[Daniel Kemper]

In praise of notepad++ as a poetry-editing tool

1. Crisp and clean plain-text only interface. Not cludgy or gooey.

2. Tab-completion of common words like texts or IM's.

3. HYUGE: Absolutely unintrusive autosave.
-It just stays right there, no "which draft", no weird auto-adjusments, no wondering where it saves.

4. HYUGE: Tabs as in tabbed browsing.
Multiple docs open at once.
Just click to move from one to the next -or ctrl+pagedown / ctrl+pageup
Get stuck on one poem, ctrl+pageup and work on the next

5. Line manipulation:
hold ctrl+shift, then arrow up/down to move a whole line intact up/down in the order of your poem.
*OR SELECT ENTIRE SECTIONS and move them up/down. No cut scroll, paste, etc.

6. Since it produces .txt files, they're readable by anything anywhere.

7. There are a gazillion other tweaks and customizations. The unique thing about this is that it's actually a code writer's/developer's tool. Applying it to verse is fascinatingly fun.

8. FREE FREE FREE

[John Isbell]

Hi Daniel,

Nice to see this praise of a medium., and I'm glad this works so well for you. I always compose longhand, then type up in Word. I value the slowness of longhand composition, and tend to be unhappy with the few pieces I've composed onscreen. A personal taste. I would just add, as an enemy of spellcheck, that I don't like my words being completed for me by an algorithm. It is very often wrong, and requires of me an attention to being misguessed at which I find a bit antithetical to the state of mind I need. If I am typing, say, they're, their, it's or its, or some foreign language - to name a few examples - I know what I want and don't want an algorithm stabbing blindly in the dark. It is however true that after the fact, in Word, I am generally grateful for the underlinings of various colors that spur me to contemplate, say, my punctuation. The piece is already written by then.

Cheers,
John

[Jim Moonan]

x
John, A good poem about algorithms would soothe my soul.

I have grown to like Google docs for many of the reasons Daniel likes notepad++. GD has a feature that allows you to create a doc and share it/work on it with others who use GD. I fantasize Eliot and Pound sharing The Waste Land...
x
x

[Roger Slater]

I do most of my first drafts on Notepad. If I like the draft at all, I then copy and paste it to Evernote where I polish it up. I think Evernote is fantastic since it is secure and available from any computer or even smartphone. Evernote also has lots of other uses apart from writing immortal verse. I haven't tried Notepad++ yet. I'll check it out. Thanks for the tip.

[Daniel Kemper]

Hi John, yes definitely one size does not fit all. There is something organic about long-hand, which is very soothing. I don't exclusively compose in notepad++. Actually, I can grok with not liking tab-complete. It's just a feature I could easily envision some liking. It is seamless and unintrusive if not desired.

I'm like you in that I don't want to clean up while I compose and I think my many spelling and punctuation errors show that such checkers are not well done in notepad++. It is, after all, primarily a coder's tool. I just love the little thing though.

Jim, I like your take on Google Docs. Not sure why it never caught hold with me. (And it ought to because my kids schools use it so much.) I like to imagine Hopkins and Bridges, or Keats and... anybody.

Roger! Sounds kindred. I know a lot of people who totally adore evernote, not the least for the "reach it from any machine" feature that you mention. If you use notepad, you'll love notepad++.

Again, I'm not saying everyone should adopt. Should one size fit all, we'd probably have very little to write about. And I'm loving seeing the different composition media.

[John Isbell]

Hi Daniel,

Yes, I agree, this is an interesting thread topic and I hope it draws more commentary.

Cheers,
John

[Ann Drysdale]

I looked it up. I now know (but do not understand) it to be "a free source code editor which supports several programming languages running under the MS Windows environment."

My language is British English and I write and think in it. Once upon a time somebody invented Word97, which worked in the same medium. To use its tools one only had to puts one's need into ordinary words. That way of working was made by a writer, for writers. It has never been bettered. I use it still.

When I was forced to move to Windows 10 I was reduced to tears by the language which drove the system. I thought I didn't understand until I discovered that much of its workings were the same but the language had changed. I was whimpering in confusion because I didn't have, had never had, an App. When I discovered that it was merely another name for a "program(me)" I laughed with sheer relief.

Nobody mocks a craftsman in wood or metal when he loving displays tools that his grandfather passed on to him, tools that are fitted to his hand and suited to the craft. Please don't mock me for feeling the same about the program(me) that has served me so well for so long.

[Erik Olson]

For my part, the program I use to write and edit is Scrivener. It works great for me because it allows me to easily look at two alternate iterations of text side by side.

Cheers,
Erik

Added later: One of its most useful draws I think lies in its core set-up, whereby: Scrivener files are called projects, not documents, because a project itself can house endless documents in an easy-to-navigate sidebar or Binder. I am a perennial revisor who will save a poem in different stages. Not only do I revise and correct continually, but sometimes revert to earlier versions, whether in whole or in part. That is why Scrivner is so useful to me because it combines what I get from Word in text manipulation with what I get from Evernote in the organization of files. There are more features than you or I will care to hear described. So you will have to take my word for it that it is actually worth every penny.