel like I now need to toss mine in the trash. Phew.