I mentioned Ghostwriter somewhere else in this thread https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter

I believe they have a Windows executable. If not, you can compile it yourself quite easily. You just need the Qt libraries and the easiest way to compile it would be to use Qt Creator.

J’ai lu en diagonal (merci pour le post) mais tu cites “building a second brain” qui est écrit par le mec qui développe PARA ?

J’ai prévu de jeter un coup d’œil à GhostWriter qui semble être assez KISS (keep it simple and silly) et je pense que GIT (si j’arrive à maîtriser les arcanes) fera une bonne GED. Ce qui me manque c’est le flux de traitement des mets données ; en pratique je me mail des notes ou des liens avec des mots dièse et je voudrai un moteur de workflow simple et naturellement compatible avec PARA.

Est-ce que le bouquin (building a second brain) rentre dans ce type de details, j’hésitais à me l’acheter.

Tiago Forte: le nom du mec en question, forte labs son site.

https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/

or

https://vscodium.com/ this is a code editor. But if you type long text, folding is really useful. It lets you fold titles on click, so the content is hidden. Just like in Ms word when you click the little triangles. It also lets you fold list items. But I'm not sure if it has a real time rendering like ghostwriter (for making titles big etc.), maybe there's an extension for it.

they're both free and open source.

Format over plain text means markdown. You can try Marktext or Zettlr, both a little simpler than Notepad++ I believe, which already was mentioned. Buy if you want something as simple as Notepad maybe I would choose ghostwriter, but any of those is a great choice. Again, the key is to learn markdown more than the program you use.

To say it in a fancy way it's a type of a markup language. It sounds scary, but it's actually just a simple way to well... "mark up" your text to signify different things: headings, bullet points, bold, italics, etc.

It's exists somewhere between plain text and rich text. Unlike rich text (like a .doc or .rtf file) it is human readable when open it as plain text (with something like notepad++). It can also be easily exported to different formats - plain text, rich text, html, pdf etc.

It's quite commonly used online. In fact, if you ever made text bold or italic on reddit, you already used it.

For example, by writing the text below:

# Heading ## Subheading

* point * another point, but bold

1. and a numbered point 2. another numbered point.

A new paragraph!

You are actually writing this (when it "renders"):

Heading

Subheading

• point
• another point, but bold

1. and a numbered point
2. another numbered point.

A new paragraph!

You can see more examples of how it's used on wikipedia. The ghostwriter guide is even better intro to how to use it for writing.

Thanks! so much for looking into this. I also used a wiki for world building in the past but I used vim-wiki (and then exported to HTML). I do have a modular sandbox structure on my list for a "version 2" of the generator. This is not going to be super hard to implement but I want to design it well enough, so I need to properly wrap up "version 1" before.

Until then, Ghostwriter is a great free editor that can be used to edit the monolithic Hexroll markdown file with ease. Images throughout the sandbox will not be cropped properly in the preview window, as this cropping feature is a CSS capability that requires a full browser to work - but this shouldn't be a show-stopper. Code is yet another free editor that can be used to edit large markdown files. Both require familiarization with markdown syntax though.

For actual worldbuilding and brainstorming I use vim and vimwiki. For note-taking or writing long texts, I use ghostwriter.

Si te tinca usar markdown, esta Ghostwriter esta dirigido para Linux pero también tiene una version de Windows. Es liviano y esta construido desde cero para ser así.

I like ghostwriter. Its markdown based. I use it in the raw markdown view but you can also use split or only preview. File explorer is hide able (annoys me in other programs). https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/

Polecam https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/

Edytor pozwala na bieżąco wyświetlać pisaną treść w formacie markdown (czyli jak tu w komciach na reddicie), w postaci wyświetlanej przez przeglądarkę.

GhostWriter most of the time, I have nano configured specifically for some systems that don't do graphics (very old laptop set up for distraction free writing).

Wonderful! There's lots of programs to edit Markdown. It's just a format/standard, after all. You can use the primitive Notepad, something esoteric such as vim or Emacs, something reasonably simple such as Notepad++, or any raw text editor of your choice. What you probably want, though, is an editor specialised for Markdown.

https://stackedit.io/app works reasonably well if you don't want to install anything. Just start writing, and you can print right from the browser.

https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/ is also fairly good, but needs to be installed.

Essaie Ghostwriter en mode "Hemingway". C'est tout bête, mais ça m'aide beaucoup. En gros tu écris d'abord en t'interdisant d'effacer quoi que ce soit, et tu nettoies après. Le nettoyage prend très peu de temps finalement.

Try out simply a basic markdown editor, formatted text is easily readable and can be opened with any text editor if needed. Using markdown doesn't lock you to use any certain editor or service, and you can sync the files however you want, for example with syncthing.

Don't know if you need any "notebook" features, some of the other suggestions have those. Simple editors work basically like a notepad, like you wanted I believe.

> Something simple, one that can be saved in "files" like notepad ones

Markdown syntax is used here in reddit as well. Btw your url has an extra space at the start, so it does not show up correctly.

[name]( url with a extra space at the start)

• ghostwriter: Markdown editor for Windows and Linux
• Markor: Text editor for Android, supporting Markdown and todo.txt
• CommonMark: A strongly defined, highly compatible specification of Markdown

MindForger is one of the apps I am very excited about. Unfortunately it still has some bugs that need to be fixed and some features that need to be implemented to make it a viable alternative to Joplin (which I currently use).

It obviously can be used by non-developers. Markdown is very easy to master and after you get used to it it becomes very efficient way to format your text. All of the post on my blog were written using markdown in ghostwriter.

As a bonus you get your notes in a plain text which is the ultimate portable format, so you will be able to export them later to a different application easily.

This post, and all of it's suggestions on writing tools, and other posts about staying focused and giving up on the first draft and first drafts are suppose to be really bad, got me thinking about creating a new editor that only allows you to focus on the current word or sentence and not go back so you didn't get tempted to edit while creating your first draft. The editor I had in mine was going to be awesome and I'd call it "First Draft" and every one would love me. I thought I'd do a little research first and luckily there's already "ghostwriter" and from what I have read of its features it's exactly what I'm looking for. I haven't worked much with it yet, but it looks promising.

Here's a handy link: https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/

Bonus: it's free and open source for Windows and Linux