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Modern Word Processor Discussion Thread

Tsurugaya

Active Member
Sounds good, keep us posted and most of all, have fun coding. I'd be happy to beta test when you feel it's ready.
 

lparsons21

Active Member
Sounds good, keep us posted and most of all, have fun coding. I'd be happy to beta test when you feel it's ready.

Instead of 'beta' testing for free, why not do what I did and just buy it now? It costs less than you probably spend at the coffee shop! That's how you encourage developers.
 
OP
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goodintentions

Active Member
Instead of 'beta' testing for free, why not do what I did and just buy it now? It costs less than you probably spend at the coffee shop! That's how you encourage developers.
Haha, that's what I was thinking, too.

Sometimes, I don't think people realize how much work is involved with a project like this, especially when it's not my day job. I'm an engineer. While I'm not doing this mainly for money, it's always nice to see my work appreciated.

I'm exploring to see how many features I can cram in this app while keeping it small. With the speech recognition, it is now 2.0mb.
 

Tsurugaya

Active Member
Instead of 'beta' testing for free, why not do what I did and just buy it now? It costs less than you probably spend at the coffee shop! That's how you encourage developers.
I've already bought it. The OP started the thread to solicit critique and opinions. To me that sounds like beta testing, with or without quotation marks.
 
OP
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goodintentions

Active Member
If anything, this gives me an idea. See, this app is mainly for document editing. If I delve too much into speech recognition -> translation -> speech synthesis back in another language... well, it's not a doc editing app anymore. It's now a star trek universal translator.

That said, the main problem I'm having right now is...

See, when I set out to create this app, there were some ground rules I had for myself. These include but not limited to:

(1) using certain programming techniques to keep the app as efficient and small as possible. There are plenty of bloated apps in the stores by lazy programmers who just copy and paste large amounts of code together hoping it would compile. The result is an app that is 10-100 times bigger than it should be. I hate that.

(2) Make optimum use of available resources. For example, take a look at the screen space. I know the traditional way is to put the menu either on the top or bottom. Notice that my menu is on the side. Why? Because a tablet screen is a lot smaller than the traditional PC. Every inch counts. Most people feel more comfortable using the tablet in landscape mode. By putting the menu on top or bottom, precious vertical screen space is used up while more abundant horizontal screen space isn't utilized. That's why I put the menu on the side.

(3) Made for practical use. I remember in college there were many times when I had one document opened as a reference while I type away on another document right next to it. Hence, the split view feature.

(4) Made for dummies. This is the reason I don't like to hide things. One of my previous jobs was a tech support. To most normal people, if they can't see it then it doesn't exist.

(5) Self-contained! And this is where the problem lies with the requested translation feature. I want my app to be self-contained. In other words, I don't want to have to tell my users to perform extra tasks before they could use my app. This ties in with the #1 above. If I include too many language libraries, the app will be humongous. Another option is to have the user install language packs from MS website, but this is the extra tasks I'm trying to avoid.

I'll spend the next week trying to resolve this issue without either bloat up my app or make the user do extra tasks. We'll see.

Edit.

Oh yeah, and people please post your reviews. Hundreds of downloads and only 6 reviews?
 
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