When the first models of personal computers just began to appear in homes, many perceived this device as just an improved version of the typewriter. Time has shown how erroneous and superficial this idea of computers was. Our entire life today depends on these electronic devices. They changed their appearance, became much more compact and powerful. But one thing in them has remained unchanged: we still “communicate” with the computer using a keyboard, push-button or virtual. And just like in the first models of computers, one of the most important programs is a text editor. True, the requirements for it have become slightly different. Now users are looking for an opportunity to collaborate on documents, and they try to keep the finished files on cloud servers.
In this article, we will look at some web services that will allow you to perform a wide variety of operations with text online: from changing the code page and automatically replacing text to collaborative layout by several users.
What you need to know about cheap editing
It is easy to find affordable editing and proofreading services and a cheap editor doesn’t mean bad editing. A cheap editor means good quality and reasonable cost. Essay-editor.net is a shining example of such a combo.
Collaboration on a project, be it a text code of a program, an article, a book, an abstract, or something else, means sharing the same documents. There are many web tools out there to do this. For example, in the online word processor Google Docs, multiple users work on the same text in real time.
This very convenient feature of the cloud office can significantly reduce the time you work on a large piece of text. But no matter how convenient the “Google Docs” package is, it still has its drawbacks, therefore, it makes sense to look for a less inconvenient alternative.
Draft: writers in the cloud
The main feature of this service is that all work is saved on one of the cloud servers. To do this, Draft users can connect their Dropbox, Evernote, Box or Google account to the service. Connecting these accounts and managing content on cloud servers is done using the Filepicker.io service manager.
You can also import a file into a web application by using a link to an FTP or HTTP server. Documents typed with Draft can be easily published to WordPress, Tumblr, Ghost, Svbtle, Blogger, Twitter, LinkedIn blogs, Basecamp and Mailchimp. You can export your Draft work to HTML, EPUB, Kindle (MOBI), as well as plain text and documents. Draft can save intermediate versions of the text, and also keeps statistics – counts the number of typed characters.
The word processor interface is ascetic and not overloaded with elements.
If you have a large number of documents that you have to work with, you can use virtual folders to organize your work material.
Pulitzer and Nobel Prize Winner for Literature Ernest Hemingway left a piece of advice to all aspiring writers and reporters: “Write drunk, edit sober.” The creator of the Draft service used this advice to create a special mode of operation in the word processor, which he called – HEMINGWAY MODE.
When this mode is activated, the user cannot delete or edit what he wrote. It turns out that he really writes like a drunk, writing down any thought that comes into his head. In this case, the editing of the text is postponed until later. You can use the keyboard shortcut SHIFT + CTRL + ALT + Right Arrow to switch to Hemingway Mode.
As email continues to be one of the most popular means of communication, Draft provides the ability to quickly import documents using a dedicated email address. You can see it in your account settings. If a message is sent from the email address, which is also specified in the account settings, to the “secret” address generated by Draft, the content of this message will be interpreted by the service as another text fragment. The subject line will be the title of the new document.
TitanPad – chat editor
TitanPad editor is perhaps the simplest and most practical tool for collaborative typing. The creators of this service did not reinvent the wheel and invent some new interface, but took as a basis a slightly modified chat window. As a result, they have a compact online editor that can serve not only as a tool for working with text, but also as a means of communication for the team of editors.
In order not to get confused in editorial edits, each user of the team can choose one of eight colors, which will be used to designate the new text.
Typically, when editing or proofreading text in an offline application, the program saves a limited history of actions performed on the document. Therefore, it is not always possible for the user to revert to the initial versions of the text fragment. The TitanPad does not have this drawback. This web editor implements a rollback system in a very unusual way. Users who are co-authoring text can use one of two ways to undo their actions. First, in the course of work, you can repeatedly save the current state of the document and later, if necessary, load old versions. Second, TitanPad uses the Time Slider tool to undo text operations.
By the way, you may have already come across a similar tool if you managed to try the Google Wave service, which ceased to exist a few years ago. The TitanPad project is based on an earlier development – EtherPad, which was acquired by Google in December 2009. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the similarity of Time Slider with a similar Google Wave tool.
As in the long-closed project from Google, in TitanPad you can return to any stage of document editing using the slider on the timeline. You can also replay the entire text editing process as a recorded animation. Saved document states are marked on the timeline with special markers.
The Textmechanic: automated editing
The Textmechanic service is useful in cases where there is a need to make any edits to the text, but a normal text editor is not at hand at that moment.
Textmechanic tools are versatile tools for finding and replacing text. With their help, you can process a text fragment by changing its content according to a specific rule.
This service can be used, for example, for fast case conversion. The case switch tool gives you the ability to automatically correct each word or sentence so that it starts with a capital letter. You can also correct all letters in the text to uppercase, lowercase, or combine them in any order.
Another service tool allows you to add a text prefix and / or suffix to each line of a text snippet. With Textmechanic, you can eliminate all spaces in the text, remove lines that contain or do not contain user-specified text.
Using the specified criteria, you can search and replace text fragments. Among the service tools, you can even find such “exotic” processing tools as a tool for the reverse spelling of words or sentences.
Conclusion
There are so many cheap and absolutely free online tools for working with text that it may seem as if nothing fundamentally new in this area can be invented. However, as soon as this thought takes hold in the mind, some interesting project with a completely unexpected and original approach to routine typing and editing of text comes across.
Who would have thought that a computer could function as a stenographer? Previously, this seemed as unrealistic as the assumption that the most important documents will be stored not on the hard drive of our home computer or on a hard disk, but on some distant cloud server. Therefore, if one day a person begins to type a text with the power of thought, do not be surprised – this is only the beginning.
