Modern Word Processor

[livingenzyme]

It used to be Office Word Touch.  But apparently that might get pulled due to it resembling MS's trademark.  So, I recently changed to Touch Type. But it doesn't sound too catching.  So, I just sent out another update this morning to change it to Modern Word Processor.

 

What is it?  It's a word processor that is touch oriented.  It works just as well as MS word minus all the layers of fat that most people never use... ever.  With MWP, you can still edit the colors and formats to your heart's desire.  You have full control over paragraph formats like spacings and such.  Again, think MS Word minus the kazillion features that most people never use.

 

Some features I've added include but not limited to spell checker, speech recognition that writes out the texts for you, text-to-speech, and hand draw/write. 

 

I've had users make conflicting requests regarding the look and feel.  For example, some users wanted the buttons to look like tabs with gradient colors while others wanted to see the more modern look of rectangles with solid colors.  So, I added controls for the user to change the themes and color schemes. 

 

What really sets this app apart from other windows store modern apps is the fact that the user can open many documents and switch back and forth between the tabs.  The user can also see 2 documents at the same time side by side.

 

When I was in grad school, I was hired by a professor to take notes in his class and post them online.  I didn't have very good hand writing (still don't), so I used MS Word to type my notes.  But every time the prof drew something, I had to draw it on a piece of paper and then scan it into the document later on.

 

So, just last week I added a hand draw/write feature for this app.  The user can draw whatever he wants.  When inserting into the document, he can either insert the whole picture or he can select particular strokes to insert.  Plenty of colors and line widths.

 

Anyway, there is a free trial.  The user has 3 days with full features to try out.  After 3 days, the app will go into read-only mode until it is bought.  If you have windows 8.1 and want to try out a touch oriented word processor, try it out with the link below.  I published it a little over a month ago, and I've sent out 14 updates, each adding something new.  Plenty of downloads and support from my users.  Always need more reviews, so if you have a minute please consider reviewing it.

 

Thanks guys.

 

http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/office-word-touch/4ae5b098-96f6-41ac-add8-2e98dd20f538

 

 

[livingenzyme]

So, last night a user emailed me.  Said he noticed that he couldn't change the page margins.  I was like "DOH".  Don't know why it never occurred to me.

 

So, today during lunch I cranked out a control for the page margins.  Will be included in the next update.

[taim]

You're the greatest dev ever, you've actually listened to a user.

[livingenzyme]

You're the greatest dev ever, you've actually listened to a user.

No, I just know what it feels like to send an email to a dev about a bug or deficiency and get a reply like 6 months later, if I ever get a reply at all.

 

A couple years ago, I bought an android document editing app for $9.99.  It looked decent enough.  Well, I quickly noticed that the darn thing didn't have word wrap.  So, words were getting cut off in the middle of the word at a line bre

ak like that.  It was extremely annoying and useless.  Every line at the end had a wo

rd that was cut off like that.

 

I emailed the dev.  A month later, got a reply with a promise to fix it with the next update.  Next update came a month later and this problem was still there.  I emailed again.  Several months later there was another update and no fix. I must have emailed them like 20 times and finally over a year after my first email that problem was finally fixed.  All it took was a single line of code to put in word wrap, and it took that dev over a year to fix that problem. 

 

Devs these days just don't seem to care about the quality of their apps.

 

Edit.

 

Besides, the best ideas come from users.  Half of the features in my app so far came from users.  For instance, the ability to open many documents and have the tabs at the bottom.  That came from a user email who told me he liked the app but sure wish he could open several documents at the same time.  Another user asked me if I could make it so he could see 2 documents at the same time.  Hence, the split screen feature.  Screenshot #4 from the top.

 

Back when I first published the app, which was just a simple text editor, the first review said he gave me a 3 star because it lacked a spellchecker.  So, 3 days later I sent out an update giving it a spellchecker.

 

There was a woman that asked me if I could give it a read-only mode because sometimes she wanted to just read her documents on her tablet without the virtual keyboard keep popping up.  So, I gave it a read-only mode.

 

In fact, giving this app this many features have started pissing MS off.  There is a push by MS for devs to make 5 different single-purpose apps rather than combine those features into a quality app.  When I sent out the ability to export any doc, docx, and rtf to anything/everything else including html, it was denied by MS.  The reason was the MS tester failed to see the relevance of the ability to export to other formats in a word editor. 

