YLINAT is a text "editor" that does not allow you to edit your text. You can write, but you cannot backspace or reposition the cursor.
Created for Timasomo 2023
- Simple, boring UI with minimal distractions
- Autosave
- Word count, both in total and for the current session
- Font, margin, and line length options, so you can make it your typewriter
- A completely useless "Edit" menu
- "Goldfish mode" for when you can't stand to look at what you wrote before
- A text box that won't let you fix that typo no matter how much you cry, scream, or beg
This program is available as a Python script. If you're comfortable using Python and you know your way around the command line, pip install -r requirements.txt should get you what you need, and then you can run YLINAT using python3 ylinat.py.
On Linux, I found that I also needed to install the libxcb-cursor0 library. YMMV.
If you're pretty sure a python is a kind of snake, don't worry: there are ready-to-run programs compiled for Windows, Mac, and Linux available on the Releases page. Just download the .zip for your operating system, unzip it, and you should be good to go.
Well, almost good to go: most modern operating systems are skeptical of new programs from unknown developers.
- On Windows, SmartScreen is likely to complain the first time you run it, and you'll need to give it permission to run.
- On Mac, you'll probably be prevented from running the app until you control-click on it, then click "Open". It should work normally after that.
If any of that sketches you out too much, that's a good instinct to have. My day job is in infosec; please don't make a habit of creating security exceptions for random bits of code you downloaded from the internet.
I'm hoping it might help people who have trouble silencing their inner critic and just need to bash out that first draft, but mostly I wrote it for fun. I imagine it will be very frustrating to use.
You don't.
Oh! Congrats!
Take your file and open it in your full-featured text editor or word processor of choice. You no longer need your laptop to be a typewriter.
If it's still 2023 and you've found a bug, go ahead and open an issue for it. In particular, if you've found a way to edit text in this program that isn't convoluted and weird (meaning, someone might stumble on it by accident), I'd really like to fix that.
Otherwise, I don't plan on doing much more with this, so if you want to make it better, please fork it!