Typewriter scrolling is great for writing medium to long documents. I do not like the cursor hanging out at the bottom of the screen. I do not create long notes in Tinderbox, so it is not an issue with me. How many users create long notes In TB and find the lack of typewriter scrolling stifling?
If I wanted typewriter scrolling for creation, I could cut and paste from the apporpriate editor. Possibly something easier to implement is a manual centering of text, not unlike Vim’s zz to center text.
I like writing in Scrivener, or IA writer because of the reduced cognitive load(for me). Tinderbox is a fantastic way to understand notes, or clarify thinking/process, but for writing I want things as easy as possible without necessarily having to worry about templates and export codes ( the addition of the HTML template was excellent and made things much easier to understand). For fiction writing, the relatively simplicity of Scrivener outweighs the power and complexity of TB(for me).
This is of course not entirely true, as I have been using TB to write more formalized and structured reports.
Up to a certain point beyond which I use Scrivener to make corrections, I use Tinderbox in this way: one file per project, with three views for each one: the outline view, the map view and the Attribute Browser.
As I use Latex, I insert my code in each note or separator and export the whole into Texpad or Texshop.
Just checked this behaviour in Scrivener. The scrolling is instantaneous, like a carriage return (as fast as the word-wrapping). In an empty window, the base-line starts at the top of the page as normal and the typewriter scrolling starts when the designated line is reached.
Scrivener allows 5 options: top quarter, top third, middle, bottom quarter, bottom third. Ulysses is more sophisticated and allows very flexible placing of the scroll line.
I see the feature not as a part of distraction-freedom, but ergonomics: having the scroll line near the top of the screen allows for the sight-line to stay optimal for creaky necks.
I’m really confused by this whole typewriter scrolling thing. How different is this from having a standalone Text Window that’s half the height of the screen?
It seems mostly an ergonomic thing and about people using laptops where they are hunching with the insertion at the bottom of the screen.
I write more in Evernote than Tinderbox, because I use multiple computers and need the sharing. I realised in reading this thread that much of the time when I’m writing in Evernote I’ve done exactly that, sized windows to be in the upper quadrants of a screen. I use Moom, one of the window managers which makes such sizing a single click operation.
The issue isn’t so much the height of the window: it’s that it is irritating to have the text continually abutting the bottom of the window, no matter where the window is placed on the screen, and even with laptops.
Effectively, typewriter scrolling gives you a bottom margin to your text, which you don’t get by simply resizing the window. For long texts, many people find this much more comfortable.
The same applies with the other margins, but not so acutely: good text editors allow you to have a (small) margin at top and to the sides as well.
Indeed – the comment was aimed at some text editors which don’t allow you to change any of the margins, not at Tinderbox.
BBEdit is one – incredibly powerful in many ways, but the top and left margins are fixed, which makes the text feel cramped. It does allow a half-way house for typewriter scrolling (I think they call it overscrolling), but it’s not particularly well done as it’s not automatic.
The best implementation of typewriter scrolling I’ve come across is Scrivener’s – something along those lines would be very welcome in TBX, if it’s possible without huge disruptive effort.
