How should typewriter mode work?

The preview release of Bike 1.9 adds typewriter mode.

I’ve been playing with typewriter mode in different Mac apps and I’m really liking Scrivener’s implementation. It’s different from other implementations in that it’s much less invasive.

Unlike most implementations it doesn’t scroll you to a predefined position (such as screen center). Instead it just maintains the current position as you type. This gives the user flexibly to set the position where they want to type and also avoids the problem of the view scrolling as soon as you start typing… (or for other implementations) anytime you move the cursor.

I’m curious to hear what people who use typewriter mode often think about it? I’m wondering if it makes sense to make Bike’s typewriter mode work like that instead of offering the Top / Center / Bottom variations. I think I would prefer to change to a Scrivener like implementation. @macosxguru?

I use it all the time. You are right about the implementation in Scrivener. It is not a program I use all that much, so I forgot about it. I like it. It is a different approach from every other implementation I have seen. Personally I like the Scrivener approach better, but I am used to the traditional approach.

Implementing the Scrivener approach will make you different from most other implementations. That has some upside and some downside. However for an outlining program it makes more sense to use the Scrivener approach. I want to work on items in the outline and it seems better to work on the Scrivener way. I tried out a list in Scrivener. It does work great.

macosxguru

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Scrivener’s is good - highly recommend

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