Emacs for writers
Sometimes, being a computer user can feel somewhat like being a treasure hunter. Think about it: you’re on a quest to find that one application that perfectly suits your needs. You start your search, seeking the treasure map on some website or forum that will point you to the ‘X’ marking the spot. When you finally find it, you feel like you’ve struck gold. This is how I felt when I discovered GNU Emacs and started using it as a journalist’s tool, as opposed to a programming tool or for any other task it is capable of.
Continuing with the treasure hunting parable: the path through the jungle was neither easy nor short. My goal was to find a distraction-free text editor or word processor that would work on Linux. This was several years ago, and the selection was not that extensive, even though the distraction-free trend was starting to gain momentum. There were options like Pyroom (still available today), FocusWriter (still actively developed), and AbiWord, which has a useful full-screen mode. I’d stick with one or the other for a month or two, but eventually, I’d encounter some limitations. I also tried using old programs like Word Perfect and WordStar in an emulated environment. It wasn’t a great experience because they lacked support for Unicode, which caused additional problems with different code pages.