Writing Software Setup
In 2024, it was still so hard to figure out a good software setup to manage my writing. It needs to be easy and quick to edit. Tools should be available in both mobile and PC. Allows offline access. It should be based on standard format such as markdown. Most importantly, the documents should be available in the file system and can be managed by standard file management tools.
The last point is crucial. No matter how good the editor is, they often don’t do as well in file management. This means organizing the articles into folders, finding them, reorganizing them, and deleting unneeded crumbs. There are tools I use for years that do this job really well. Unfortunately, some editors manage the files themselves inside their own database, thus not interoperable with file management tools.
One of such tools is Google Doc. I have slowly drawn to Google Doc due to its superb spelling and grammar correction function. (I am still writing this piece in Google Doc and then copying it over). Since I make on average one grammatical mistake every other sentence, the grammar checker is a godsend for me. Unfortunately, their file management is the most horrible. It is basically just a linear list that you have little control. The main order is the last modified time. If I open an old file and accidentally add one space, it rises to the top in front of all other docs. There is no way to push it back. If I want to skim and find a file, I have to open it and then close it, which needs multiple clicks and is slow. Deleting is clunky. There is no usable folder structure. Google seems to think you should not organize by folder but to use the search function exclusively. This has never worked for me. The result, once I have added a small number of documents, I start to lose them because it is so hard to find them.
This is my new tool set
Google Drive - for cloud storage
DriveSync - Android app to sync to Google Drive
Markor - a markdown editor on Android
Total Commander - an old school, Norton Commander style file manager
The documents are managed as regular files. It also works with my own backup system that I am already using. I use a regular text editor (VSCode) on PC and Markor on Android. But it can be any markdown editor. Because it is just editing files on the disk, I can swap it with a different editor if a better one comes along.
Total Commander is an old school file manager I cannot do without even after all these years. I am slowly transfering the dozen of Google Doc documents to individual markdown files. As I move them, I am rediscovering much of my writing that has become “lost” in Google doc.