[Cuis-dev] Replacing a creative writing program

[Casey Ransberger]

I’ve been using a commercial Mac app called Scrivener to do creative writing for a few years. It has a lot of powerful features that I don’t use, but one that I use constantly: it lets me write a “scene” as a thing in itself, which it can represent as an index card on a cork board. This allows me to write out of order, and then play with my narrative structure by re-arranging the index cards. 

Unfortunately, macOS 10.15 went and killed 32-bit apps. The good news is that I can get my words out of the file without parsing some strange binary file format, and I’ve toyed with the idea of reproducing the index card behavior in Smalltalk for some time (it’s a popular feature, found as well in other apps like StoryMill, FinalDraft, etc.)

So I went to fire up a Smalltalk image, and surprise! I need a new VM. Where should I go to procure a Cuis-compatible VM that will work on a Catalina Mac?

Next question. Did styled text editor ever get an open source release? Can it save/load RTF files?

I’ve long wanted to do more mundane day-to-day stuff from inside a Smalltalk image. The creative writing program seems almost like low-hanging fruit, especially since I want something convenient for hammering out a first draft, and don’t need any tools for the “finishing” part of the process.

—Casey