Text editor software for writers

Distractions are the enemy concentration. When you want to buckle down and do some serious writing, I find it best to clear my mind and concentrate on what's in my head. There are some great pieces of software that can help eliminate the clutter on your computer screen and keep you focused on your writing.

There are several pieces of excellent freeware for Windows that reduce your computer screen to nothing but a blank slate and your words. In a recent search, I came up with more than half a dozen pieces of freeware that serve this purpose. Each can completely fill the screen with a uniform sheet of black.

Not too many years ago, all computer screens had a black background and text of a single color. That other color ranged from orange to white to blue, but the most common was a dark neon green. Most of the programs I mention here default to that neon green. It offers a strong contrast to black, and strong contrast makes for quick and easy reading.

I'm a fan of portable software, so I was looking for software that I can keep on my USB keychain drive and use on any Windows computer. I also wanted to be able to reduce the column width of the text so my eyes didn't need to move all the way from left to right across a large screen. And while I do like the bright green on black that most of these program use as default, I wanted the ability to change colors in the future. But speed and ease of use are primary concerns. This is just a simple text editor, so there's no reason this kind of software should run at any speed other than blazingly fast.

Those parameters narrowed the field for me to two pieces of software.

WestEdit is a little (124KB) program that seems to run on any Windows machine, allows you to set background and text color and choose from any font installed on your computer. It uses a set column width that seems fine. It is comprised of a single file. The workspace is completely plain with only your text visible. To change settings, you hit the Escape key, which also allows you to work in a window you drag to any size you desire or the default full-screen mode.

Q10 is a larger piece of software, but still plenty small at 357KB. It creates and maintains a configuration (.ini) file in the same directory that on my computer is 2KB. The default black screen includes a very small information bar across the bottom that unobtrusively displays the number of words you've typed, number of pages in the document and the number of characters, plus filename and time. That's all useful information. Hit Control-P to pull up the Settings dialog. There, you can adjust colors and font size (with a live preview), adjust the column width to a set number of pixels or instead set the left and right margins to a set number of pixels. You can set the indent of the first line of paragraphs, the vertical margins, change what information appears in the info bar, create some autocorrection commands, add some quicktext lines for instant insertion, and a few other little things.

Both WestEdit and Q10 do a fine job. WestEdit is simpler. Q10 offers more customization. Take your choice.

Other similar Windows freeware that I looked at didn't measure up as well for me.

Darkroom requires the .NET 2.0 framework. One machine I use frequently is older and doesn't have that installed. And I could well run across other computers that don't have that.

JDarkroom requires Java 1.34, which did happen to be on two of the three computers I use regularly. But on both of those machines, it ran much slower than Q10 or WestEdit.

Monkey ran slowly on all the computers I tried it on. On one machine, it took more than 20 seconds just to start up. On that same machine, WestEdit and Q10 each started up in less than three seconds.

I found another program, called Dropcloth, which blackens the entire screen except the active window. The intention is to remove distractions. But Dropcloth is not a text editor. You could use it if you wanted to write in MS Word, for example. But when I'm writing in Word, I generally use it full screen, so there's nothing else showing that Dropcloth would hide. I suppose if you have a text editor you like to use in a small window, you could use Dropcloth to hide other programs you have open. For me, it seems useless.

I still use a simple text editor for notes. My favorite is MetaPad, which is small, simple and somehow better than the default Windows Notepad. But, like Notepad, MetaPad allows you to adjust column width only by dragging the window smaller. And then you do have other things showing on your screen. Sure, you could use Dropcloth to hide that stuff, but that's a more complicated solution that simply using Q10 or WestEdit.

So, when I am ready to settle down and get my creative juices flowing, I fire up WestEdit or Q10. In a couple of seconds, I have a blank screen ready to accept my input. No distractions, no waiting, no messing around. Just my head, a keyboard and a screen.