Modern Word Processor Discussion Thread

[goodintentions]

Ladies and gents, I've just sent out an update. This new update will:

(1) Again, give another 3 days full features to everyone on trial even if it expired last time.
(2) Fix some bugs.
(3) Add a hand draw/write feature!

A little background behind this newest feature. When I was in grad school, I was hired by a professor to take notes in class and post them online for the students. I didn't have very good handwriting (still don't. So, I typed everything out. It was really annoying every time the professor drew out something on the board. I had to always draw something out on a piece of paper and then scan it into my word document later.

So, what can you do with this new feature? Sign a word document. Just sign with either your finger or stylus. The app also recognizes an active stylus like the one that comes with the surface pro 3. Can someone with a surface pro 3 please test this out for me? I don't have a tablet with an active stylus.

You can draw something out quickly. I give you plenty of colors for you to work with. Also plenty of stroke sizes.

What's special about this drawing tool is you can select individual strokes to insert into the document. So, say I just want to insert the tree but ignore the cat, all I have to do is select the tree and press insert. If you don't select anything, pressing insert will insert everything.

Edit.

Oh yeah, and I just shamelessly stole someone's suggestion on here and changed the name to Touch Type. Why?

I just consulted a semi-expert on trademarks. Even though technically the name of my app wasn't violating any trademark, it was close enough for MS to yank it. MS is a multi-billion dollar industry. I'm one guy with a keyboard and an old computer. They can afford to stomp on me with a vengeance.

So, I'd rather be safe than sorry. It is now known as Touch Type.

 

[TheManWithTheBunnyTattoo]

I had to get my SP3 replaced but this new feature looks great! I want to play with this so bad haha.
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I read (either here or on the surface subreddit) that a teacher/ta was having trouble with MS Word's drawing feature. In their case, the drawings would not work when opening the file in Word OSX. If you have any Apple products, maybe you can work on compatibility with them next?

In TouchType, do the drawings render into a jpeg file or something after inserting? From what I gathered, on MS Word the drawings are some kind of overlay that can be edited continuously. They are present but cannot be read by Word OSX (when you ctrl+a, something is highlighted). Maybe your insert-method will work better?
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This also brings up another question, does the formatting cause any problems when opening in a different program? I remember this was the biggest pain in my butt when I was using open office my freshman year. I spent so much time reformatting that year...



P.S. I support the new name 100%

 

[goodintentions]

I had to get my SP3 replaced but this new feature looks great! I want to play with this so bad haha.
________________________________________________________________
I read (either here or on the surface subreddit) that a teacher/ta was having trouble with MS Word's drawing feature. In their case, the drawings would not work when opening the file in Word OSX. If you have any Apple products, maybe you can work on compatibility with them next?

In TouchType, do the drawings render into a jpeg file or something after inserting? From what I gathered, on MS Word the drawings are some kind of overlay that can be edited continuously. They are present but cannot be read by Word OSX (when you ctrl+a, something is highlighted). Maybe your insert-method will work better?
________________________________________________________________
This also brings up another question, does the formatting cause any problems when opening in a different program? I remember this was the biggest pain in my butt when I was using open office my freshman year. I spent so much time reformatting that year...



P.S. I support the new name 100%

Well, I just changed the name again to Modern Word Processor. All three words are generic, so there should be no problem at all.

Formatting was actually my first concern long before I published this app. This is why in the original post I said I wasn't sure I would ever publish it. I've worked with open office and a couple others, and yes formatting was a pain in the butt.

Regarding the drawing, haha putting in an overlay to allow the user to keep editing the drawing was the first thing that came to my mind. It worked great until I tried to open it up in other programs and... well you can imagine the rest.

So, my second approach was to have a drawing window where the user can move it around. Once the user finishes drawing or handwriting, he can select part of or all of the drawing and insert it as a bitmap. The inserted bitmap is resizable in real time.

Here is a screenshot of this app alongside MS Word with the same file opened.

The "yo" drawing is done by the new feature I added. Note that every word and the bitmap is in the same place in both apps.

I ain't got no OSX, so I'll have to test this out when I can get my hands on it. May be the library has a mac. I'll check it out later.

 

[TheManWithTheBunnyTattoo]

Ooh i like your name better lol. (however, it says "office word touch" in the store for me right now!)

I guess you have all my concerns covered then! I would test it out for you, but we are a mac free family lol. These surfaces are actually our first premium computer. If you email me that test file, I could probably try it out for you eventually--I'm actually going to an apple household in a few minutes!

 

[goodintentions]

Ooh i like your name better lol. (however, it says "office word touch" in the store for me right now!)

I guess you have all my concerns covered then! I would test it out for you, but we are a mac free family lol. These surfaces are actually our first premium computer. If you email me that test file, I could probably try it out for you eventually--I'm actually going to an apple household in a few minutes!

Here is a test file.

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=1F2084E7541FA607!137

It should look like this.

Added by edit.

It takes several days for the name change to go through.

 

[goodintentions]

So, last night a user emailed me suggesting a control for page margin. I was quite embarrassed when I realized this function never occurred to me before. So, during lunch today I quickly cranked out a control for the page margin.

Any other basic control for a typical word processor missing?

 

[goodintentions]

I was at the best buy earlier today. Thought I'd use one of their surface pro 3's to test out my new hand draw tool with the surface pro 3 pen. It works. My finger wasn't registering when I had the pen next to the screen.

 

[TheManWithTheBunnyTattoo]

Hey, I really like the new icon! I'm not really sure what it means but it looks much more cleaned up!

PS I finally got my sp3 replacement and classes have started again so I hope you still have time to work on this! (although lately I can't really find anything to complain about )

 

[goodintentions]

Hey, I really like the new icon! I'm not really sure what it means but it looks much more cleaned up!

PS I finally got my sp3 replacement and classes have started again so I hope you still have time to work on this! (although lately I can't really find anything to complain about )

Modern Word. M in front of W.

Edit.

Next update will give option to have menu buttons on top. There's been a few people requesting that. People are too used to seeing menu on top instead of the side.

Also making it possible to resize the drawing window. Small for quick signing. Medium for quick draw. Big for elaborate drawing. Will also add more colors and brush option.

Translator for a whole paper is coming along. But probably not releasing that until next time. Too many kinks to hammer out.

I'm also looking at making it possible to exporting a whole file to mp3. Say you're about to go on a road trip. Want to listen to a story. Simply open up a word file and export to mp3.

What's on my top priority, though, is figure out how to get more people to write reviews. Plenty of downloads and buys. Only a couple dozen reviews. Maybe hold their computer hostage until they crank out a review?

 

[goodintentions]

So, after working on the logo on and off for 4 days, I've finally got something that looks nice and is unique. God, a good logo is just as hard as the coding itself.

 

[Tsurugaya]

That one looks good. Modern and a tad quirky, what more can you ask f for?

 

[TheManWithTheBunnyTattoo]

Agreed! And it doesn't look like an argyle sweater vest haha