{"id":3736,"date":"2011-09-06T12:33:55","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T17:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=3736"},"modified":"2016-06-23T10:45:20","modified_gmt":"2016-06-23T14:45:20","slug":"comparing-iphone-text-editors-v6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/06\/comparing-iphone-text-editors-v6\/","title":{"rendered":"Comparing iPhone Text Editors, v6"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since version 5 of my comparison<\/a>, I’ve added rows for tracking iPad and TextExpander touch<\/a> support.<\/p>\r\n

Elements<\/a> added support from LF line breaks and a nice interface for choosing the folder on Dropbox. It also has an interesting Scratchpad feature. Locayta Notes<\/a> added support for choosing the Dropbox folder, background colors, and sorting by date. Nebulous Notes<\/a> added multi-file searching. WriteUp<\/a>, still my preferred editor, syncs faster with Dropbox than before and now supports .taskpaper<\/tt> files.<\/p>\r\n

It’s nice to see so many of the features that I track become standard across nearly every app in just a matter of months.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
<\/th>\r\nDroptext 1.2.1<\/a><\/th>\r\nElements 2.0.1<\/a><\/th>\r\nLocayta Notes 2.0.1<\/a><\/th>\r\nNebulous Notes 2.1<\/a><\/th>\r\nNotely 1.3<\/a><\/th>\r\nNotesy 2.0.2<\/a><\/th>\r\nPlainText 1.4.1<\/a><\/th>\r\nSimplenote 3.1.7 (Premium)<\/a><\/th>\r\nWrite 2 1.1<\/a><\/th>\r\nWriteRoom 3.0<\/a><\/th>\r\nWriteUp 1.5.1<\/a><\/th>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Choose Folder on Dropbox<\/th>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes1<\/sup><\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes2<\/sup><\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Nested Folders<\/th>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nYes1<\/sup><\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Works Offline<\/th>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Choose Font<\/th>\r\nNo (Helvetica)<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes3<\/sup><\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes4<\/sup><\/td>\r\nNo (Georgia)<\/td>\r\nNo (Helvetica)<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Font Size<\/th>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes3<\/sup><\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes4<\/sup><\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Font Color<\/th>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo10<\/sup><\/td>\r\nYes3<\/sup><\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo10<\/sup><\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nNo10<\/sup><\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Background Color<\/th>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo10<\/sup><\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo10<\/sup><\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nNo10<\/sup><\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Multi-File Search<\/th>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes5<\/sup><\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes9<\/sup><\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Search Results List<\/th>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Jump Within File<\/th>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nYes6<\/sup><\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
LF Line Breaks<\/th>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Sort by Name<\/th>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Sort by Modified<\/th>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nNo7<\/sup><\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Rearrange Lines<\/th>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Versions<\/th>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nYes8<\/sup><\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
TextExpander<\/th>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
iPad<\/th>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nNo<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\nYes<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Price<\/th>\r\n$1<\/td>\r\n$5<\/td>\r\nfree<\/td>\r\n$2<\/td>\r\n$2<\/td>\r\n$5<\/td>\r\nads or $5<\/td>\r\n$20\/year<\/td>\r\n$2<\/td>\r\n$5<\/td>\r\n$3<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/table>\r\n

1. Rather than syncing everything, Nebulous Notes makes you choose individual files as “auto-saves,” which is a drag.<\/p>\r\n

2. Simplenote seems to be much slower than the other apps at picking up changes from Dropbox. It was often 5 minutes out-of-date, and sometimes hours or days. You can force it to sync, but to do that you have to go to the Simplenote Web site.<\/p>\r\n

3. Locayta Notes is the only app I saw that lets you set font and color options per-file.<\/p>\r\n

4. Notesy lets you set both a variable-width font and a fixed-width font, which is a good compromise between choosing just one and choosing per-file.<\/p>\r\n

5. Locayta Notes does some sort of indexed\/prefix search, coupled with auto-correct, which didn’t work well for me. Some words it didn’t find at all. When searching for “cat” it would find lots of useless matches of “at” but totally miss “wildcat”.<\/p>\r\n

6. Simplenote’s results-jumping did not work for me with files containing basic Unicode characters such as é<\/tt> and ’<\/tt>. The tech support person was not able to tell me which subset of characters to avoid, so the only solution seems to be to stick with ASCII.<\/p>\r\n

7. The option is there, but in my experience the modification dates shown in Simplenote, if I’m using Dropbox, have little relation to when I actually edited the files. The tech support person said this is not the normal behavior and is looking into the matter but has not yet found a solution for me. Even going by the displayed dates, the sorting is sometimes out of order.<\/p>\r\n

8. Simplenote’s versions feature is like the one in Lion<\/a> and works within the app—very cool.<\/p>\r\n

9. Excellent options for searching by word (Boolean AND), phrase, or regular expression. You can also choose whether to search everything or just the filenames.<\/p>\r\n

10. You can’t pick colors, but there are preset themes to choose from.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since version 5 of my comparison, I’ve added rows for tracking iPad and TextExpander touch support. Elements added support from LF line breaks and a nice interface for choosing the folder on Dropbox. It also has an interesting Scratchpad feature. Locayta Notes added support for choosing the Dropbox folder, background colors, and sorting by date. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3736"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14923,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3736\/revisions\/14923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}