Hey, Jesse –
Steve here; fellow Cocoa developer from North America – happy to find this news just now. I was on board with your pining for WriteRoom’s minimal customizable text editor back in the day. I bought a couple of versions, and from what I can tell, you helped set what is now a trend of similar apps. Congratulations if so. ^ _ ^
My main use case for WriteRoom (many times a day) has been a quick alternative to TextEdit for typing random stuff in window that I’ve previously tweaked to perfection, rather than a brash white one. I use it less lately because performance seems to falter under load, and I was about to finally say goodbye before learning you had set out to resurrect it. I also played with the theme-making a lot, but found the image rendering behaviour hard to predict when resizing; so I decided to settle for solid colours and have been content ever since.
Speaking for myself, if WriteRoom had overcome those little things, then my conception of it would have been “a better TextEdit,” and I’d probably keep using it for years. It wouldn’t have to do much for me to continue loving it in the aforementioned way, but it would have to be as quick and reliable as TextEdit is.
On the contrary “what would you not like to see” – I see people asking for Markdown, cloud sync, et cetera… which reminds me of other apps including the near-essential Ulysses, championing a lot of that stuff. Speaking again for myself: if WriteRoom tried to be Ulysses and fell short, then I’d just continue using Ulysses – the only reason I can think to aim for that would be to actually exceed it (a real challenge) or to be a lower-cost competitor.
My general complaint about the current trend of minimal editors is that they’re good, but… sort of quirky – it’s reminded me that I’ll take meticulous polish over bells and whistles when I’m really picking software companions. (It’s certainly inspired my own devopment philosophy too.)
Anyway. Best wishes with the project. ^ _ ^