Great concept, but "not delete" feature? God no! A total deal breaker for me!
I like to correct obvious mistakes, such as typos, when i see it. I like to insert a paragraph, or a phrase, on a early section, when i think of it. I like to erase whole paragraphs that a new one I just wrote contradict or substitute.
I am starting to write some essays and this would be perfect, except for this write-only. You disrupted too much my process.
I think the intended audience is people who want to practice finishing as opposed to perfecting. I often struggle to finish bits of writing I start because I go back and read and re-read and tweak and then before I know it the afternoon I allocated is over.
I certainly wouldn't view it as a substitute for a regular editor, but a tool for a different job.
The "no delete" feature is super-weird to begin with and takes a lot of getting used to. If your workflow is to edit-in-place all the time then Earnest is probably not for you.
I do respect the "this is the vision, take it or leave it" way of thinking, but there is a middle ground. Perhaps give one edit per 100 characters (or something configurable).
Put another way -- you don't have to make something entirely impossible to discourage a user from doing it. What other ways are there to reduce in-place editing?
Just one idea: don't show what people are writing for more than a few seconds, and then gradually fade it away.
Well, the feature that you're suggesting be removed is pretty much the only thing that distinguishes this from low-end text editors.
It's perfectly sensible and appropriate that such a request would be rejected. It's really no different than, say, requesting that the directory listing functionality of the ls command be removed. Yeah, it is a suggestion, but it's surely not a viable one.
I certainly don't think the same way. On browser, easy saving with no signup and counting words, that would be enough for me to chose among the mentioned competitors. Only if i could delete
My site, https://www.justwritedammit.com lets you save automatically to browser local storage, Google Drive, or Dropbox. If you have writing in Google Drive already, you can import it as chapters. You can also manually export and import files to and from the desktop. It has word count and a timer showing you how long you've been writing. There is a word and phrase frequency analyzer to help you figure out if you're over using certain idioms. And if you've been using it for a while and have a lot of writing, you can export it all to an EPUB package for eReader devices.
EDIT: and it works on smartphones, too, which I've personally been using to get some writing done on my galaxy note 2 while on the go or at the coffee shop/bar.
Why wouldn't you just use a minimalistic text editor like Notepad or nano, then?
They avoid the distractions of spell checking and all that, while still saving files locally, and while still allowing you to delete text you've written.
I use Sublime Text for my writing for this purpose. I'm fairly good at not making spelling errors, and I usually correct them when I type them anyways, but it's nice to not have something look like it's on a printed page already with the margins, etc.
I like to correct obvious mistakes, such as typos, when i see it. I like to insert a paragraph, or a phrase, on a early section, when i think of it. I like to erase whole paragraphs that a new one I just wrote contradict or substitute.
I am starting to write some essays and this would be perfect, except for this write-only. You disrupted too much my process.