from Hacker News

Writer: An Open Digital Typewriter (2018)

by mzehrer on 4/9/20, 8:56 AM with 65 comments

  • by sigwinch28 on 4/9/20, 9:42 AM

    This seems more like a word processor than a typewriter. The author seems to concede that this isn't a typewriter at all:

    > However, using a typewriter comes with two major shortcomings: 1) You cannot delete a typo. I know you do a lot of those, no need to expose this nasty behaviour to everybody’s face. 2) You cannot share the text you wrote online, be it on your website or on any other social platform.

    Also, I am not a fan of the bulky wooden case, but I get that some people would be. I think that this would be a great opportunity to take inspiration from devices like the iPad (Pro) and Nintendo switch: perhaps the meat of the device (display, electronics, connectors) could be in a single unit, with a detachable keyboard of some kind. Then, people would be free to create their own "docks" out of wood, old model M keyboards, pipe organs or whatever which could connect to this device using a single connector.

    That aside, I really like the concept: hacker-friendly open design, a "more pure" writing experience, and a "real" operating system underneath it all which can be modified by the user.

  • by megous on 4/9/20, 11:01 AM

    I have some docs on how to drive one of those spare eBook reader eInk screens from my reverse engineering adventure of PocketBook: http://linux-sunxi.org/PocketBook_Touch_Lux_3

    I've mainlined the support for this PocketBook to Linux 5.7.

    Though if I was doing this project I'd re-use the PocketBook board too, instead of building new HW to drive the screen. Driving the eInk signals on larger screens requires a very fast and precise signalling, and you also have to generate around 5 different voltages for the screen. And the board can already do that and the SW (bootloader, kernel) is all open source, so there's no downside. You could drop the RPI.

  • by LB232323 on 4/9/20, 9:59 AM

    I work as a writer and love the concept, but the size of the screen is the one major drawback. Both the commercialized version ($550!) and the hacker version have tiny screens that do not compare to a laptop with a word processor or a typewriter with standard size paper.

    If they scaled the screen size up, I would definitely consider this for professional use. Otherwise, it seems kind of inconvenient compared to the traditional methods.

    The most attractive features are the e-ink screen, the long lasting battery, and the minimal design. Writing without getting distracted is more a matter of personal discipline than advanced technology. If anything, having internet access while writing is very convenient for research.

  • by fbelzile on 4/9/20, 2:05 PM

    Not sure if this plug is welcome here, but I'm seeing some comments suggesting that people are looking for this sort of thing:

    If anyone is looking for a practical, distraction-free typing environment, check out my freemium app called Cold Turkey Writer: https://getcoldturkey.com/writer/

    Writer locks you into the app for a certain amount of time or until you type a certain number of words.

    It's free, but the pro version also lets you disable the backspace/delete key, arrow keys, selecting text, etc...

    I hope it helps someone here!

  • by derefr on 4/9/20, 2:51 PM

    The “right thing” here, if:

    • you’ve got a RasPi running Linux (Raspbian)

    • you want to drive a novel display with it

    • you want the contents of the display to be regular Linux text-mode console output, with regular Linux text-mode console input

    ...would be to just write a Linux kernel framebuffer driver for your novel display device, and then drop it into the Raspbian kernel tree, recompile, and deploy to your device, no?

    Then there’d be no other custom software needed. You’d just have a regular Linux system, with a regular Linux console TTY, mapped to a grid of pixels by the Linux framebuffer code (bonus: in whatever bitmap font you wish), in turn bit-banged to the display device’s IO port using your driver’s custom refresh sequences.

    Sure, this approach requires learning some new codebases (Linux kernel driver development!) but so does the “user-mode driver” approach in the article.

  • by afandian on 4/9/20, 10:15 AM

    It's great to see people's takes on the idea. I have been mulling something similar. I've bought a couple of old Alphasmart units, which were originally designed to do exactly this: simple word processsors with the ability to dump text via a keyboard interface.

    They have a keyboard and standard four line LCD character interface. I'm planning to stick an ESP32 inside and make it dump text via wifi.

    After all that, you have to find something to write. I wonder whether having grown up with a random-access word processor makes it difficult to write this way.

  • by mattkevan on 4/9/20, 2:03 PM

    Still use my old Newton eMate as a distraction-free writing device.

    The keyboard is great, NewtonWorks is a capable word processor, the battery life is amazing and it makes cute beep boop noises when you touch the screen. Plus it looks like something David Cronenberg would design.

    I've occasionally thought about modding it to house a rPi, but it would be sacrilege to gut something like that when it still works.

    Incidentally, if anyone has a broken eMate knocking around I'd be very interested.

  • by jacobush on 4/9/20, 9:50 AM

    There was a similar commercial product, basically a PC keyboard with a small (LCD?) screen, for typing text only documents. It was distraction free, and pretty cheap for something with great battery time. I think notebooks were very expensive back when it was launched.

    You'd then download your texts into a computer.

