Software Review: Ulysses–The Writer’s Text Editor

One of the most important programs for a writer is their word processor. After all, we wordsmiths work with these tools constantly, using them to brainstorm, compose, touch up and finalize our texts. But when you get down to it, how many writers really need the complexity and full features of a word processor? Sure, some do: when I write computer books I need to use a Microsoft Word template provided by my publishers, so I can apply styles as required. But a lot of other texts I write, such as articles for Kirkville, or even first drafts of magazine articles, could be done in any text editor, even Apple’s TextEdit. Unfortunately, TextEdit just doesn’t do the trick. It’s a basic text editor that can handle simple formatting and layout, but even that is superficial for some tasks: it doesn’t count words, its find/replace function is rudimentary, and its display is not ideal. But it’s close. The problem is that TextEdit was designed for general text editing – which includes writing letters and faxes, and viewing longer texts – but as a writer it leaves me a bit short.

As I have already mentioned, I use BBEdit often to write texts for my web site. While this is practical when writing straightforward texts, especially when I need to use HTML code, it is too linear for some types of writing I do.

Word processors offer useful tools: I like being able to count the words in my text, I need a good spell checker, and I want a powerful find/replace function, but both text editors and word processors offer no organizational tools. As a writer, I have often longed for something better, something that will help me both organize my thoughts and commit them to paper.

Like many writers, I am regularly on the lookout the “perfect” text editor, one that allows me to forget about everything that I don’t need to think about, but that helps me by providing functions that fit with the type of writing I do. Hence Ulysses, a text editor designed first and foremost for writers. The developers looked at what writers need–essentially creative writers–and created a unique program that fills a niche in the Mac market.

Writing in Ulysses

What is most interesting about Ulysses is that it combines the simplicity of a text editor with some powerful document management functions that writers will like. Ulysses creates “projects”, which are bundles containing one or several files. Each file can contain text and notes; the Ulysses window separates these two parts of the file, displaying the main text in the center of the window and the notes at the right. Ulysses uses tabs, in the main part of its window, to display open files, which lets you switch easily between open files with a single click. You can add notes to individual files about anything: you can use them to jot down ideas, or you could paste an outline into the notes section of the window to always have it handy.

But it gets better. Ulysses lets you store as many files as you want in your project, and displays them in the browser on the left of its window. The browser has three sections: the top section shows all the files in your project; click on one of these and the second section gives you a preview of the file, showing the beginning of its text, and double-click the file to open it in a tab in the central part of the window. The bottom of the browser gives you a preview of the file’s notes. You can therefore have as many short texts as you want in separate files and open them when you need. (The best way to understand the program’s interface is to look at the screenshots on the Blue-Tec web site.)

This lets you conceive documents differently. Instead of a linear approach to writing, you can create separate documents for ideas, scenes, character information or settings. You can switch back and forth between them, jotting down bits and pieces in the different files, then cut and paste them into a main file. You are free to fragment your words as much as you want; as much as you need to create your text. You can also copy text from other sources and paste it into different documents, putting all your research for an article or story in one place that’s easy to access.

When writing, Ulysses offers in-line spell checking, as in TextEdit, and lets you use specific characters to indicate two levels of headers or paragraphs. The entire paragraph following these characters takes on a color (that you can set in the program’s preferences), so you can use these colored texts to indicate comments as well as headers. Beyond that, it’s just text–writers can focus on their words, and only their words, without having to think about any styles and formatting issues. All the usual text control gestures are the same as in any text editor or word processor: you double-click to select words, triple-click to select paragraphs, and you can drag and drop text.

Ulysses also offers one of the most unique features I have seen in a text processor: a full-screen mode. As I type right now, I see nothing on my screen but the text I type. Nothing. No window widgets, no title bar, no menu bar. And, the program’s preferences offer several choices as to the full-screen display: you can choose a font, size, a background color, and whether you want your text to be screen width or 600 pixels wide. (The program does need more choices for text width; I’m working on a 20″ iMac, and 600 pixels is a bit slim, but on my iBook it’s fine.

