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Show HN: MonsterWriter – Write a thesis, post, or organize notes

by WolfOliver on 4/22/24, 7:41 AM with 30 comments

• by karencarits on 4/22/24, 1:44 PM

  For scientific writing, you've also got https://manubot.org/ which combines git (for versioning and collaboration) and markdown and multiple good-looking outputs

  One of the most useful features is that you can just insert a doi/pubmedid/... and it will automatically fetch and format the references

  Edit: One of the biggest problems with the tools for scientific writing is that the writing process if often a collaboration - one author makes a draft, distributes it, and receives comments and revisions. Currently - and sadly - I think Microsoft Word has the best solutions for commenting and revising text, although you have to keep track of multiple versions being emailed around

  Edit 2: "We will use our servers to create PDF files" is a no-go for certain documents - unpublished papers are often regarded as quite sensitive

• by korowod on 4/22/24, 6:33 PM

  So you're telling me it can't validate the license without internet connection. Which means you lose the access to the software you paid for if the authentication servers are dead.

  Great times.

• by petemir on 4/22/24, 3:12 PM

  Just about to start writing my PhD thesis but... alas, no Linux love :(.

• by SamBam on 4/22/24, 4:41 PM

  I'm playing with this a little bit.

  Can this deal with varied styles of inline citations within a single text? For example, APA lets you say both "This study found X (Shmoe, 2021)" as well as "Shmoe (2021) found X." There are other ways you might vary it as well. For instance, you might say "Shmoe (2021) found X (p.191)."

  This kind of variation is used all the time in papers, but I don't see how I could do that in Monster.

  I feel like it would be nice to be able to insert a citation and then tell it how to format that. You should be able to type in in yourself. For instance, I don't expect Monster to have a dropdown for "Shmoe and colleagues (2021) found X," but I should be able to hit "insert a citation," connect it to the article, and then hand-type "Shmoe and colleagues (2021)" so that the whole thing is associated with the reference.

  Another random thought after playing with this for a few minutes: It should be easier to just drag in an image, without needing to go to insert-image and then drag in the image.

• by limandoc on 4/22/24, 10:16 AM

  This is nice! My thesis writing experience always was far from comfortable, used Obsidian, Evernote, and Latex tools, but nothing matched my needs fully. MonsterWriter would definitely help me few years back.

  But I have noticed that my problem is mainly in visualizing and remembering all the docs, pdfs, websites, and basically keeping all the bits of informational from various sources.

  So I started my own hobby project LimanDoc[1] where it would serve the purpose of visualizing, diagramming, and previewing docs (later I'll add features like in Roam/Loqseq to backlink pieces of information). One important feature is keeping the files agnostic and possibility to open files in other 3rd party tools. If I want to edit word/excel/markdown files I do it in other tools, and in LimanDoc just preview it.

  Still far from perfect, but it is available for download and play around.

  [1] limandoc.com

• by WA on 4/22/24, 10:39 AM

  Looks interesting. Cross-references within the same doc are surprisingly rare in Markdown editors. However, there is no import function for existing Markdown (or any other file format)? That makes it pretty hard to try this out in a serious way.

• by michaelrpeskin on 4/22/24, 5:56 PM

  This is the first I heard of it! I love the idea, I keep looking for an easy-to-use editor for technical reports. I've been using Typora for now, but chapter management would be nice.

  I was able to try it out on my personal computer and love this. I would like to transition to my work computer, but I can't because the PDF export goes to your servers. I understand why, but for someone technical, it's not hard to setup LaTeX. If you ever do a local-only version, I will buy a copy for my work computer.

• by ThinkBeat on 4/22/24, 1:20 PM

  Does it integrate well with spell checking and grammar checking?

  Given that its multilingual (as I am) I prefer Microsoft Editor, but Grammarly is good since I mostly write in English.

• by summarity on 4/22/24, 8:27 PM

  So how can I actually fill in the title page info for an APA student paper (e.g. department). Also, author and other "export" info doesn't seem to be saved. APA by default supports in-flow tables, which is not legal in APA. So many basic formatting issues with APA.

  Essayist remains the best option, though it painfully lacks table support. Monster looks like it could be useful in maybe a year or so of development.

• by willwade on 4/22/24, 10:10 AM

  nice. Im trying it out. I'm not that bothered personally about integrations (a DOI is really easy to copy and paste from one tool to another). But I'll get in there first.. I switched to Paperpile a while ago (after the death of Citeulike RIP) - and it's pretty darn perfect. I'd vote a +1 to have that as a citation source..

  PS is this a electron app? It has that feel..

• by patkaiist on 4/22/24, 5:57 PM

  This is nice, and as a simple way to write and keep cross-references without having to commit to Word or LaTeX (journals often require one or the other, and often Word in my field unfortunately). The thing that would keep me from using this regularly is mostly issues of UI/UX polish, and of course no Linux version.

  Examples:

  - On Windows right now and the scrollbars pop out as white even when disabled (nothing to scroll), so I can't stand to use dark mode, but also hate light mode in general.

  - The menu bar is my normal Windows UI font size, and the UI in the app otherwise is much bigger. The mismatch bugs me excessively.

  - Relatedly, I need to be able to set fonts and sizes. Forcing me into one that doesn't have glyphs I need, and then forcing a fallback that's mismatched, it's a problem. Forcing me to use Poppins as the only font alone is reason enough that I won't be able to use it.

  Which is really a shame because I would start using this tomorrow as my main writing tool for solo papers. It checks the boxes I otherwise need and would let me focus on writing not on packages or templates or other things that are just a waste of time, since again at any point I may need to run it through pandoc anyway if I change my mind on which journal to submit to.

  Also local-only would be needed, but I guess the server is an easy enough way to implement a paywall? I just don't feel comfortable sending potentially sensitive data to some unknown server.

  That said, honestly just giving me access to something like the stylesheet for basics would be a huge help, and again that alone would have me using this tomorrow. Otherwise I'll stick to Google Docs or Overleaf.

  Well done, overall, though.

• by ezconnect on 4/22/24, 2:53 PM

  Is there an app that can beautify a Jupiter notebook and export it as PDF or single webpage?

• by agileAlligator on 4/22/24, 1:54 PM

  This project comes three months too late for me sadly... I'll still check it out though

• by buraksarica on 4/22/24, 12:43 PM

  Hi there,

  Can we use this app on multiple devices and sync documents?