m. c. de marco

Via I Should Be Writing: Rachel Greenham has a writeup on subversion for writers. I find rcs more than sufficient for my version control needs, but I suppose subversion could help other writers get in a few good hours of cat-vacuuming.

Word users need not apply.

I noticed the mis-take in a old Language Log post on hyphenization:

In any case, pro-ofreaders were clearly not obsolete then. Nor are they now. Though brute-force methods — really really big dictionaries with possible hyphenations specified — can improve things considerably, and undoubtedly have.

But I knew TeX had a famous (well, to TeX geeks) hyphenation algorithm that was rumored to never mishy-phenate.

Via Daring Fireball: Steven Poole says goodbye to Word.

Microsoft Word still uses the metaphor of the page, the computer screen that imitates a blank, bounded sheet of physical paper. For me, this is outdated and unimaginative. It has become a barrier rather than a window.

I heard about Bartas Technologies’ CopyWrite for MacOS X in the National Novel Writing Month forums. CopyWrite can help you organize your novel chapters, notes, and scratch paper and flip through it all with one handy interface. If you want to know more, see MacWorld’s review of CopyWrite version 2.1.