PyRoom provides distraction free writing in Linux

By , Published June 1, 2010

If you’re anything like me then there are times when concentrating on writing seems like an impossibility; facebook pokes, youtube crawls, aimless stumbleupon-ing all get in the way of aiming my focus solely on the task in hand.

PyRoom aims to solve that.

PyRoom, above all else, is a simple text editor that runs in fullscreen “without buttons, widgets, formatting options, menus and with only the minimum of required dialog windows“, hiding all of those distractions that normally hinder you thus letting you to focus on simply putting words on the page.

PyRoom's full screen writing environment gets your computer out of the way so that you can focus on your work. The result is a subtle clearing of the mind that helps you write better.

As PyRoom is a text-based editor with a very minimal UI there is no support for formatting (bold, italic, hyperlinks, etc), something worth bearing in mind if you’re writing something requiring more than just flat text.

You can invoke PyRoom’s preferences window by pressing CTRL+P. Here you are able to configure various options such as font & autosave period as well as the theme!

Installation
PyRoom is available to install from the Software Centre, just search for ‘pyroom’. Alternatively just hit the one-click-install button below.

Once installed PyRoom can be run from Applications > Office > PyRoom

Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

No related posts.

Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.
  • peder

    Funny, i just read about meTexts ( http://myownapp.com/applications/mytextstouch/mytextstouch.html ), a similar app for the iPad. (Not that i could ever afford such a device)

    By the way, i also like LyX in fullscreen mode! ( http://www.lyx.org )

  • Airballman

    You know, a simple vim, nano or anything else would have done the same jut in typing F11.

    So what’s the real point?

    Thx for the blog, I like it!

    C U

  • http://twitter.com/ZisisMaras zisis maras

    I dont think it will make you focus,its more like it makes you want to die,staring at a black screen.

  • kringel

    Thanks, I really need an editor like pyroom. Where no F11 can get me out. :)

    I am affected by this bug though:
    https://bugs.launchpad.net/pyroom/+bug/367990?comments=all

    But it’s very easy to workaround (thanks to Csomortáni Hunor in the topic on launchpad):

    So my solution was
    From a Terminal:
    LANGUAGE=” pyroom &

    In Gnome via ALT+F2 you type in:
    sh -c “LANGUAGE=” pyroom”

    And all your pyroom menu entries change to:
    sh -c “LANGUAGE=” pyroom”

    Worked like a charm. Please note, that after LANGUAGE= there are two ‘ not a single “, just do copy&paste. :)

    Some /etc/environment LANGUAGE-variables work, some don’t.

    But even setting it to ” I have my correct language in pyroom. Everything works fine with this little workaround.

  • kringel

    To stick with the original menu entry it’s:

    sh -c “LANGUAGE=” pyroom %F”

    works. :)

  • No

    Unfortunately its not on the level of Writemonkey or q10 yet. So atm I could not use pyroom or any other fullscreen editor on linux to my full satisfaction.

  • rgz

    An yet I find out that when writing what I need the most is a way of organizing distinct pieces of an idea as well as formating.

    For these things Celtx is a divine gift, I recommend it absolutely.

  • Anonymous

    I like this idea, but from my first short test run it seems as though PyRoom forces you to use [Enter] to continue writing on the next line. I imagine this would be a problem once you tried importing the text into a different word processor, since the flow of the text would be different. You’d
    end up with lines that break like
    this,
    and causing you much extra work
    when
    you later have to manually remove
    all
    the misplaced line breaks. In order
    to make
    the text flow correctly.

    • Anonymous

      I agree… I loved this app soooo much until you pointed this out and it’s true… Can someone please ask the developer to add automatic line break? Even if only as an option in settings? PyRoom could be so useful, if only this was implemented…

      edit: nevermind, just hit spacebar at least once a line and it works ^^;

    • Anonymous

      I dont have that problem *knock*

    • Anonymous

      Oh, I’ve got it! It needs at least one space to break the line. Maybe that was the problem?

    • Anonymous

      Oh, I’ve got it! It needs at least one space to break the line. Maybe that was the problem?

  • http://twitter.com/connorabruce Connor

    Pyroom would be perfect if it had a spell checker, but at the minute it means pasting it into something else that does.

    • http://twitter.com/scotslawstudent scotslawstudent

      I find just typing until you’ve produced a draft and then checking it all at once using aspell -c works very well. I think the concept of a distraction free text editor works better without red lines under misspelled words.

  • Anonymous

    oh the old dos day

  • http://justindz.tumblr.com justindz

    This is very similar to Lightroom/Darkroom for Mac and Windows which provided the same forced distraction-free writing experience. I find it great for blogging, copy-writing and initial drafts of requirements docs for work. Also good on planes late at “night” (fun concept on international flights).

    If you are like me and use different OSes depending on which machine you’re using and you like this app, might be worth checking out the others too. I will definitely try this out when I get home :-)

  • http://twitter.com/RabidWeezle Adam Smith

    If you need a mature editor to do the same thing just run gedit and press F11

    • http://twitter.com/wolterh Wolter Hellmund

      I miss the margins hah

  • Anonymous

    Terminal + nano + f11 anyone?

    • Anonymous

      customizable colors :D and “less geeky” for grandma

    • Anonymous

      Doesn’t help a darn bit if the terminal is transparent xD

      • Anonymous

        Ah, I didn’t take that into account, since I got rid of that nonsense first thing upon installation xDD

        • Anonymous

          I should too, but I’ve gotten used to it by now and it’d feel like something’s missing :p

    • Anonymous

      Doesn’t help a darn bit if the terminal is transparent xD

  • Scott G Newson

    It would be great if I could use it to fill in any text entry in any program or website.
    If I could press some keyboard shortcut, and have pyroom pop up. Then type what I want and ‘save’ or just exit, and then have the text I wrote in the text entry area I last had the cursor in.

    Then I could use it in open office, on blogs, writing emails, whatever!

  • Pingback: FocusWriter 1.3.0 Released

  • Pingback: TextRoom – Distraction free full-screen rich text editor for writers

 
News