 

My reaction was is this a joke?  Considering that MS office can export a document to many other formats, they honestly rejected my app for giving it this ability?  I resubmitted it unchanged with a long explanation as a note to the tester.  I outlined exactly the situations users might have for the need to export to other formats.  And the ability to export as html could give users an easy way to edit websites.  It took them a week to finally certified that update.  Nothing wrong with it programmatically.  They just didn't like that I put that feature into this app rather than create a separate app for it.

 

 

 

Added by edit.

 

Anyway, my rant aside, the controls I have, like speech recognition, text to speech, etc. all should be their own separate apps.  That's how MS can tout the number of apps they have.  They don't seem to care much about quality.  I'm just doing what MS recommended.  On their website, it says to make your app unique.  Do a search in the store and see if you can find any other text editor that can do all the things mine can.  Anything else that lets the user hand draw directly into a word document?  I still can't believe they gave me a hard time about it.

[livingenzyme]

Just sent out the update.  Here are the things that you will see changed.

 

First of all, real-time spell checker.  You have no idea how many times I banged my head against a brick wall to make this happen.  I almost gave up several times, too.  What kept me going was the fact that a word processor ain't a real world processor if it couldn't even do a real-time spell check.

 

 

Speaking of real word processor, what's a word processor without the find and replace functionality?  Again, I've been banging my head against a brick wall the last 2 weeks to make this happen.

 

 

The user can now save the document directly to doc, docx, rtf, html, or txt.  No need for a special export function.

 

Tables are now resizable.  Furthermore, the user now has control over the background colors of table cells.  Cells can be combined and divided.  Just play around with the controls to see what I mean.  I spent a lot of time tweaking the formatting engine to make it work.

 

Some users have asked for more font style choices.  So, rather than pick and choose which fonts to include and which not to include, I decided to include all 255 font styles available.

 

 

Oh yeah, I've completely redesigned the radial menu.  For starter, I've made it slightly bigger.  Some users have complained that the old one was too small.  If I make it too big, it would take over too much real estate.  So, I kept playing around with the layout of the radial menu to until I got it just right.  I've also made the radial menu threads more intuitive.  And the color of the radial menu will now reflect the color of the theme the user has chosen.  Just play around with it to see what I mean.

 

Some users have requested I make it possible to hide the menu buttons and top title bar.  So, with the newest update, the user can swipe down from the top to hide the title bar and the menu buttons.  Do it again to bring back the title bar and menu  buttons.  The user can also achieve this with a mouse by moving the cursor all the way up to the top edge and right click.  On keyboard, it's the windows key + z.

 

 

From now on, every time the user closes a file, the app will ask to save or not.

 

I've included an instruction file in the global menu.  For now, it's not much of an instruction.  I put it together in about 15 minutes.  I'll try to write a more comprehensive one later for the next update.

 

Over all, much hard work has been put into this latest update.  I'm proud of my work.  I hope you will like it.

 

Remember, if you find a bug, please tell me.  I won't know unless you tell me.

 

Also keep in mind that I'm one guy with an old laptop.  I'm trying to make this app as close to MS word as I can, but given that MS has billions of dollars and tens of thousands of software engineers... just give me a break where you can.

 

Don't forget to give me suggestions

[livingenzyme]

I just sent out a major update to my Modern Word.  Should be available to download in a couple hours.

 

Here are some things included in this update.

 

1. Paragraph alignments and line/paragraph spacings are now retained in saved files doc, docx, and rtf.  Before, these elements were lost every time the user saved to these formats.  As I said before, my formatting engine is written entirely in html.  It's the language I'm most familiar with and also the only one I know how to do a real-time spell check function with.
2. Added more short-cut keys.  The list for these keys are in the instruction file.  Just go into global settings and press on the Instruction button on top.
3. I've refined some code logics to add stability and improve the speeds of the function.
4. Upon user request, the app can now open and save to txt file format.
5. Save to pdf!  Been working on this function for 3 months.  3 different approaches.  Finally, on the 3rd approach I didn't run into a brick wall like the other 2 attempts.  The resulting pdf file is fully searchable.  This means the texts are selectable and searchable.

 

Please note that Modern Word is the only app in the store currently that can do this without using an online web server.  That's right.  The function to convert the document to pdf is fully contained in the app itself!