DarkRoom
I found this program a while ago, but thought I would put my two cents in on the matter. DarkRoom is a simple text editor designed for people who are easily distracted, like me. Now I know the world is full of text editors, some with a lot of useful features and the last thing the world needs is another one. This program, however, fills a very specific need, one that I have. There are so many things on a computer that can distract a person that it is handy sometimes to turn them all off for a while and just type.
That is what DarkRoom does. It blanks out the screen so all you see is your text and nothing else. Green text, black background, much like the computers from the early 80's. (My family's first computer was an old IBM XT with a monitor that could only display various shades of amber. No I am not THAT old, the machine was ancient when we got it.) Now, the screen is not just filled with text. You can specify how wide you want the text to be on the screen, giving some white space (or in this case black space) to ease your eyes. The default is 600 pixels, which I find just right for my 1440 pixel wide laptop display.
You aren't stuck with green and black either. You can make the text white on black, but that hurt my eyes after about five seconds. You can change the background of the text area you set before and the background behind that. For example, black text, white text area background and a black main background looks like a piece of paper. However, there is something about the green on black that I like. Easy to look at.
Now, there are somethings on the computer that you can't ignore. Say you have a, um... well there's the... ok I can't think of anything right now, but if not being able to see your desktop is a problem for you there is an opacity setting that you can use to make DarkRoom semi-transparent. This may defeat the purpose of blacking out the desktop to begin with, but maybe just a little transparency is good enough so you can see it when you look closely but it is not distracting you. Play with it, see what you think.
Now, there aren't any fancy features here. No spell check. No rulers. No mail merging, tables, or even print capabilities. This program is designed to allow you to dump your thoughts in a distraction free environment and copy and paste them into a more full featured word processor for final editing. And to be honest, it does a great job of that. I am using to write this blog post in fact.
That is what DarkRoom does. It blanks out the screen so all you see is your text and nothing else. Green text, black background, much like the computers from the early 80's. (My family's first computer was an old IBM XT with a monitor that could only display various shades of amber. No I am not THAT old, the machine was ancient when we got it.) Now, the screen is not just filled with text. You can specify how wide you want the text to be on the screen, giving some white space (or in this case black space) to ease your eyes. The default is 600 pixels, which I find just right for my 1440 pixel wide laptop display.
You aren't stuck with green and black either. You can make the text white on black, but that hurt my eyes after about five seconds. You can change the background of the text area you set before and the background behind that. For example, black text, white text area background and a black main background looks like a piece of paper. However, there is something about the green on black that I like. Easy to look at.
Now, there are somethings on the computer that you can't ignore. Say you have a, um... well there's the... ok I can't think of anything right now, but if not being able to see your desktop is a problem for you there is an opacity setting that you can use to make DarkRoom semi-transparent. This may defeat the purpose of blacking out the desktop to begin with, but maybe just a little transparency is good enough so you can see it when you look closely but it is not distracting you. Play with it, see what you think.
Now, there aren't any fancy features here. No spell check. No rulers. No mail merging, tables, or even print capabilities. This program is designed to allow you to dump your thoughts in a distraction free environment and copy and paste them into a more full featured word processor for final editing. And to be honest, it does a great job of that. I am using to write this blog post in fact.
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