Plain text editor atom software#
Plain text editor atom code#

Atom lists the contents of the folder in a Project overview pane on the left-hand side so you can quickly jump between files. Chapters are named sequentially starting with “Chapter 01.md” (using two digits makes sorting much easier).

tool-bar-markdown-writer: Adds a useful formatting toolbar to the top of the screenįor long-form fiction, I use a one-file-per-chapter approach where each chapter is a separate Markdown file.markdown-toc-auto: Automatically generates a table of contents using the document’s headers.markdown-scroll-sync: When previewing a document, this lets you scroll the edit and preview screens simultaneously.markdown-preview-plus: Lets you view the rendered version of your document in real-time.markdown-writer: Adds a variety of tools for writing in Markdown including keyboard shortcuts.Setting Up AtomĪtom lets you extend its features by downloading and installing packages.

Plain text editor atom software#

Fortunately Atom’s Markdown support is top-notch, since many developers use Markdown when documenting software projects. Markdown allows for basic formatting such as bold, italics, underlining, headers, tables, and lists. The language I use to create my documents is called Markdown. The benefit is that the file itself is plain text and can be opened by any program that supports plain text files, even those that can’t interpret the code.

Plain text editor atom code#

Where a word processor shows you the formatted document, a text editor like Atom shows you the code that creates the formatted document.

It’s built for code rather than text, which requires you to think about writing in a different way. In addition to writing creative fiction, I also use Atom to write software documentation and program microcontrollers, and it works just as well in one task as it does in each of the others.Īs versatile as it is, the important thing to remember is that Atom is not a word processor. Atom is open source (so anyone can contribute to it) and incredibly flexible thanks to its huge library of community-supported plugins. Atom is a software development environment that can also be used as a plain text editor.

My approach starts with a program called Atom. After trying dozens of different word processors and writing programs, I eventually got sick of playing the format game and decided on a totally different approach. Even software designed specifically for writers suffer from proprietary formats, as Stu Maschwitz eloquently explains on his blog Prolost. A Word document, for example, will never look or behave exactly the same in Google Docs as it does in Office. These programs offer a wealth of tools and options, but they all have one important limitation: they each use their own preferred format. Most writers are probably used to creating documents in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or some other word processing program. Since then, I’ve developed a setup that’s more transparent, easier to work with, and requires less command-line wizardry. In an earlier post, I explained how I used version control software to manage my creative writing documents.