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Simzart

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 26, 2011
3
0
San Francisco
Hi, I've been MacRumors user since 2008 but created a new account for our new app, Heart Writer!

Heart Writer is the simple yet powerful text editor that supports 40 desktop-level keyboard shortcuts for quick and easy editing.
You can have up to 90 custom texts and shortcuts in one screen.
Using Heart Writer on iPad, you can concentrate on writing and wouldn't miss your professor's or lecturer's speech.


For example, here's a list of what you can do in just ONE tap (or swiping) in Heart Writer.
1. Typing brackets [ ] (8 taps required using the regular keyboard)
2. Deleting a long word such as "applications" (you have to tap the delete key many times or move your hand to a text area, select, and delete it.)
3. Typing a long word.
and much more!


Features:
Swipe your finger to type (easy :))
- Tap it, or swipe your finger in one of four directions to write a text or to perform a shortcut function.

90 custom texts and shortcut functions in one screen (just 0.8 inches height!)
- 45 visible and other 45 while holding the "Heart" key.

40 desktop-level shortcut functions.
- e.g.) copy/paste, move a cursor left (or right) one character/word/paragraph,
select a text left(or right) one character/word/paragraph, find/replace a text, and type [...], (...), {...} -> ... is your own text, and more!

Customization and Presets.
- Create a new key and customize with your own text and above shortcuts!
- Store these keys into Presets and use them later for different classes.

Dropbox and Google Docs™ support.
- iTunes sharing; connect your iPad and transfer it in iTunes.
- Dropbox and Google Docs™ support!! (Thank you for Dropbox and Google Docs teams.)
- or just email your document.
* Caution: I forgot to include this in the App Store description. Dropbox uploading works fine with the English title and SHORT foreign language titles.
However, you'll fail to upload a document with a long title written in some foreign languages such as Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and so on. (the maximum length for uploading is different for each language.)


Sorry about too advertisement-style post!

The goal of our app is not to create beautiful document which you can do in Apple Pages or other great editors,
but Heart Writer is designed for users to write and edit a document more quickly in iPad and send it to your desktop via email/Dropbox/Google Docs for word processing!

It's just version 1.0. We would like to hear your opinion!
Thank you so much!





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Website:
http://heartwriterapp.com

Introduction video in HD:
http://vimeo.com/22780846

iTunes App Store:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/heart-writer/id432871473?mt=8&ls=1#
 
I've spent a few minutes with it on my lunch break. I don't usually like custom keyboards with a learning curve, but this one is simple and excellent.

I'd like to be able to skin it (a blue border, for example), change the colors and so on. I also wonder if you could add fonts, or enable image pasting?

If you update this often enough with new features yet retain its simplicity I can see it becoming quite successful. You could advertise it as a writers' tool.

Many thanks.
 
This is advertising and against the rules. Thus, I reported it, also the name of the app does not fit and I don't want a heart icon in my productivity folder.
 
Nice. Very nice.

The description had me raising an eyebrow. The screen shots had me intrigued. The video made me buy.

Two bucks? The quick deleting, backspacing and formatting with brackets and quotation marks and a version of a numerical keyboard available at all times?

Sold. This looks like just the ticket to bang out fast, accurate emails. Too bad it's not a keyboard replacement for use in other apps... yet (he said hopefully)?

First impressions are very, very positive. The shortcuts are very intuitive... just going to take me a day or two to get proficient with them.

Nice work.
 
First impressions are very, very positive. The shortcuts are very intuitive... just going to take me a day or two to get proficient with them.

Nice work.

Abe pretty much sums up my impression of the app. Nice job, looking forward to where this app might go.

... the name of the app does not fit and I don't want a heart icon in my productivity folder.

My take, unless you are overly pretentious about what you put in your productivity folder then you should give this app a try.


The only suggestion I can offer is it would be nice to have some type of help documentation available in the app.
 
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Thank you for feedback!

Alright. I still dislike the name and icon. If you changed that, added subscripts and superscripts. I would buy it.


I agree with your idea. The icon looks like heartbeat monitor app or some love-related app icon. lol
I asked our designer to draw a pen on it. Here's a prototype.

newicone.png



About naming, yea we should've asked more people :( We're non-native speakers, so we thought that Heart is familiar to everyone. lol
When normal users think of a text editor with keyboard shortcuts, they would think it's only for some professional users
such as programmers, writers, blog editors, and so on.
But actually it's much easier to use shortcuts in our app than a desktop editor where users have to remember key combination!
So we thought the Heart image makes our app look easy :)
Anyway, it seems that we can't change the name again in App Store. lol



About subscripts and superscripts, as iPad 3G user since its release date, we really wanted to build a desktop-level editor,
not fancy but just the level of TextEdit application in OSX, that supports adjustable bold, italic, and font size and color for each character.
However, Apple doesn't provide enough classes and frameworks to build a text engine from scratch.
Of course, we tried to build our own text area using Core Text and TextInputs to support them.
But the problem is that it simply doesn't work well with foreign languages, and also they were buggy last year (iOS 3.2).
I believe Apple made some useful classes (used in Apple Pages) to be private API yet, maybe to prevent other major companies to release a word processor lol. (not sure!)
So we decided to build a text editor with shortcuts for a simple document that's guaranteed to work well.

Again, thanks for feedback!


- For future updates: icon, help documentation or tutorial for sure. :)
 
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