There is something liberating about tying in full-screen mode. You see nothing but a “blank page”, though you can type your text in the same way as you always do. But there’s nothing to distract you: no menus, no toolbars. Nothing. While it is closer to a typewriter, you still have access to the automatic spell-check, but nothing else. If you want to focus on your writing, and only on your writing, you’ll find this simple feature to be invaluable.

Ulysses also stands out for its organizational tools. The program’s browser offers several ways to organize your files: you can set the status of any document, add colored labels to help organize them, and you can sort the browser by status, label or title. You can also use its search field (like the search field in the Finder) to look for text in any of the files in your project.

There is also a control panel, at the bottom right of the window, which lets you keep an eye on document statistics, change document titles, set file status (new, draft, done, etc.) and apply editable labels with colored icons to indicate document types. And if you want to get rid of these extra sections, the browser and the notes-control panel, you can do so. Finally, Ulysses packages are Spotlight-searchable, so you’ll be able to scour your writings and find text easily.

All this adds up to a uniquely powerful tool for writers who don’t work in a linear fashion. It is sometimes useful to work not from the beginning to the end of a document but to move around and explore different ideas as they come. Ulysses lets you do that, but in a radically different manner than other programs, such as outliners. While you could do the same with a folder full of files, Ulysses gives you document management tools that pull all the related files together.

Getting the Text Out of Ulysses

So once you have written your text in Ulysses, you’ll need to export it if you want to share it with others or send it on to your editor or publisher. If plain text is all you need, you can copy and paste from a document into any other program, such as an e-mail program or other text tool. But Ulysses has powerful export features that let you save your files as plain text, RTF or *censored*, in one file or many, with a fair amount of control over the styles used in the exported documents. Ulysses only offers plain text when you’re writing, but you can use codes to indicate different styles such as bold, italic, etc. For example, the default codes are ::bold::, //italic// and __underline__. This may seem annoying to write like this, but since some magazines and newspapers still use similar coding to indicate styles, it may not be a problem. You can set your own characters for these codes, and Ulysses parses them when exporting to RTF to convert the text between them into the appropriate style.

The file export function uses plug-ins, and the developers claim that other plug-ins will eventually be available. This will make Ulysses even more useful, as additional export plug-ins can save you time if you want to publish, say, directly to HTML. Currently, you’ll have to edit your text and apply HTML styles, but if this is automated through a plug-in you’ll be able to generate HTML directly.

You can naturally print your Ulysses documents, choosing to print either the main text, notes or both. And if anything goes wrong, and you can’t run the program, you can still get your text from the project packages. Just Control-click a project, select Show Package Contents, and you’ll see a series of folders, each of which contains one document, with separate files for their text and notes.

Where to Go from Here

Ulysses in not meant to be a feature-laden program, and this is a good approach. But there are a few things that would be useful. The developers have said that they’ll be adding some kind of version control feature; it would be useful to be able to integrate comments and see changes, but this might not be very practical if you’re working with someone who has a different program.

It would also be nice to be able to sort tabs, rather than have them display in the order in which they are opened (the most recently-opened document is the leftmost tab). And if documents could be reordered in the Documents pane, and even arranged hierarchically, this would give Ulysses a rudimentary outlining capability.

Visually, I’d like to be able to justify my text, because I like seeing text that way. And I’d like to be able to adjust the margins between the text and the scroll bar in the main window.

This program will throw many people for a loop, but the only way to look at it is through the eyes of creative writers and journalists, those who work with text alone and don’t need any kind of fancy formatting. Its price will also throw some people; at EUR 100, or about $125, it seems expensive when compared to other “writers’ word processers” available for the Mac.

I find that Ulysses fits well with the way I work when writing certain types of texts–especially those which involve a lot of notes and research–offering me a single workspace for text, notes, background information, ideas and fragments. It is an excellent start for a program that presents a new concept, and the developers are receptive to users’ comments; since the first version, they have added many new features based on user requests. If you’re searching for a tool that will let you organize your ideas and put them into words, without worrying about feature overkill, you should have a look at Ulysses.

Update, November 2006: Blue-Tec is working on the next version of Ulysses, the 1.5, and the current public beta looks nice indeed. They’ve added some interesting features, simplified others, extended the preferences and improved the overall design of the program. If you haven’t check out Ulysses yet, now’s the time. Especially if you write for a living, or even just for fun.