Portable FocusWriter release
Posted on July 2, 2010, under FocusWriter
I made a small release of FocusWriter today that primarily adds the ability to run it from a USB drive. I don’t personally have a use for this feature, but several people have contacted me over it and it turned out to be very easy to add. Along with that I have done a bit more platform integration, such as always using native file dialogs. Unfortunately, I do not believe this release will fix the keyboard entry bug on the Mac as I am still using the Carbon version of Qt.
Part of the platform integration is using each platform’s keyboard shortcuts. Qt nicely provides for that with QKeySequence::StandardKey. I figured that it would be a safe to use it because it was added in Qt 4.2; however, it turned out that QKeySequence::Quit was added in Qt 4.6. After I realized my error (the broken Ubuntu packages tipped me off 😛), I uploaded patched versions of the Ubuntu packages. I don’t like changing Qt versions with a minor point release, but I will probably switch to Qt 4.6 for the next major release.
8 comments
Rob G says:
August 15, 2010 at 10:41 pm
Thanks for sharing FocusWriter with us! I am using Mac and PC, so it’s great to have the same distraction free environment on both platforms.
Graeme says:
August 16, 2010 at 9:41 pm
I’m pleased to hear that you like FocusWriter. Please let me know if you have any issues or suggestions.
LogC says:
September 1, 2010 at 10:32 pm
Great full-screen editor! The daily goal is a really neat idea.
I’m wondering if the “keyboard entry bug on the Mac” you mention here is the one that I was about to report on your Github repository: whenever I try to write a diacritic (like á, ó, ú … ), FocusWriter writes the character twice. So, if you hit “´” + “a” + “p”, you end up with “áap” instead of “áp”.
Tried to fix it myself, but I have almost no C++, nor Qt knowledge. Can you get around to fix it? Any hint on where can that happen in your code?
In order to contribute at least something to your project, I translated the app to Spanish, via the .ts file. How can I contribute it?
Thanks!
Graeme says:
September 2, 2010 at 3:05 am
That is indeed the keyboard entry bug on the Mac that I was referring to, but it is not a bug in my code. It’s actually a bug in the Carbon version of Qt, and according to the Qt bugreport it is fixed in the upcoming Qt 4.7.0 release.
Thanks for translating FocusWriter! You can email me (the link is on my site) the .ts file and I will add it to the git repository.
ED says:
October 1, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Very nice package Graeme. Just discovered by way of Lifehacker. If there is a choice, I only use the portable versions of software, even if they stay on my laptop. Trying the windows version right now and will also try on mac.
One feature that I would like to see, and is hard to find, is the ability to have the document title automatically extracted from the document when saving, usually the first line.
Graeme says:
October 2, 2010 at 4:13 pm
That’s a feature that I hadn’t considered before. I’ll look into how complicated it would be to add.
Jayzee says:
November 20, 2010 at 3:41 pm
Hi Graeme
I’ve just downloaded FocusWriter, and it does have a nice, clean, non-distracting interface. The timers and meters look like they would be useful too. Unfortunately there seems to be no way to increase the display size of the text, or change the font. Since my eyesight is no longer up to reading 6pt san-serif I’m afraid this package is unusable for me.
Graeme says:
November 20, 2010 at 3:59 pm
The font and font size are set in each theme. You can modify the themes by opening the “Themes” dialog under the “Settings” menu.