20110521

Daedalus Touch FAQ v1

2011-05-21 12:36:57 Sat

Q: Why is the app so crashy?
A: gestures on the first version

Q: How do I move a sheet to another stack?
A: Well, you can move a sheet within a stack but so far the metaphor is blown when you try moving a sheet out of the stack to another stack, you can't. Period.

You can copy and paste the text to a new sheet in the target stack. Oh.

Q: Why are the margins so fracking huge?
A: The developers like whitespace? So your fat fingers can execute the fine cursor movement? What? You're saying I'm fat?

Q: How do I insert hyperlinks? Turn on line numbering? Import TextMate bundles? Turn on syntax highlighting? Set minor mode? Insert unicode? Sync to WebDAV? Bring up Clippy? Where's the voice recorder?
A: Uhh...

A: Buy Daedalus Touch.
Q: Do you have 4 dollars to spare to enter text editor heaven?

Daedalus Touch Review

2011-05-21 Sat before Rapture.

Synopsis: Coverflow and Stacks interface meets notepad, but with deep UX.

So the Dvorak waltz and slick UX demo got the best of me and I fell for a version 1 of this next generation text editor.

The premise is simple. So Apple UX like: type text and keep the organizing metaphor of pages and stacks. Why hasn't anyone thought of that?

The 'Winning'-est method for my messy mind of loosely tended pieces and bits of ephemera would be something like this: capture, repeat.

The idea is one thing, but execution is another.

Will Daedalus Touch (DT) meet the challenge?

The app provides a great tutorial even for a user experience so familiar to Mac users: scroll through pages with left and right swipes, pinch to move through page and stack levels. Edit, edit, edit in between.

Uhhh, movement from page to stack is just so slick that the interface doesn't distract you with clutter.

There are quiet unobtrustive little, but enormous refreshing features throughout DT that aid the writer.

Fine cursor movement: marking a point in the text and holding down that position moves the cursor one character at a time to that point and will accelerate to movement by word. Tap and tap and hold brings the usual magnifier that most text editors use.

SEARCH: in your face right at the tip of the page. Your query is highlighted in yellow in page view. The real brilliance shines, however in the stack where mother of holies, your results are highlight by word and page. You gotta see it to believe it.

Text stats are posted in realtime at the top menu bar. A look

Web lookup: a built in browser allows you to lookup words or ideas from the web and you can add more sites besides the default Google, Wikipedia or dict.cc

Themes: change to 3 fonts or backgrounds, minimalist and paper like, just like we like them.

Autocorrection and TextExpander support: just in case you need to add a hard coded snippet or date time stamp

Naggy Negatives : I got my first crash during tutorial, then the second when I tried pasting but accidently hit the Delete in the iOS default contextual menu.

Nice to have:
Maybe a wider margin?

Maybe a different icon or method to delete a sheet. Deleting a page is found under the sharing icon or at least what most apps use to indicate export or share.

What's the end result:
Daedalus Touch has been a pleasure to write this review with save for a couple of crashes, this is the text editor to beat at a 4 buck sale.

FYI I also have reviewed:
SoundPaper, TrunkNotes, default Notes, WriteRoom, iA Writer, MobileOrg, Nebulous, Textastic, ThinkBook