Amrith

Left - A minimalist multi-platform text editor

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Left is a distraction-free, minimal note-taking tool for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

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Amrith
Love how clean your work is @neauoire and @rekkabell 🖤 Does this substitute for a code-editor as well? If not, syntax highlighting would look great in this!
Devine Lu Linvega
@rekkabell @amrith It shouldn't. It doesn't have syntax highlight and language autocomplete. But I still use it from time to time to write yaml database stuff ;)
Ashish Kumar
Curious as to why would you create a new editor instead of a theme? For eg: I know about this minimalistic theme for Atom https://github.com/apex/apex-ui
Devine Lu Linvega
@ashfame Yeah that's a good question. Left was actually initially created for our personal usage(we are in the process of publishing a short novel). And its main features were meant to be only the synonym dictionary, as well as the speed reader, and the markup navigation. Which Atom does not have, also, Atom, for some reason doesn't work well on our older machines, is slow to the point of being unusable.
Amrith
Ashish Kumar
@neauoire Sublime? I believe plugins & themes on both Atom & Sublime are possible. Also Sublime is native hence lightweight, I believe? Anyway, good exercise if you wanted to create an editor yourself, but sounds like an overkill solution when you just wanted to add features. Nonetheless, congrats on shipping! Always feel good to create something.
Devine Lu Linvega
@ashfame It's funny you mention Sublime, because this whole thing started with Sublime, I actually built the speed reader and synonym dictionary feature as Sublime plugins at first. It was a less than fun experiment, but I learnt a lot in the process. When I got around to building a dynamic markup navigation.. well things started to crumble, and fall apart. I couldn't believe that making something so simple was such a pain, so I just scrapped everything, and went ahead and built Left, knowing that ultimately we'd need an exporter to PDF and various print formatting features, I didn't want to be bothered to build atop Sublime's plugin infrastructure. Anyways :) Making your own things is fun. https://twitter.com/neauoire/sta...
Ashish Kumar
@neauoire Cool story!
Benn Crawford
Spell check coming soon?
Devine Lu Linvega
@be2n Sure! I'll add it right away, give me an hour or two. Are you on Windows or OSX?
Benn Crawford
Devine Lu Linvega
@be2n I've spoken too fast, adding a spellchecker is a lot more work than I expected. I'll have to cogitate on this a bit longer..
Devine Lu Linvega
@be2n I'm one step ahead :) I've been spending on time on this and I have hunspell implemented. It works almost reliably.
Zach Dubos
Absolutely beautiful.
Benn Crawford

It's so fresh and so clean. I seems 'basic' but when you account for the

spacing and structural considersations made, time has clearly been spent on Left.

The theme are a nice touch as is this being open source! The people behind Left are dudes!

Pros:

Simple, elegant, sexy even.

Cons:

Constrast on some themes is not accessible - no spell check

Eka

Beautiful simple text editor, perfect for quick scribbling (eg. blog post ideas and the like)

Pros:

Simple, beautiful minimalist Markdown text editor; themes; "sticky" outline sidebar

Cons:

Default OSX shortcuts (full screen, close tab/file) don't work

Devine Lu Linvega
cmd+w should close a file similarly to other text applications like Sublime. And fullscreen is cmd+enter, similarly to other applications. What would be a better shortcut for fullscreen?
Deleted User
I love this! The default font size is too tiny for me though, and zoom isn't saved between sessions. Any chance yall are planning to add that?
Devine Lu Linvega
@bryantpeng Oh! Yes, let me add the zoom value to the localStorage. I will push the updated build this afternoon.
Deleted User
@neauoire Hmm doesn't work on macOS for me. If it's a hassle don't worry about it haha, no biggie!
Devine Lu Linvega
@bryantpeng I haven't gotten around to doing it yet. I'll try to do it tomorrow, it's been a pretty busy day.
Deleted User
@neauoire Haha no worries, you're providing a free service after all!
Clo
Hi @neauoire and @rekkabell Damn, Left feels good to use. Just the right features, nothing unnecessary. I had a few questions but found my answers here:
Also it seems that a few features don't work on Windows, like drag-and-dropping an existing .doc file to open it, and some other smaller / non-blocking stuff. Also, you. live. on. a. boat. And you make games. Gonna go check them out.
Devine Lu Linvega
@rekkabell @clo_spa Thanks :) Yeah, .docs/.docx might generate a couple of weird side effects as it is not a raw-text file format, but a sort of RTC with lots of custom markups. Let us know what you think, and if you have anything you'd like for us to add — and we'll implement it :) !
Clo
Hey @neauoire =) I will let you know if I have any specific feedback to give! =)
Jonathan Völkle

I used my code editor before to take note, but Left is the better option, especially if you want to use markdown. Left displays the headings on the left, to stay organized and fast access different subheadings.

Pros:

Elegant, simple text editor with markdown support

Cons:

None

Christopher Pedersen
I'm messing around with your text editor right now, but I can only save my file as a txt file. Are you not able to save files as .html, .php, .rb, .py etc. with Left?
Devine Lu Linvega
@topherpedersen It should work, try adding an extension as you save. Won't it let you add .rb to the file name upon save? Are you on Windows?
Christopher Pedersen
@neauoire I think I found a bug for you on Mac. If I try to save something as "helloworld.php", it will actually save as: "helloworld.php.txt".
Devine Lu Linvega
@topherpedersen Damn, I don't seem to be getting that bug. Do you have npm installed/know how to use it?
Christopher Pedersen
@neauoire I tried the text editor again this afternoon and was NOT able to reproduce the bug. The text editor is working fine now. I'm not sure exactly what was going on before. I really dig your editor and congrats on reaching the top spot on Product Hunt!
Devine Lu Linvega
@topherpedersen Thank you :) I might have pushed a fix yesterday that fixed it :) It's all thanks to @amrith for posting it.
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