Originally published at: AppBITS: Stapler Opens Multiple Apps, Documents, and Folders - TidBITS
If you prefer a task-based method of working that requires assembling multiple apps, documents, and folders, take a look at Stapler, a modern-day take on several classic Mac apps from yesteryear.
“I imagine them opening a specific set of apps and documents, arranging a few folders just so, cracking their knuckles, and starting to write.”
I once read an interview of Issac Asimov, he had seven computers in his house, each one with a different book in progress…
Sorry, not exactly on topic, but sorta’?
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Good as far as it goes, but how about a key combination to save and close the apps you’ve opened?
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Some authors use antique manual typewriters or a beloved electric. Others use FreeDOS & WordStar or WordPerfect. Several well known authors have used Emacs as their writing tool. Perhaps because they were exposed to it in the early days of computing or they were a developer or engineer in a previous career. Some use vi / ViM / Neovim and quite a few have made the leap to Emacs. since it supports the ViM keybindings.
Advantages to using an open source writing environment.
- Plain text is FOREVER it will never become incompatible. You are not locked into a proprietary file format.
- Plain text can be revision controlled like source code in git
- There are a myriad of text editing capabilities such as delete word forward and back, transpose characters, words, lines. that simply do not exist in word processors. Plus more advanced search and replace.
- You can export to nearly any file format. HTML, PDF, LaTeX, DOC/DOCX, etc., etc., etc.
- Cross-Platform software that runs most anywhere. This enables some interesting solutions, especially for those on a tight budget. You could elect to buy a Chromebook or old ThinkPad w/upgraded RAM/SSD running Linux using a lightweight X / Wayland GUI. All of these tools run on macOS as well. If Apple ever allowed Emacs on an iPad I would certainly use it.
- Complete freedom to customize your editor and your workflow
- Emacs has Org-Mode which may just be the ultimate writing tool. It’s an outliner that uses a markup language similar to Markdown so it’s just as simple. Org is a killer App on Emacs, second only to Magit, the porcelain wrapper around git. A writer would practically live in Org-mode. Org has kicked off a bit of a revolution when it comes to GTD / Second Brain / Zettelkasten. Writers could use that to organize their writing. Perhaps a little knowledge base containing all the details and history of an artificial world the author creates. Write their stories in Org, perhaps a chapter per outline heading. Or a chapter per file and have them all linked when you export. For those writing about programming, you can have source code blocks in Org and you can actually execute them and return the results. You can tie multiple code blocks together so they interact.
There is a new configuration distribution for Emacs, called Emacs Writing Studio. It gets a writer up to speed and their site has a myriad of articles about how use it. Write Articles, Websites and Books with Emacs Writing Studio
A macOS user can install Homebrew & Emacs on macOS as below in the Terminal.
/bin/bash -c “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)”
brew install emacs-plus@29 --with-native-comp --with-imagemagick --with-poll --with-modern-pen-icon
Something for @gingerbeardman to consider. :-)
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@ace Some of those authors have dogs. See (Dean Koontz).
Sometime in the last year we did a virtual session courtesy of our local PBS station with him and the dog was very prominent in inserting himself at times, IIRC.
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I’m not a writer, but a software developer, but I use Emacs for most of what I write.
I’ve found that it’s very convenient to write text using Markdown. This format is a set of simple extensions to plain text for applying basic formatting. The nice thing is that when not interpreted as Markdown, the plain text still looks good, so you don’t need a special viewer.
I wouldn’t consider authoring a book with Markdown, but it’s a really great format to use for things that are small enough to make text-file distribution meaningful.
For presenting/viewing Markdown content, I usually do it from my Linux systems, using one of the following:
- GRIP: GitHub Readme Instant Preview. Not the most robust Markdown previewer, but is very convenient to use while editing. It can launch a local web server, then launch your web browser pointing to its output, and dynamically update the page every time you save your Markdown source file.
- Markdown Viewer. A “Webext” browser extensions that renders any Markdown files received. Works great on Windows and with a bit of setup work on Linux. Unfortunately, I have not been able to get it to work with Firefox on macOS.
The paid version of BBEdit has a mode that can render Markdown as you edit.
Another useful documentation tool that I’ve quite a bit of experience with is Sphinx. You’re editing text files using either Markdown or Restructured Text. Sphinx will let you compile a directory full of pages into a variety of useful formats including HTML, LaTeX (which can be compiled into PDF) and ePub.
Another way is to download a binary from someone else who has done it. My current installation is from the GNU Emacs for Mac OS X web site.
I’ll add a discussion or feature request at GitHub @DocC (but no promises as I’m a busy game developer by day)
And @ace surely you found my app in my thread here rather than MacUpdate? Or maybe not?
Adam - I love AppBITS. Please keep it up!
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Yeah, it’s more than a bit of an ask. 
My apologies.
I once managed to cobble together something like that in AppleScript. It worked, most. of the time, with two specific apps. I wouldn’t care to try that again.
Brett Terpstra (who developed the crucial NValt) has something similar called Bunch. It’s definitely more nerd-oriented.
Definitely is an understatement!
Yes! I saw it here, thought, “Well, that’s cool,” and then had the same thought when scanning through MacUpdate, which made me think that there was more to the idea than just a regular from TidBITS Talk sharing their app. But you were first in the queue!
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Thanks.
I wonder who added it to MacUpdate - it wasn’t me. I like that somebody did though!
Ach, sorry for my ambiguous phrasing. I didn’t see Stapler on MacUpdate, just something else that caught my eye.
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Tried Stapler once after reading Adam’s article. Had permissions issues on the files being opened. Fixed that. Tried it a second time. I forget if it hung or crashed, but it didn’t work. Removed it.
That is …surprising.
And it would make this the first crash report, but I don’t think we can call this a report in all fairness.