    I can't recall the name. I think it ran on regular alkaline AA cells. It attracted a bit of a cult following.

    Edit: I think I must be thinking of the Alphasmart line - with products from 1993-2013:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaSmart

    Back before that, journalists used battery powered versions of the TRS-80 and even a modem to upload their texts to their news magazine.

    A modern take is:

    https://getfreewrite.com/

  • by cpach on 4/9/20, 2:33 PM

    Very cool project! Would love to have one of those :)

    An acquaintance of mine pointed out that since this project was created there is a new driver in the Linux kernel for working with e-ink-displays: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin... (Don't know what kind of hardware it supports though.)

  • by upofadown on 4/9/20, 11:21 AM

    >However, I find the current screen refresh rate way too low.

    Emacs does (or did) different things depending on the data rate of the terminal. If the rate was low enough, it would do stuff to avoid having to redraw the text.

    * https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Te...

    Added: I just tried it with the rate set to 110 baud (for sentimental reasons) and emacs started leaving half the screen to fill in every time I hit the top or bottom of the screen. The general idea seemed to be to keep the cursor vertically near the middle of the screen as much as possible. Good for adding new text on a eink display. Wouldn't help if you were overwriting existing text unless you were willing to leave the old text there for a time.

  • by bravoetch on 4/9/20, 1:03 PM

    I have the astrohaus freewrite, fully closed source metal case implementation of this idea. It's well done in some ways. The keyboard is great, the case and screen are good.

    Where it falls down is the workflow. They require you be signed in to the device as config changes can only be done online on their website. If you don't use qwerty layout or want to change the font size you have to be online to make those changes.

    While documents can be accessed locally via USB, you cannot delete a document. Only copy it.

    It just has enough weirdo limitations like this that I never use it and always turn to my MacBook, a stand, and an external mechanical keyboard. I get a ton of writing done in scrivener with this setup.

    If they open-sourced the freewrite it could be the dream!

  • by tyingq on 4/9/20, 10:44 AM

    "Typewriter" seems like a misnomer here. But, the article dives into grabbing a terminal emulator, ripping X11 out, and replacing it with the primitives to draw to an e-ink display. Which is more interesting to me than a typewriter.

  • by anthk on 4/9/20, 1:13 PM

    Better if instead of a limited sw they bundled a tiny image of NetBSD/OpenWRT with ed(1) as the default text editor and spell(1).

    A lot of people would hack it in order to run drotz(6) but that's a feature.

  • by donatj on 4/9/20, 4:17 PM

    I've owned an AlphaSmart for years, and it's a great prebuilt machine for roughly this purpose.

    I type out my thoughts, plug it into my computer, hit a key and it dumps the entire thing into whatever editor you have open by emulating a USB keyboard. Great little device. Before I built my own editor, I used it all the time.

    Disclaimer: Due to acquisition I now work for a company who at one time produced AlphaSmart machines. I however owned and loved the AlphaSmart prior to this.

  • by DanBC on 4/9/20, 3:19 PM

    I love this!

    "Electronic typewriters" have a long history. Here's one from 1973ish:

    https://deramp.com/swtpc.com/RadioElectronics/TV_Typewriter....

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_Typewriter

  • by scandox on 4/9/20, 10:47 AM

    This is fantastic. I was dying to do something like this. Tried with an ESP32 and an LCD, but just didn't have the chops to get it working.

    Love it. If you're willing to make me one by hand, I'll certainly pay you for it.

  • by Koshkin on 4/9/20, 9:04 PM

  • by corny on 4/10/20, 1:00 AM

    If using macos and want a distraction-free writing environment, create a new user with strict parental controls. Allow access to zero web sites and limit app usage to just your word processor.

  • by dang on 4/9/20, 8:44 PM

  • by wyclif on 4/9/20, 12:12 PM

    It would be easy enough to create a fold-down wrist rest at the front of the box to alleviate some of the comfort issues he mentions.

  • by skunflyk12 on 4/9/20, 1:20 PM

    "I am easily distracted."

    Well... I distracted myself with this awesome blog

  • by Hoasi on 4/9/20, 10:50 AM

    Beautiful work. And witty also. Indeed restriction fuels creativity.

  • by EvanAnderson on 4/9/20, 11:52 AM

    I wonder how many hyperlinks there are in the text that I missed. I'm reading on my phone and the styling of hyperlinks makes them completely un-discoverable (short tapping every word in the text). Why bother having any links at all with that kind of styling?

  • by Lanrei on 4/9/20, 1:10 PM

    > The mechanical keyboard is a 61 keys Chinese bootleg.

    This guy obviously doesn't know anything about keyboards.

  • by russellbeattie on 4/9/20, 10:47 AM

    Unless you're Steve Wozniak in 1977, wood and computers never go well together. Better to buy some opaque acrylic sheets for it instead. It's about as easy to cut and glue (chemically weld actually) together and looks much better. 3D printing is also an option.